What a BFF is to Me

Ivy and her BFF at baby shower in 2011

What is a BFF to you?  I struggle with friendships and I sometimes feel even more clueless as to what a BFF is.  As children, we have our BFFs and maintaining our friendships is pretty easy, aside from learning about real friends.  As adults, maintaining our friendships is so much more work because we have to balance work, husband, children, home, pets, and our own hobbies or interests.  Life with a kid, hubby, monthly racing hobby, and an autoimmune disorder that kicks my butt takes a lot of time and energy, making it very difficult for me to connect with anyone, much less long term.  I have a hard time understanding my own life with this autoimmune disorder, and I can’t blame anyone for not sticking around to figure it out with me if they hardly know me.  But, when I really sit down to think about it, I realize a best friend isn’t the same for everyone.  Our individual personalities each require something different to fulfill our needs and make us happy.  We may have several BFFs during our lifetimes, while others have a BFF for life.  For me, a best friend is someone that I share a long history with.  She knows who I was and who I am today.

My real life BFF is a woman I’ve known since Kindergarten.  We’ve been through many ups and downs, sharing various funny and sad stories, and shared plenty of successes and failures in our lives.  Sadly, we also had a period of separation sometime after graduating high school.  A few years later, we reunited and I found out I missed out on, what could have been, some really good times with her.  In fact, I missed out on her wedding.  Fortunately, we’ve witnessed each other grow into mature (well, at least mostly mature) adults with children of our own. And though a bit of distance and new interests, family, and life keeps us apart more often than I’d like, we’re always just a phone call (or text) away.

Our friendship isn’t perfect.  What relationship is?  I think that’s the beauty of being able to call her my best friend!  We can be imperfect and still love each other.  Even if we can’t always be physically present in moments of need, we think of each other often and hope for the best outcomes in every situation.  The few times we can arrange a visit, there’s a comfort that I will probably never know with anyone else in my life, simply because of the extremely long ride we’ve been on together.  From silly little kids, stupid highschoolers, to women raising our own silly little kids, we’ve been through so much together.  I love knowing that I never have to explain my past for her to understand my present and vice versa.

Plus, we can share some really funny (aka stupid) stories from our past, which includes the long-time inside story about cheese sitting.  K, I continue to claim innocence in this case as  “I did not sit on your cheese!”

Now for a little throw back photo of the two of us right after high school:

Halloween

Who is YOUR best friend, and why?

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