friends

sometimes we need our friends to save us from ourselves. sometimes we need them to understand we need to make our own mistakes. but most of all we just need them to be there whether rejoicing in our victories or helping us pick ourselves back up after our defeats, because if nothing else there is a lot of power in knowing we're not alone.

I am so lucky to have had and continue to have such great friends. I've been blessed with having friends that cared about me and loved me as I was for the last 19 years or so. While some have come and gone, and other relationships have shifted and new ones have formed, it has been a constant that there has been at least one person in my life that has been there.

And in some weird way they have given me a gift that is more valuable than anything thing else I can think of. I now love myself. In some way through being themselves, in loving me and not only letting me, but wanting me to love them, I have learned to love myself. Somehow this fleeting basic need that I had been missing has been found. And it's not because they love me that I love myself, it's not dependant on someone else anymore, it's through the love between us that I realized my own inherant worth.

in truly loving someone, one cannot disreguard the value of something they care about. If it has no other value to you, it matters simply because it matters to them. That's how it first started. If I matter to someone who really matters to me, then on some level I must matter to myself. And then add to that, that here are people who I adore just as they are preceived flaws and all who love me for who I am flaws and all. I trust their judgement on so much, why do I not believe them where my own worth comes in. Through their love of both me and themselves I began to see my own value, not just the things I value in them that are in me, but also believe that they are not being fooled and do in fact see and love me as I am. They showed me how to love myself, but now it has become I love myself even if their view of me has changed. They have shed light on the me I refused to see., and now that I see it, it cannot be unseen

Through the support of friends and their being there I have learned how to take care of myself. They are invaluable, life is so so much better with them there, but now I feel I have the strength to live even if there were to come a day when I did not have the support I want. They have taught me to be my own friend instead of the enemy I had always been. I'm grateful