friends are friends forever. i'm reading a lot about friendship these days, and my thoughts turn to organizing and categorizing my friends constantly. some would say it's ego-centric, self serving, and ultimately a waste of time; i'd like to call it research. the study of friendships fascinate me. how they're formed, how they're maintained, how they're lost. each friendship has its own story, its own way of working, its own importance in your life.

hearing someone else talk about their friends can often be terribly boring. i try not to unload all my thoughts about my friends unless provoked. it's impossible to show another person what your friends mean to you -- or why you get along, etc. the dynamic between two people can never be fully experienced by an outsider and usually it's futile or frustrating to try. it's best to just make relatable comparisons and leave it at that. we use terms like "good friend, best friend, acquaintance, used to be close," in an attempt to generalize our experiences, but they often don't come close enough to what we actually want to convey.

the divide between "being close" and "feeling close" to someone can often be very large. being close to someone is knowing that you've experienced many things with them, that you can count on them, that you understand and know things about them that any good friend would. some people, you know nothing about them, but you just feel close. like you could disclose things to them and given the time you would be super close, but you just never have had that opportunity yet.

friendships for me used to always start at "being close" and then move along to "feeling close." nowadays, for some reason or another, that feeling close often precedes the actual being and knowing close. you know what i mean? part of the reason for this is i think that as you get older, you become better attuned to what type of person you know you can be close to. you cut out the getting to know you and move right along to the i know/trust you stage.

this is both wonderful and detrimental to friendships. on one hand you can have insta-friends, on the other, you can rack your brain about the things that you know about a "good" friend, and really come up with nothing. it's not a bad thing per se, just an observation on how some (relatively) recent friendships in my life have developed. like putting the milk before the cow almost.

i miss the getting to know you parts sometimes. the talks and the experiences that lead to deeper friendships. i know those times will most probably come, but i always fear that those moments might never appear. i wonder if that's a silly thing to be worried about.