On Friedship

Friendship is one of my very core values. Since I was a small girl I thought that friendship was the best a girl could experience. My mother was a romantic at heart and supplied me with books that glorified friendship between girls. I was the only child for 10 years. Then my brother appeared in my life and the life of the family. By that time I did not need a small noisy thing at home. It upset my world that was full of ideas I found in books. And I read the books my romantic mother supplied me with. The main influence was Ann of Green Gables and a book about a princess from Georgia. The second book was a translation from Russian. It was a very old book, referred to as a pre-war edition. Definitely a pre-communistic literature representing very capitalistic ideas. The book must have been forbidden in Russia. The story was about a princess who lost her mother, the unruly girl was placed by her loving father in a boarding school. His decision, however,  was influenced by a skimming and wicked woman. The school was a very exclusive boarding school in Saint Petersburg. The princess felt lonely but she found true friendship among her schoolmates. 

                                                                         

Maybe I will be able to get this book when next time in Poland, a Polish translation though

                                                       

These were friendships for life, till death do us part sort of thing. I responded to this idea vehemently and this is how friendship became my top value that still is the most important of them all. It represented love, honesty, unconditional support, trust and many other beautiful things. Actually, I consider myself most of all a friend. This is my label – I am a friend. It is a relatively new realization even if friendship has been always present and sought for through most of my life. There were times I thought I was a wife, a partner, a manager. Now I know, I am most of all a friend. I do have my own Diana, the best friend of Ann Shirley from the Green Gables. Our friendship does not go as far as the grammar school but it goes to the first day at uni.  It has been long enough to call her my friend for life. She is now the most trusted person in my life and I am very happy and grateful for that.

When I think about real friendship, I really have a friendship with a woman in mind. That is how it was in those books. Boys did feature, unless they were to become at some stage romantic partners. Like Gilbert Blythe. However, there are so many “howevers” in life, I have some male friends that are also true, valued friends.

What friendship means to me? It is trust, permanency, support, understanding, fondness and many other warm and fuzzies. When I was a young woman two of my very close friends died before they turned 30. They were my first loses of friends. It was very painful but there was no betrayal or rejection behind the end of those friendships. I wonder how far they would go. Would they finish prematurely? Would they last till this day?

When some of my friendships finish, I hurt a lot and can not understand it. Friendships do not finish. That is how it was in those books. Friendships are forever. I still want to think that and believe in it. There is a saying that I found at times comforting: Friends are for a reason, for a season or for life. Yes, I have had seasonal friends in my life as well, but those friends who are not “for life” are they real friends or are they my lapse of judgment?

This Picasso painting represents women friendship to me