What are friends and how do people make them?

What is friendship? It’s a question that utterly baffles me. I feel like an alien for being so confused. I have friends, a few friends and I love they dearly. I just have no idea how, or why they are my friends. How did it happen, what made them my friends?

I met and befriended about 80% of the people I consider my friends within about 18 months for starting secondary school, we were all 11-12 years old. All the people I had considered friends before that seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth and only acknowledged by existence if I was the only available option. Other people seem to have no issues finding new friends and keeping them I seem to lack that ability.

In my experience there are three things that seem to be required. Proximity, will power, and luck.

Proximity seems to be the most successful factor in my experience. As I mentioned I met 80% of my friends at school.

The person who now holds the title of ‘best friend’, claimed that role very quickly. It was early in they school year but my old friends were gone and I had never felt more alone and unlovable.

My best friend reached out and invited me to their birthday party. I assumed that they had invited everyone. I firmly believed they had hundreds of friends, of cause they did, they were so nice they even invite ME to a party! In the weeks leading up to the party doubts crept in. Maybe they were only inviting me as a joke! Maybe I would arrive at the party and no one would be there, or everyone would be there and they would all laugh at me for being stupid enough to think someone could like me. I don’t know why I thought this but I did and by the time the party came I had pretty much convinced myself that I just shouldn’t go. I think my mum told me I had to go because I had already said that I would.

I’m so glad I went.

I’m so grateful that they reached out, so grateful that I am brought to tears almost every time I think about what my life would be if they hadn’t asked or I hadn’t gone. I don’t know if I capable of expressing how much their friendship means to me or how desperately I cling to this event when I’m feeling lonely.

Over the next 18 months I met so many people but only 3 others who really stuck as friends.

One who made me feel so comfortable in myself that I finally let all my ‘weird’ out. I didn’t feel like I had to hide how much I loved fantasy and dragons and silly noises because they were the same as me! I have never felt so completely understood by someone so quickly. I never felt the need to hide myself to crush the urge to do something that, I had been told in no uncertain terms, was not normal.

One who was so exceptionally cool and confident and powerful that I felt honoured to just be allowed to be part of their life and privileged to be trusted with any form of personal information. I still feel that way.

And one who just fitted, we were so comfortable around one another that practically moved in together for one of the school holidays, going back and forth between our respective houses. To the point that I stopped getting the school bus home, so I could walk part of the way with them and then catch another bus in town.

From there I just didn’t seem to make any other permanent friends. No matter how much I wish I still spoke to some of them, we drifted apart, lost contact or in one case that still hurts far more that it has any right to, decided that I was no longer worth their time.

Will power is something that I have only realised factors into making friends because my lack of it caused me to miss out of potential friends. My poor mental health took over and prevented any and all attempts to form connection.

Possibly the biggest regret is that I failed to accept the hand of friendship when it was offered, repeatedly by the same person. A person who I know with absolute certainty, would be been an excellent friend and would have introduced me to other excellent friends. I regret that I not only did not accept despite wanting to but also giving off the impression that I was not grateful. If they ever read this, I was grateful, so grateful that I was still fighting with my own self loathing and doubt when I got on the bus home, I almost won, I almost got off the bus and ran after you when I saw you leaving but my feet didn’t move. I’m sorry.

On a happier note, luck brought me my most recent confirmed friend. This friend was a complete accident. I was buying a new phone, they worked in the phone shop. They overheard me asking about student discounts and we got talking. We were studying the same thing at the same online university. We exchanged numbers and just kept talking. We have been on holiday together, read each other’s work, exchanged opinions on anxiety medication and share an undying love of museums.

Now I just have to figure out how to actually ‘make friends’. I am now an adult, an adult who has worked in a few different places and met many people, a lot of whom I would love to consider friends. I just have no idea how to make that happen.

How does someone cross the line between work friend and full friend? Is there even a difference between the two or is it just me expecting too much of people. Do I expect an unreasonable level of connection before I consider someone my friend? I don’t think so, but maybe. Maybe I am missing a category between friend and friendly acquaintance or work friend. Maybe the people I consider friends should really be ‘close’ friends and that the people who I want to be friends with, are in fact already my friends, I’ve just been stingy with the title.

After all it’s probably a little unhealthy to require a relationship to inspire a level of devotion in me, that the loss of it would still be tearfully mourned well over a decade years later, before I even consider it friendship.