C has sent in their response to the latest prompt about friendship. This is what they had to say:

Friendship truly means everything to me. I curate the life I want to live, the values that I want in my life through my friendships. Personally I find this especially prevalent and important to me because I feel like my family is missing a lot of these values and care that I deem necessary in my life. 

For example, my family shows no emotion towards each other unless it’s anger. That relationship is not one with a lot of emotional depth or integrity. Because of this my friends are the most emotionally intelligent and mature people I know. I seek out that deep emotional connection and emotional outlet in my friends because that’s something I value so heavily within my life and feel like I am missing otherwise. 

It’s this kind of structure of friendships that I find so valuable. My friends reflect who I am, what I value, what I love, what I prioritize. They are all the better versions of me and I try to be more like them every single day. 

I don’t mean to be dramatic but they are my reason for living. I wake up and am excited to talk to them and spend time with them. As soon as I have a spare second in my day I’m texting or calling my friends in different cities or I’m walking into my friends houses unannounced and uninvited. That’s how I want to spend my time, with the people that I love. 

One thing that I find so special about friendship is I think friendship is the purest form of love and connection. There is no biological, or legal, or even reproductive element within the relationship. You both are in it just because you want to be in it. I think that kind of love is very precious and valuable. Not only can you learn from this kind of love and apply it to other parts of your life, but it also just feels really fucking good to love and be loved by someone in this way.

I love having deep philosophical conversations with my friends as we walk for miles in the moonlight. I love bumping elbows with them in the kitchen as we’re all trying to make breakfast in the morning. I love having people to call me on my bullshit and keep me in check. I love getting mundane updates of what my friends are up to day to day to keep us connected even if we can’t be together in person. I love running straight to my friend to tell them something I just said I wouldn’t tell anyone about. Having these moments, having these conversations, just getting to see my friends smile, even getting to see them cry, this is what brings meaning to my life. My friends truly mean everything to me. They fill a hole in my life of things I didn’t even know were missing. 

So back to the question of close friends versus superficial friendships. For me all of this discussion of friendship only applies to my close friends. These people really are my found family in the purest sense of the word. They know me better than anyone else, even better than I know myself. It takes me a lot to get to this level with people. And I don’t want to say that superficial friends don’t exist, but the people that I would call superficial friends really don’t know me at all because I don’t let them know me. It’s all or nothing for me. But I’m having trouble defining what these people would be to me. I want to say they are more than my acquaintances, someone I would say hi to, or someone I would do normal friend activities with, we’re just missing that deep connection. So I guess superficial would be a good word to describe it. These people just don’t tend to have the same priority in my life, though I do appreciate their company and would call them a friend. 

I’m still unsure how I feel about this question, but I can say for certain how strongly I feel about my close friends. They mean the world to me. To all my friends I LOVE YOU!!!