Friends are like clothes.

In reply to Lindsey's comment on Matt's blog.

"Friends are like clothes. Sometimes we outgrow them, or they outgrow us (in my case, I shrink at such an alarming rate I will be a size -3 by the time I get back to the US), sometimes the fashion changes or our tastes do and we move on to liking other things. And then there are clothes to suit different occasions and different needs. Some clothes are flattering and others just don't look good on us (I want to be one of those that looks good on anybody - take that whatever way you want *wink*)

We'll always need clothes and I hope we'll always have them. I like them - they keep me warm. =)"

Matt's blog today about best friends invoked a long reply from me

I'm going to be lazy and simply cut and paste it here.

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Look at what one introspective post can do. That was my favorite of all your posts on LJ thus far. :) Was this inspired by my recent blog about my best friend in highschool?

Well, I have two cents too, only it's in Malaysian currency (so technically, it would be 2 sen) and hardly worth anything. I'm going to write this here for the heck of it and post it in my own blog later, I think. *schemes*

I have misused and abused the term "best friend". Till now, I'm not really sure I know what it means. I call alot of people my "best friend" if I absolutely adore them (like all my friends from college). All my church friends (those are the ones I hung out with the most, really liked and enjoyed myself immensely with) have been called my best friends. But like you said - it's so much more meaningful when it's mutual.

From the time I was 7 up to the time I was 10 or so, my best friend (and I think this was REAL) was this girl from church named Melanie. She was 3 years older than I was, but somehow we discovered each other. I had formed a club (I was always forming a club of some kind) and she was co-leader. She played the piano like I did, and we'd play duets and stuff. She was older so she was ahead of me in piano- I really looked up to her. We had sleepovers and begged our parents to let us go to each others' houses to play after church each Sunday. We talked about boys the most. I had liked this kid named Brian all my life and she liked his brother. We had our weddings planned out and matchmade all the other kids in church with each other. Girly stuff.

Then, she turned 12 and left the primary for Young Women in church. She grew up on me. We were still friends after that, but things were different. She was friends with the older boys, and I still hung out with the kids. We had the same piano teacher when I was 14, by then I had nearly caught up with her in piano (because she had stopped for a couple of years in between while I just kept on going) and I was fiercely competing with her. She was my role model, like I said. Our piano teacher would compare us to each other and I liked that.

We'd still get together, play the piano and sing for church but we became aquaintances, not friends. Especially after she started college, she stopped coming to church as often or at least became less and less involved. I felt that she had apostatized on me. Eventually, our branches got split and I saw less and less of her. She went to BYU-Hawaii after that and became nothing more than a part of my past.

And then, it was MY turn to go to BYU-Hawaii. We ended up being roommates! She was a wonderful roomie, but we had grown apart so much. In a way, I was disappointed. She sucked at piano because she stopped playing it for years (ok, so she wasn't bad, but alot worse than I could remember... what happened to my mentor?!) and I found her shallow and materialistic. We turned to each other alot with our problems as roommates, but something was definitely missing. I still consider her an ex-friend.

She's back from Hawaii now. Graduated. I haven't seen her yet. People change, they grow apart. That's life.

I have a sister a year younger than me and I've always thought of her as my best friend. We had everything in common as kids. I told her all about the guys I liked and she broke the news to them for me a couple of times. We had recess together everyday in Grade school and shared each other's friends. She couldn't get into the same middle/highschool that I had gotten in so she went to another school, a girls' school (like mine) nearby who were our biggest competitors. That was good for her. It gave her a chance to be independant and live outside of my shadow. At that time, she also started gymnastics - one of the first few things we didn't do together.

At some point, I started turning to friends over the internet. They became my best friends. I eventually got an internet boyfriend I couldn't tell her about because she would disapprove (and she always used that kind of knowledge against me when she was mad, not cool!) We just drifted apart. Being sibblings, we could only drift apart so much, so that was good. We still shared a room and would talk and stuff, but we weren't, you know, TIGHT like before. We still had alot in common - she was Molly Mormon like I was and we played the piano and sang together WAY often. Eventually, I moved away to college, I hardly called/wrote home because I was having such a blast and kept so busy.

When I moved home again, I was so changed, she must have really felt like she had lost a sister, like how I felt I lost a mentor with Melanie. She must have thought I turned shallow on her. I couldn't tell her anything because she looked at me as if I was sick when I told her I had kissed my boyfriends (and have pictures). Kissing is kept hush hush here, and we grew up learning that it was unecessary (maybe even thought it was EVIL), and we were both planning to kiss only those we were dating seriously (as in going to marry). Heck, I couldn't tell her about any of that OTHER stuff I did.

Well, now she's in college and has had her first boyfriend. They've kissed. Hahah! Now she gets it. But for her it's strictly no tongue. Freak. She really makes me feel like scum sometimes.

Recently, I just talked to her boyfriend/ex-boyfriend (they're even more confused than I am) and he was encouraging me to talk to her more. Apparently she wishes that we were closer and that I would open up to her. I would like to, but she doesn't open up to me at all. Plus, she looks up to me, and I have this image to upkeep. I want to talk to her now, but it's also really hard because I'm really jealous of her for being in Hawaii when I am grounded and at home. Just a little resentful at her for being the goody-goody and making me look bad I guess.

Regardless, my sister will always be my best friend. She's family, and I think that's what family should be. We'll stick together through thick and thin. She's always going to be there and I will always be her sister. There's this fierce emotional bond that we've forged and like it or not, it's going to bind us together forever.

That'll beat all the best friends I've made out of boyfriends lately. I open up heart and soul to them, but keep having to give them up and construct these walls.

Right now, my bestest friend in the world (yes I know that isn't English) is my blog (and now yours). How pathetically sad.