Today I am grateful for my friends. I pinged a friend on facebook because he mentioned that he was going to be in London tomorrow. We are meeting up to talk. I haven’t caught up with him in a long time so this will be great.

But above and beyond just tomorrow’s social plans, I am truly blessed. I have trouble determining who my “best” friend is most days because I have so many people who are special in very different ways. They support me in ways that I didn’t know anyone received support. I am about to do the “extra parent” upgrade on my family. That’s not an option that I thought was open to me (for a wide variety of reasons that are outside the scope of this post). But I get to have it because I have a friend who wants to do that with me.

Shanna has had three extremely well attended, fun, exciting, wonderful birthdays. Because I have friends who have been willing to step up and be her family. I have spent my entire life feeling alone and unimportant. I don’t think that any of those feelings have entered into Shanna’s consciousness. Because of my friends.

When I have been just about as low as I can be all I have to do is call someone and they will do anything within their power for me. Sometimes it takes more than one call because my friends have lives too… but that’s ok. Really. If I spread the load out in a way that is reasonable… my friends can carry me. That’s not what I want full time for the rest of my life. I like being the supporter a whole lot more than I like being supported. But life is a balancing act, right? It’s not reasonable for me to expect that I only take one of those roles all the time with everyone.

And my friends taught me that.