Day 4: Write about your closest friend(s).
The thing I love about friendship is that different people bring out different aspects of your personality, and you can have friendship that springs from all sorts of weird places. Thus, I have friends with whom I can be cynical, friends with whom I rant about politics, friends with whom I squee about fannish things, friends who understand what it is to be an Australian in the UK, friends who get what it is like to feel inadequate in Cambridge, friends whom I've known since we were children (which is a powerful thing) and so on. I love and value all these people immensely.
But when it comes to close friendship, I think there are two criteria that override all others.
1. You must be able to be yourself, utterly and completely, expressing all aspects of your personalities with one another.
2. You have to be able to handle it when they fall apart.
With those two factors in mind, I have five close friends. They are my mother and sister, my boyfriend,![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lucubratae and thelxiepia.
Not everyone is lucky enough to enjoy a good relationship with their family, and while it saddens me that this isn't the case, I recognise that I am somewhat unusual in how my mother, sister and I relate to one another. There is nothing that we're not able to talk to one another about, and I think that's something that's really crucial during childhood and adolescence. Without this kind of trust, there's nothing.
My boyfriend is kind of self-explanatory. It'd be pretty sad if I couldn't be myself, and couldn't express feelings of fear and grief (these are my most common negative emotions; I very rarely feel anger) around him.
lucubratae is a weird case, in that while we used to talk to each other every day in 2007-8, we don't really do so now. And that is okay! But when we do talk, it's as if no time has passed at all. It's a comfortable friendship, one that we're able to fall in and out of at will. I trust him with everything.
thelxiepia is my fourth younger sister, despite not being related by blood. When we first met, she lived in Wales and I lived in Australia, and I am so incredibly grateful for the crazy random happenstance that allowed us to become friends. The internet is a beautiful thing.
( the other days )
The thing I love about friendship is that different people bring out different aspects of your personality, and you can have friendship that springs from all sorts of weird places. Thus, I have friends with whom I can be cynical, friends with whom I rant about politics, friends with whom I squee about fannish things, friends who understand what it is to be an Australian in the UK, friends who get what it is like to feel inadequate in Cambridge, friends whom I've known since we were children (which is a powerful thing) and so on. I love and value all these people immensely.
But when it comes to close friendship, I think there are two criteria that override all others.
1. You must be able to be yourself, utterly and completely, expressing all aspects of your personalities with one another.
2. You have to be able to handle it when they fall apart.
With those two factors in mind, I have five close friends. They are my mother and sister, my boyfriend,
lucubratae and thelxiepia.Not everyone is lucky enough to enjoy a good relationship with their family, and while it saddens me that this isn't the case, I recognise that I am somewhat unusual in how my mother, sister and I relate to one another. There is nothing that we're not able to talk to one another about, and I think that's something that's really crucial during childhood and adolescence. Without this kind of trust, there's nothing.
My boyfriend is kind of self-explanatory. It'd be pretty sad if I couldn't be myself, and couldn't express feelings of fear and grief (these are my most common negative emotions; I very rarely feel anger) around him.
lucubratae is a weird case, in that while we used to talk to each other every day in 2007-8, we don't really do so now. And that is okay! But when we do talk, it's as if no time has passed at all. It's a comfortable friendship, one that we're able to fall in and out of at will. I trust him with everything.thelxiepia is my fourth younger sister, despite not being related by blood. When we first met, she lived in Wales and I lived in Australia, and I am so incredibly grateful for the crazy random happenstance that allowed us to become friends. The internet is a beautiful thing.( the other days )