There is nothing like a bus ride through the vast Australian country-side and reading a book about Sociopathy to make you appreciate good friends.
Canberra is the capital city of the entire Australian continent. It was chosen for its location between Sydney and Melbourne, two major cities, but also because it lies inland and is therefore safe from attacks by sea. The word 'Canberra' means meeting place in local Aboriginal terms. This weekend Canberra was my meeting place; a weekend together after years apart.
I went to Canberra to visit friends from high school; a close friend I had not seen since we graduated almost four years ago, as well as one who left the school years before that. It had been four years since I'd seen the first friend, six years since I had seen the second, and 5 years of communication but never meeting yet another friend whom I was finally united with. It was a weekend of reunions. If I have learned anything in my short but thorough lifetime it is that friendship endures.
Friends are not just who you drink with when you want to have a good time, they are not just who you study with on a stressful night. They are so much more. Good friends are the people that are there for you on birthdays and send-offs. They are the hardest people to say goodbye to but the ones you know will love you no matter what you do or how silly you look. Friends are the ones you turn to in your hardest times, when you can’t decide if you want to be left alone or if you are lonely. They are the people that you can tell anything to, or go months without talking to and knowing without a doubt that your friendship will survive the silence; it will survive anything. True friends are there despite distance and time. Sometimes they are even there because of it.
Some of my greatest friends are the ones I have not lived close to in years. My two best friends and I each go to different universities in different parts of the country (or, in my case at the moment, on the other side of the world). But that has not changed the nature of our friendship in the slightest. If anything, distance brings you closer together, as you come to appreciate the other person in a way you take for granted when they are right by your side.
This may not be an award winning piece of writing, but I think it is something everyone knows. Go tell your best friend you love and miss them, even if you saw them yesterday. Friendship is a choice, one that we keep making over and over, no matter how far away they might be or how busy they are. Friendship is never a competition or a test, it is love in it's purest form. It is a meeting place.
Dear friends: I love you.
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