When 'old' friends meet

I believe it is friends and family that help us get through day to day life. They are our mainstay and without them we would be really sad lonely people. There is a saying, 'You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family' which in my case I have found to be very true. Families grow and extend and as different personalities and cultures become linked we learn to love because we are family but it does not mean we may like each other. I learned with time that as much as I tried I could not get everyone to love me let alone like me.  I am absolutely gullible when it comes to relationships and my nature and upbringing taught me to welcome anyone and everyone with open arms, however, little did I know that behind my back not everyone felt the same way about me.

With friends it is different. We make friends with people who we are attracted to or have something in common with and as our lives progress, we mature, circumstances change, we move on, and while some of those friendships may eventually die, there are only the best and strongest that survive.

Through my life I have gathered a handful, well maybe both handsful, of really good friends who have seen me through the highs and lows of my life and continued to stick around. One thing I have learned about friendships is we are able to be ourselves with little or no judgement. We can be brutally honest with each other and tell our best friends things that we may not open ourselves up to telling anyone else.

So on the eve of New Years Eve I met up with 3 friends from high school. We were trying to work out how long it had been since the four of us were together and we couldn't remember exactly but reckoned it must be about 12 years ago.  We have emailed and messaged and facebook commented and met up with one or two together  over the years but it took me moving back to KZN to get us all together again.  And guess what.... we picked up and chatted as if we had never been apart.  Our children are all adults now, scattered across the country and even the world but having followed each other all these years we knew exactly where they are and what they are doing. There was no pretence and that is what I enjoy about really good friends.