There was a time in my life when I wondered if I was alone if I did not have enough people around me. I was looking for connections that had depth, that had nothing much to offer but emotional support, deep, intimate understanding, to make me believe in safer spaces where every conversation did not have to make sense, where accepting things was not necessary, where letting out the unwritten poetry of my thoughts would seem easy and comfortable, and that is when I understood that friendship is not a lesser form of love. I somehow don’t understand why people always crave for that one person who will change their world upside down, who will love them till the world turns to dusk, who will add meaning and colour to their life. It is good if you find that someone, but why do you think that friendship is devoid of intimacy? Two people who connect with one another on an emotional level, who understand each other in the easiest of ways. From kicking cans on the street to make each other fall and make life a little less serious, to sitting with them for hours and hours to make that same life seem full of purpose. Such kind of intimacy is rare, and that rare thing that everyone carries in their story is friendship.

The most beautiful relationship between two people who are equally eccentric and at the same time, equally torn apart. None of us are or will ever be stable, or perfectly fine. There are parts of us that will always stay broken, to co-exist with one another, to heal, we will always reach out to people who connect with us. I personally believe that having healthy and secure friendships in life is the best thing one can do, you need not be prepared for every situation and person in your life, but if you have a solid support system then no matter how worse it gets, you will always have a friend to go to, to cry to. In all these years, the one thing I have learnt is that you are lucky if you make even one good friend, even one person who sticks by your side and never lets you face the world alone. 

I always wonder if we have been taught the wrong definition of things. I am not against the idea of love, I am sure it is a beautiful feeling, but we are too young to fall in and out of love. We have all our life ahead of us to choose the person we would want to grow old with, but what we don’t pay attention to is the beauty and proximity that lies in friendship. We spend most of our lives with these people, we evolve with them, we grow with them and if life is all about investing in things that actually matter then friendship has the power to bring a person out of the darkest of caves, to heal the deepest of wounds and to make the worst days of someone’s life bearable and worthy of a giggle.

If you know that at least one person could breathe easily because they had you around, I guess that is more than enough. Jane Austen believed that there is very little real friendship left in this world, and if that is true, and if you think that you have a friend who looks after your emotional needs, who is willing to put the world on hold for you, who is constantly reassuring you that you will never have to do all of this alone, who is willing to fight the world for you, and you really do believe that you will always have one person by your side no matter what, then I guess you have that little something that is quite rare.