One in a Million
Friendships
I think that a lot of people aspire to be “the one” to at least one person. It’s just what we want; whether it be friendship, romance, blood, etc., we want someone who will always need us as much as we need them. We want to feel like people can depend on us, like we’re doing something right. So when we meet someone who we just get, who immediately understands not only what we show on the surface but what we are in subtext, it feels amazing.
I think I first grasped this concept in highschool, or rather I really mourned not having it yet. I was close friends with a girl, but she was closer with someone else. She was fun to talk to, and I loved hanging out, but I was always conscious that I was not the first person she could talk to, nor was I the most important. I was definitely important to her, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t the #1 per say. I think I spent a really long time trying to rectify it in my head, thinking “why does she not click with me as much as she does with her other friend”, or “why, no matter how hard I work, does she not think I’m more important”. I think that therein lies the problem - you just can’t force people to click with you sometimes.
It’s hard to accept at first, that you simply can’t be the best friend of someone no matter how much you want to be. It doesn’t matter how much you like them, because at the end of the day it’s a two way street. Even if you guys both appreciate each other and depend on each other, that doesn’t mean you have to be two peas in a pod - in the same way that no matter how much you really want to get to know someone deeper, sometimes it just doesn’t work that way, and your personalities are just so slightly askew that it will never work out.
At the end of the day, what matters is that no matter how deep the connection, you have it. I think that there is something to say with being able to be a pillar for someone without being their main pillar; you don’t have to mean everything to someone, you just have to mean enough that when you’re home for break or when you think of something that reminds you of them, you’re able to reach out and message and feel good about it. I think that that’s been one of my greatest takeaways from the past few years, at least socially, and its helped me out quite a bit; not only removing some of the strain from social interactions, but also leading me to appreciate people, and their bonds with others, a lot more.