Friends.

Friend is a weighty word for me right now, and it seems to be everywhere.

Friend, used by people I don't consider a friend, or consider more than a friend.

Friend, in terms of seeing posts about my friend's other friends but being excluded.

Friend, like, "Can we just be friends?"

Friends, as in the Cameron Philip song. (Go check him out, he's God-tier.)

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For me, suffering with BPD and having friends is like walking through a landmine. I never know when I'll step on the wrong thing and everything will blow up. Throughout my life I've "picked and honed" as my household knows it. This means that in any given situation, I'll find someone, mold my entire life around them, get a little too over in my head, before ultimately having my heart broken by friendship. There have been four main people this has happened with and all four of them destroyed me at some point because I didn't have the ability to step back. Little did I know that this has been a BPD thing all my life. At each stage in my life I've found my favourite person without realising until it was too late to stop being toxic. A branch off BPD is a thing called "Chameleon", where you fashion yourself off your favourite person. It takes a lot, a lot of mental space, tears, and self-hatred to wrench yourself away from this habit, which is something I've been through many, many times. It's a toxic dynamic but it's one I've never seemed to be able to lose, hence why most of my friendships are short-lived. And the ones that somehow last for years turn out to be simple, distant, and healthy.

So what does a friend mean to me?

In the past two years, a fear called agoraphobia has taken root in me. It's the fear of leaving my house, thinking the worst things ever will happen and I won't have a quick escape plan. It's taken away 90% of my social life, restricted me concerning a working life, as well as put the breaks on any potential dating life. It's a terrible thing and even happy memories make me angry and upset because they're not happy anymore, they're reminders that I'm not anything like the person who used to go out, attend concerts, get a bus to college without any second thoughts. I had this amazing best friend Elle, who was there for me through thick and thin, who saw the darkest parts of me and never made fun, or laughed, or scorned. We used to meet up every weekend, I'd skip the occasional college class in favour of hanging out with her. Out of all my friendships, ours was the most affected when my agoraphobia took root. This led to the friendship breaking down; not because Elle turned me away. No, I turned myself away, unable to endure the guilt that came with me knowing I was constantly cancelling plans and crying alone in my room. All fun and games.

Recently, I've had the opportunity to reconnect with her; I've had the opportunity to reconnect with a lot of friends in an attempt to repair what my agoraphobic self has damaged. This morning, I continued reading Justine Winan's manuscript, and there's a paragraph that says, "all friends are good. As long as they care about you, it doesn’t matter if you see them twice a day or twice a year." And that hit me massively because not even once a year do I see my best friend who lives a twenty minute drive from me. A friend merely five minutes over the road from me is someone I see maybe once/twice a month. But they've stayed, for whatever reason, they have stayed. I've been given this complex that nothing is worth anything if it doesn't happen outside my house. So I always turned bitter when I wondered why my friends would settle for a virtual persona of me. I've struggled with writing being enough to say I've been busy because it doesn't require me going outside.

Friends are the people who stay, no matter how hard the times can get. Friends will know you, and if they truly know you, they'll believe in you and be proud of any inch of effort you make. They'll recognise how much you try, no matter how small that trying is. Friends might not always think to include you, knowing it could be too much that you'll decline again, but they see and they know. They love and care.

And whether you see them every week or not even once a year, a friend can always be there.