Tell Me a Story: Out of Key

One Hot Mess has a brief post up about how friendships change as we age or how what we want/need/can put up with changes.

…as you get older, your priorities shift and your social circles narrow. The perils of adulting rush in to fill the void previously occupied by friend drama. You start to contemplate your own mortality amid piles of bills, professional conflicts and setbacks, marriage troubles, and child-rearing. You find that you lack the bandwidth you once had for friend bullshit, because there is enough other, more pressing bullshit to go around.

Yup. Truth.

The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.
~ Jay McInerney, The Last of the Savages

Back in my so-VERY-long-ago 20s, I was pretty new to the whole concept of friendship. Hells bells, I was new to myself (Hello Donna, meet Donna – she’s a bit strange but, at heart, very nice and caring. You'll dig her but, please, be patient!). This is what happens to a kid who's clocked six different states, seven fresh neighborhoods and as many brandy new schools before she's reached her teens. Interpersonal relationship-wise, I was semi-feral and far from the most aware and perceptive of beans (a condition I’ve not entirely remedied).

The folks I hung with way back then were a mix – the good, the bad and the well-meaning (but just as fucked up as me if not more so). I wanted interesting chums, folks outside the get-married-at-27/house-in-the-burbs-by-29/pump-out-bambinos-at-30 mainstream set. I was way the fuck outside that little milieu and dearly wished to meet folks more like me. I did – the good, the bad and the more fucked up than me.

I’m still friends with a few from way back when – some I found the need to DQ with extreme prejudice and others gave yurs truly the heave ho. Life shifts, change happens. I get it. Well, now I do.

A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.
~ Elbert Hubbard

Growing apart doesn't change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I'm glad for that.
~ Ally Condie, Matched

What do I want/need in a friend, here and now, at 60? //shrugs// I know/understand more than I did at 20 (gee, growth happens EVEN FOR ME!). Some things don’t change though – I want chums who are patient, accepting, supportive, funny, kind and interesting. Ya know, like Jen and Hillel. Myself? I'm serious weak sauce at all those lovely traits BUT as I age I become less stunningly clueless and thoughtless, less feral...MEBBE. I *think* that I now give as good as I get. I hope ta fuck I'm a value added, as Hot Mess termed it, kind of a friend.

Possibly yes. I hope so.