The past three weeks I spent time in North Carolina (all over the place) visiting family and old friends. I then spent an adult weekend in Bald Head Island with my group of girls that I have known for over 30 years (Wow I am getting old) and their husbands. I have to say that I loved every minute of it. These girls that I have known forever plus all of my other friends from my hometown know everything about me. All my weirdness, my idiosyncrasies, my mouth (definitely my mouth) have gotten me in trouble in the past but every person that I made the effort to visit with is someone that loves me in spite of my flaws.This got me to thinking about my new group of friends and how I feel with them in comparison to the old. This is what I decided...
1. Old friends know everything about you. Good or bad there are no secrets and there is no reinventing yourself (ever!!!). New friends means a fresh start. You can be who you want and have an added air of mystery (OK I am not very mysterious but still).
2. New friends still leave you questioning where you stand at times. Old friends you always know where you stand and where you fall in the pecking order.
3. Old friends are going to be loyal to you just because of your history. New friends means that you have to build up to this loyalty. As with anything, a loyal friend takes time to build. This can never be an instantaneous thing.
4. Old friends husbands are a must like for your own husband because you will never give up that friendship. New friends husbands can make or break a new friendship because most of the time couples meet both at once.
5. New friends give you the opportunity to branch out and try new things, meet new people and go new places. Old friends have a tendency to do many of the familiar activities because they are familiar. With new friends, places and activities are new and exciting.
With all of this said, I think that my conclusion is that you never give up the old friends but continue to make new friends. Every friend can make you laugh or cry. Whether old or new these emotions cover the entire gamut of your friendships. Sorry I am in a contemplative mood today. I will be more lighthearted later.
1 comment:
Agree! Sadly, I really haven't found new friends quite like my old friends, but I still (should) have a lot of time to find some great new friends. My rotation of friends has been interesting because I grew up in small town in NH so everyone kind of knew everyone and your first friends were pretty much your friends for life, or at least until college. But then I went to a boarding high school and it definitely shook up who I thought were my best old friends. Some stuck with me and kept in touch, some didn't and some of it was my fault as much as theirs.
My new friends I made in HS were special friends because we had a mini college environment during probably our most trying years growing up. We were literally there for everything, good or bad, happy or sad so our bonds are really tight and they will be there for life.
Then I went to college across the country in Cali so both sets of my old friends were again tested by distance and it weeded out some aquaintances from HS but my friends from home and my friends from HS have stuck with me and I know I can count on them for anything.
It was much harder for me to find as good of friends in college for some reason. People kind of rotated a bit each year, by the end I had a pretty good group but only a select few I will keep in touch with. Maybe it was because I had already done the dorm thing so there wasn't the novelty of living with someone for the first time to really bring me together with anyone. I don't know but I do know that the number of good, true friends I came away with is much smaller than HS or home. Maybe it is because I already have a good core group and I didn't feel the need to add many more and let people in as much as others who were separating from their home friends for the first time? All I know is that my old friends are here to stay and the select new friends I let in have pretty big shoes to fill, and that is the way I like it!
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