17 : Continue to be a Good Friend

A couple weeks ago, I met one of my best friends for happy hour.  We had both been busy as of late (when is life not busy?) and hadn’t had much time to talk.  We bellied up to the bar, ordered a couple drinks and started filling each other in on the latest.  My friend was stressed.  She was a working mom who held the majority of the childcare responsibilities.  On top of that, she and her husband were in the process of buying a house in the suburbs so they were working through all the details surrounding the move.  She started to vent to me as we had done so many times in the past.  This is what friends do, right?  We complained about our husbands.  We bitched about work.  We shared problems with our kids.  How many times had we done this in the past? It’s what we had always done.  But this time it was different.  She stopped herself mid sentence and without explaining anything, I knew why. I told her that she had to continue to be herself with me.  I relied on that.  I needed that.  So much had changed in my life, if my friends started treating me differently I was really going to crack.  True, her problems were different than mine but they were still legitimate.  My roles may have changes slightly over the past several months.  I was no longer a wife.  But I was still a friend.  And I would be there for her no matter what.