Circle of Friends – Week 2

Each Sunday in May (yes, I know.. I am very late!), I will be joining Raili @ Soul Gifts for Circle of Friends. Hop on over and join us!

This week’s prompt for friendship is “close friends” and Raili has given us quite a few questions to focus our attention on:

Who is your closest friend? Is there one or more?  It may be someone from childhood. It may be your faithful four legged friend.  Is it someone who has come into your life recently yet feels like you have known each other forever? What is it about them that makes them so special? What senses (sight, sound, smell, feel) do they evoke in you? What memories do you share? What form does your special relationship take? Do you bare your heart and soul to each other, warts and all? Do you laugh, cry, celebrate life together? How often do you catch up with each other? Is it in person, by phone, through social media? Is it someone you  rarely connect with, yet each time you do, you pick up as if it were only yesterday? Is it someone who has passed through your life yet the memories retain a closeness?

I don’t have many close friends period. Not online or off. I can pretty much count on both hands how many people I am close to. I am not sure it has to do with trust issues as I am a fairly trusting person. I think it has more to do with those who’ve stuck by me through all of my mental illness issues and come out of it fairly unscathed. It’s not easy remaining friends with someone who suffers from mental illness when you don’t. I am only in constant contact with four of my closest friends – Lisa, Claire, Brenda and Annette, with Annette being the one I try to talk to every day.

Annette lives in Cali and we met through our blogs. We’ve only been friends since January, but it feels like a lifetime. Our lives share some commonalities and we both struggle with our pasts. We are both on paths of healing and recovery and I think that is what binds us together the most. She is my ray of sunshine when the dark clouds loom overhead. If I need cheering up, I just need to message her.

Lisa is the selfish friend I talk about often. Most days it is a real struggle to remain friends with her and we’ve had our moments where we haven’t spoken for months over disagreements. I guess I remain friends with her in the hopes that some of my finer qualities will wear off on her. Still, she is the only friend that lives in my small town and we’ve been friends since high school. It’s kind of hard to break that long-term bond. We talk on the phone a few of times a week (she’d prefer every day, but I just cannot take her every day) and get together every couple of months.

Claire is my friend and Reiki Master. We generally chat about spiritual matters. We are both highly sensitive people, so we discuss how the world around us affects us. She is also an artist and writer, so we have those things in common too. We met during my second semester at Hollins College (Spring of 1994) and have been great friends ever since. Unfortunately, she lives about 3 hrs away and we rarely get to see one another. We communicate via email and Facebook.

Brenda is the greatest friend. She is like me, slightly introverted but also a bit social. She and I can be around one another and just be quiet, no need to really be chatty at all and just enjoy one another’s company. We met while attending the local community college back in 1991. We both took a creative writing class and have enjoyed one another’s poetry ever since. Brenda lives about 45 mins away and we get together off and on throughout the year. Otherwise, we talk on the phone or via Facebook.