Working Wives & Bachelorettes: I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

There is a cold truth out there that a lot of people may not tell you. Friends are usually not friends forever. You find this out when you leave high school and move away to college. When you graduate college and move out of state. When you get married. And, especially, when you have kids.

I've spent a lot of time, more than I would like to admit, bellyaching over friendships lost. Not because of a huge fallout. No one slept with someone else's boyfriend. Really, nothing much happened at all. It took me a long time to learn that nothing actually has to happen for a friendship to end. We grow, sometimes together, sometimes apart. Some friendships can weather the ups and downs, rumble-tumble of life. Others can't. Were they a waste? Absolutely not. Every person we encounter, every connection made, offers insight into our current situation and a glimpse into ourselves. We become better based on our human interactions with one another, whether they are good or bad, long-lasting or short-lived.

I remember being in elementary school and asking my mom why she didn't have more friends, after all, Megan, Annie, Elizabeth, Patty, Lisa and I were gonna be BFFs. Why didn't she have that? My mother told me that it was quality, not quantity. I remember thinking, "yeah, right. Who only wants a few good friends?" As always, mom was right. Though Megan, Annie, Patty, Lisa and I are friends on Facebook and it is good to catch up, we have by no means remained BFFs. We grew up. We grew apart. We moved on.

I have a story like this for every twist and turn of my life. Thanks to social media, I have reconnected with some of them and it is great to see where they have ended up, but we are just that, Facebook friends.

As you move through life, you find you have different sets of friends. Work friends. Old work friends. Workout friends. Mommy friends. Friends of friends. Friends of spouse. Family friends. College friends. High school friends (these last three groups you must stay close to. If you ever get into politics and you have pissed them off, they have hard evidence of the not-so-proud-moments of your youth!). You don't share every facet of yourself with every group of friends you run with. Some appreciate your up-all-night, no-sleep, new-baby stories. Some get the inside jokes of working in close quarters. And some love you--bumps, bruises and all.

What really matters about the friends you keep is how well you can rely on each other, regardless of how long they have been around or what category they fall into.

No matter what, I know that every person I am friends with would help me out, no questions asked, with work, family or anything life can throw at me.

After all, that's what friends are for.

~Kel