My Best Friend

Aside from my husband, I would say that I have three real "friends," or at least only three without whom I would feel difficulty functioning. I have a great many pleasant acquaintances: people whose company I enjoy and for whom I feel some sort of affection. But my life turned out very differently than I thought it would (doesn't it always?), and very differently from that of most of the people I once considered friends. I married someone who lived 500 miles away from my family and friends, and who was just very different from the people I knew. His interests were often at adds with those of my established acquaintances, and he just didn't mix so well with the people I knew. This was fine with me - I think in some ways he gave me the courage to admit that I didn't feel much of a connection with these people and to go my own direction. Before I met my husband I was the sort of person to form friendships with anyone whom I found merely tolerable, and as such I think I lacked really meaningful relationships, with a few notable exceptions.

Of my three friends, only one is someone I was close to before meeting my husband - in fact she was, and is, my dearest friend. I met her in my freshman year of high school, and she instantly became one of my favorite people. We are so different: she is athletic while I am somewhat frail, she loves to go out and party while I'd rather stay home and read or watch a movie with a few close friends, and she is reserved about her feelings while I am overtly emotional and communicative. In fact, for the first four years of our friendship I had no idea that she thought of me as her best friend; I knew that she liked me and enjoyed spending time with me, but it never occurred to me that she really felt strongly about our friendship until I got sick. She started showing up at my house while I was bed-ridden, leaving notes or little goodies when I was sleeping or too sick to have visitors, and bringing DVDs or funny books to read to me, if only for a few minutes, when I was well enough. Whenever I was hospitalized, she somehow found out where I was within a day of my arrival, and she would show up with balloons or a silly stuffed animal or a trashy magazine, despite her acknowledged hatred of all things medical. She became increasingly dear to me, and when she went away to college and I went to school near home I really felt her absence, more than that of anyone else. She was the first friend to meet my husband, and they absolutely adored each other - he now considers her one of his best friends and vice versa. She was the maid-of-honor in my wedding, and the one person with whom I could never wait to share the details of my wedding plans. She lives about two hours away now, so while we see each other less than we'd like, we exchange emails and phone calls at least once a day. She's the only person, aside from my husband, whom I would say knows abslutely everything about me. She's also my only "healthy" friend, mainly because she's the only one who understood, without me ever having to tell her, exactly how to treat me - like I was exactly the same person I'd always been, just with a little extra understanding. I know she worries about me (somehow she always seems to find something she really has to come home to do whenever I'm really sick), but she never makes a big deal about my health; in fact she rarely even mentions it. Our friendship is the same as it ever was, except maybe now we're both more open about how much we care for each other. She effortlessly adjusts to my changing physical status without a single comment, always understanding if I have to change or cancel plans or if I'm not as quick to return phone calls or emails. I can't be sure, because true to form we've never talked about it, but I think this is partly because she was raised by a single mom who happens to be blind (and who is also one of the best moms I know), so she understands the adjustments that need to happen to accommodate someone whose physical abilities are different, and also understands how uncomfortable those adjustments are for the person for whom they're made.

There was a time in my life when I would've been embarrassed to think of myself as only having three true friends. I guess I used to think that popularity was measured by how many people you have at your birthday people, or something. I don't know why it took me so long to figure out that the cliche is right: that quality is more important than quality, but I know that my best friend had something to do with teaching me that in the end.