To Whom It May Concern

How much of what we do is just reaching out for companionship?

Sure, we have our family and in most cases, they are a blessing to us. How thankful I am for mine! They support and encourage me and sustain me in ways that defy description. They are examples of goodness and righteousness to me. My family grants me the room to make mistakes and loves me anyway and helps me get through the mistakes while cheering me on to greater things.

But even having family doesn't mean they fill all the spaces in my heart. Does that mean I am somehow not 'doing it right' or that I lack focus? While I am not sure I can answer that, I AM sure that I need my friends in my life.

Though our paths are divergent in terms of our personal lives and the things we have been through to get us to where we are, I need the experiences that they have had in order to get through the experiences I am having. I don't know if that makes sense to other people - and I'm not sure it has to.

Family can be too close to a circumstance to tell you what you really need to hear. That may be an uncomfortable truth, but if so, let it ride. Sometimes people love you so much, they don't want to risk hurting you with a truth that needs to be told. And friends who love you don't have to live with you 24/7 and can say what needs to be said and are often willing to risk the friendship in order to preserve the person.

There are times that I feel the same way about the writing that I do. Most of it is typewritten catharthis because I need therapy but lack the money to pay for it. My journal, my short story folder and my blog entries are a means to an end as I try to sort out the circumstances of my life.

Does this method work for everyone? No. Absolutely not. There are times I find that I have been too candid for the comfort of others and indeed, reading back, perhaps too candid for my OWN good.

But it is there and life seldom offers a rewind and edit feature, so I resist the temptation to go back in my writing and clean it up to suit the sensibilities of others or of myself under duress and circumstance.

I try to live each day as it comes without over-expectation of what should be. I keep a calendar on my desk, carry one in my purse and have one on the computer at which I define my life. The calendar is an addiction. It is a sense of control in a world, which for me, generally lacks control. Though I am by nature a planner and plotter, there are times that my plans lack the insight to truly be prepared for what life sneakily has in store.

Those are the times that I need my friends the absolute most. My family is a given in times of crisis, but there are times during those crises of my life that they are so invested in my personal well being and issues that I need the unvarnished eye and the open heart of a friend who is willing to set aside the load of personal circumstance they shoulder to simply steady mine.

Can you ever have enough friends? The question is asked often and I believe that the answer is yes. Enough means that your life has balance and since life shifts like the sands of the desert following a storm, the number of people within your circle changes as the needs in your personal desert change.

Friends are to me as an oasis of calm, refreshing water in the barren wilderness of my life. Though they often come into my life unexpectedly, they bring the blessing of a continuation into my life. They bring continuity. They bring balance and they bring peace.

This isn't to say that they are perfect, because they aren't. I don't think they would be able to tolerate someone so blatantly imperfect as I am intruding into their life if they were totally without faults. That they aren't perfect is a good thing right now. Maybe later, we can all get to the point where the idea of perfection becomes more than theory, but for now, I will accept my friends as they are, where they are - without warranty and without a definative time of arrival, duration or departure.

I confess that I hate to see relationships change and dwindle. But that too is part of the equation for some relationships - they simply run their course and people move on. Life circumstances change. People take different jobs, move home to care for aging parents or simply redirect focus so that their time is spent in other ways.

So for now, I am trying to focus on how thankful I am for the warmth of hearts that are welcoming to me and my life for whatever duration I am offered. All of this mortal life is transitory, but I have a hope deep within that all of those whom I have ever been friends with during my life might harbor a feeling of wanting to keep me around as an eternal friend.

I know that is how I feel about them. I want to be able to see them as I think of them in my mind's eye and know that the good feelings and shared memories meant as much to them as they did to me.

But for this time in life, I must content myself with the one way expressions of how I feel about my friends. They fill places in my heart that are just the right size for a special friend when I need one. And they leave an echo of their passing when they leave that can tide me over during the low ebbs in the oceans of my existence.

The memory of their presence as it breezes through my days and nights is as a refreshing wind in the arid places in my life. Without them, my days would be heavier, and, in some ways, unbearable.

Just what came out while I typed today.

Hug a friend today and let them know what they mean to you. Time is moving along as a fluid stream and the opportunity may never come again.