A Friend Indeed

When I first moved to Oak Hill High School, I was a huge ball of social anxiety. It was my freshman year of high school and I had just been taken away from my friends at my last school. Back then, I had terrible people-skills and I was always really shy and awkward. To make the matter worse, I was sick the first few days of school. I remember sitting in my first high school history class during period 4 with three boxes of tissues down by that point in the day. This is when I met my first friend, let’s call him Tom, as well as when I got my very first stupid nickname, “sniffles”. Me and Tom were close from the beginning, and ironically enough we lived right across from each other. Every day afterschool I would jump through Tom’s bedroom window, and we would play videogames for a few hours before I would head back home. Tom and I had one of those friendships that other people find annoying, for example, we had way too many inside jokes so nobody ever understood our humor. One of my favorite things about him was that he always had kittens. His cat was always pregnant, I felt really bad for her actually. I came over to see him and his kittens every day, and most of them we named and played with together. Tom had a girlfriend he had been on and off with for quite some time, and me and her got along pretty well, we will call her Stacy. Stacy ended up being one of my closest friends for a bit of time, we hung out quite frequently. I slept over to her house a lot, I have good memories with her, and I helped them with their relationship when they needed support. They would often break up and fight and both would ask me for advice or support, and I always ended up helping them through their problems. One day Stacy decided to see me as a threat to her and Toms relationship, so she ended up saying things about me to Tom that were not true in order to stop him from talking to me. It worked, Tom completely left me in the dust along with Stacy, and I had lost two very close friends. This left me feeling lost because it felt so weird not having our weird little traditions in my life anymore.

It had been a couple years since then, and I had missed having Tom as a friend, but I didn’t want to pry, so I waited until he wanted to talk again. Very recently, he contacted me again. Tom and Stacy had broken up, and he apologized to me and realized he was being a really bad friend back then. He messaged me because he needed somebody to talk to about the breakup, and even though I could have gotten mad at him, I decided to be there for him as if nothing happened. He came over and we finally hung out again, it felt normal, as if we had been talking this whole time. Just like old times we went out through the woods and explored the trails, then we played some games and watched some movies that we both enjoyed. Tom was going through such a hard time with the breakup, I wanted to help him feel better by keeping him company, but during the day I ended up getting really sick all of a sudden and he took care of me all night to make sure I was alright. I was very dizzy and it felt like I was on another planet, I have never felt that bad before. This situation made me realize what a true friendship should be like. What me and Tom have is a really special friendship, and we help each other out even when things have been hard.

A friend is somebody who can help the other person out no matter what and support them through their troubles. Me and Tom have been through a lot and we still look past our problems and continue to support each other as friends. Moral of the story is, everyone needs a friend or someone special in their life. Sometimes needing help is okay, being selfish sometimes is okay too, as long as you help each other through the long run.

Photo on Foter.com