Friends of Friends

Recently, I found myself marveling about a certain friendship. With a person who has many, many other friends. Who are all really great, incredibly successful, kind, and fun people. Which made me wonder to myself—why is that person friends with me when they have so many other friends to pick from? In fact, this person will often say that I am their “best friend.” So they're not just choosing me along with their other friends. They've chosen me as their favorite. How is this possible?

I've written before about how I grew up with almost no friends. Many years in elementary school, I had no friends. The good years, I had one friend who didn't stop being my friend midway through the year when another of their friends demanded that they stop being my friend to prove their friendship to the other person. Believe me when I say that I was not picked as the “best friend” ever in my childhood. By anyone. I never made demands on other people to stop being friends with someone else because that wouldn't have occurred to me to do, and also I would have known that no one was going to pick me over any other person.

In high school, things changed a little and I had both one boyfriend and one best friend. I had a “posse” of other friends which made life enormously better because no matter who had what lunch, I always had at least one person I could sit with at lunch. (This had been a serious problem in junior high, when my one friend had a different lunch than me and I was kicked out of a table by a group of kids I thought didn't hate me, but it turned out they did, so I ended up spending most lunch periods outside wandering around the yard, eating my lunch out of my sack—not so different from my elementary school experience). Having friends is protective, socially. You get picked on my bullies a lot less if you have friends. But I just didn't seem to be friend material. Clearly, something was wrong with me. Something that I couldn't figure out and couldn't change.

After I thought about this one friend who likes me, apparently a lot, I made a list in my head of other friends I've made in the last few years. People who care enough about me to text me and ask how I'm doing on a regular basis. People who go out to lunch with me on my day off. People who post photos of me out to lunch with them on their social media, which must mean that they're not embarrassed to be with me and not just trying to befriend me so I'll do their homework for them. Right? I have friends who are famous authors (not to brag or anything, just to express astonishment at this pure luck). I have friends who are brilliant artists and friends who are deeply kind people. I have friends who are not Mormons and know very little about Mormonism but what I write about it. I have friends who are deeply committed to other religions.

I honestly don't know what this means. It seems very strange to the child-Mette who is still inside. She is just a little suspicious that these are real friends who can be trusted. Ya, thanks trauma. But also, child-Mette is full of awe and wonder at this reality. She keeps double-checking. These are actually some of the best of the best. And they like me. It's not a mistake, because I'm too honest and open and raw about what's inside this meat sack. They have to know who I am in a deep way because I don't hold anything back. And if my friends are good people, do you know what that means?

I've tested this most of my life. If certain people have really awesome friends, they are always awesome people themselves. If you want to have a great friend, all you have to do is look around at their friends. It is very telling. I've made mistakes not trusting this test before, but I assure you, it works.. Every. Single. Time.