Love is blind. Friendship tries not to notice.

There are all sorts of friendships. And, though it’s safe to say that some are preferable to others, I believe that the way we communicate (IE: email, text, video chats, etc) in this day and age has changed the way we rate their importance.

It’s so very rare, I think, to have a friendship that stands the test of time, but what about distance? Are friendships like romantic relationships in that respect – near to impossible to keep going when you aren’t sure when you’ll see that person next? What about if you’ve never even met that person?

My best friend in elementary school was my cousin Ben. He was three months younger than me and, consequently, in the same classrooms until about the age of 10, when they suddenly realized that separating us would not only benefit our learning abilities, but the sanity of our teachers. Unfortunately for our parents this was not an option at home as we happened to be next door neighbors.

We spent many an afternoon discussing the merits of karate vs. street fighting or seeing who could spit the farthest. I was pro street fighting, Ben was pro karate and, though I’ve often had reason to believe he cheated, he always spit the farthest. He would pull me, blinking and irritable, away from my latest paperback and out into the sunshine. We were the last of the Mohicans running through the woods, he in his bare feet and I in my navy Keds, only discarded when I was a safe distance from my prissy mother and her entirely rational fear of snakes and poisonous spiders. We raced bikes, played horrendous games of basketball, and made solemn promises with sticky handshakes.

Over the years our friendship changed, adapting, like so many boy-girl relationships, to make way for the things puberty claimed we needed. He became my protector rather than my sparring partner, and I became his sounding board for all things female – an idea as preposterous now as it was back then.

Though we remained close through the few teenage years we were allowed, and though I continued to call him my best friend, we branched off and found people that met with our often changing qualifications and fads. While I dabbled in a particularly heinous Goth phase, he was trying his hand at the All-American jock. While I practiced the art of the hanger-on, he took up afternoons with the fishing club. However, by the age of 15, we seemed to be moving within the same circle once more. The common circle, collector of teenagers everywhere – trouble.

I was only just discovering the feeling of constantly having him around again, of being on the same wavelength. Afternoons were spent using every curse word we knew, playing video games, burning rap CD’s that would make our mothers faint, and smoking cigarettes on the sly. My favorite pastimes were riding in the car with him next to me, singing Afroman at the top of our lungs, and lying in his bedroom at night giggling over things that only made sense if you were stoned. I’d barely begun to appreciate our new relationship when he was killed suddenly in a jet ski accident.

Losing my very first best friend – my brother – my blood – in such a terrible way, crushed me. But after the anger had run its course, after the hurt dulled to a controllable throb – he managed, in death, to give me something. He pulled me out of my shell again.

In the years that followed Ben’s death, I made friends with an ease I’d never had before. I still disappeared behind my books from time to time, but I wasn’t the same withdrawn child being coaxed to come out and play. Interacting with all those different people was necessary.

When I think over all the friends I’ve had since, there are only a few that even bear mentioning and I’m glad - glad that I had so many imposters, so many which passed through quickly. It’s made it much easier to recognize the real thing.

Rachel, whom I’ve written about before, was the next person to make a big impact in my life – helping me move into adulthood with honesty (I had a significant problem with that.) and much needed hilarity. And though she’s still my best friend, things seem to be at another turning point. I’ve changed yet again, and I suppose when that happens, you need new people in your life to reflect that change.

I’ve recently (over the past year) developed some unexpected, unconventional friendships. At times, especially in the beginning, I couldn’t think of them as anything special because it would just be too weird. But I’ve since readjusted my thinking.

I’m talking about my friendships with you guys.

This whole online dating fiasco I entered into recently? I’ve been pretty embarrassed about it, depending on who I’m talking to and what day it is. But in all honesty, it’s not that different from blogger. Sure I don’t have any romantic intentions as far as the lot of you are concerned, but I’ve formed some pretty close attachments despite myself – without even being aware of it happening at first.

Every comment and every reader has a special place in my heart. I love all of you guys for giving me the validation I wasn’t aware I needed until I started this blog. The support I’ve received here, through some of the most difficult times, has occasionally been the push I needed. Your comments are always encouraging, more often than not hilarious, and usually better than any anxiety pill. See, even having a great group of “in-person” friends, I just don’t get much encouragement on the writing front. I needed that, and you all gave it freely – so thank you.

But as with any large group, there are always a few standouts – a few people I’ve gotten to know a little better than the rest. A few people who started as encouraging strangers, and ended up becoming close personal friends.

Mr. London Street, whose real name I wish I could use here, if only to make myself sound more plausible, has been, in a manner of speaking, the driving force behind almost everything you’ve read on this blog since spring of last year.

I’ve always been an ok writer and I knew it was something I desperately wanted to do, but it wasn’t until I read his site that I realized just what possibilities really lay behind blogging. I was using my site to vent and occasionally tell a funny story or fill out a meme. And here was this man, writing so beautifully about everything from humorous bus expeditions to painful childhood memories. It was a wakeup call.

He gave me the courage to write in a way even I had no idea I was capable of and encouraged me to push boundaries. And I will be forever grateful, because one of the best feelings in the world is seeing something you’ve written and thinking, “I can be proud of that.” It might be “just a blog”, but it’s also a record of just how much I’ve improved. I’m a long way from reaching my full potential, but I have a feeling I’d be even farther away if we hadn’t become friends.

And I do consider him a friend...a real one. A mentor of sorts, obviously, but a friend first. Not a week goes by without an email or a twitter message that makes me laugh, think, or roll my eyes in amused exasperation. We have quite a bit in common for all our surface and cultural differences and, of course, our geographic distance. I plan on remedying the latter sometime in the first months of the new year, if only for a brief visit, and I can’t tell you how excited I am at the prospect of meeting him in person.

There’s another blogger that I’ve become close with, though I prefer not to name them as they’re quite funny about their privacy. Suffice it to say that if a few days go by and we haven’t spoken, I wonder what’s going on. They make me laugh constantly and even, on occasion, irritate me to the point of insanity, as friends are wont to do. Our phone conversations often leave me in stitches, but even when they turn serious, I’d be hard-pressed to find someone I enjoy talking to more. I genuinely hope that this is one friendship that will prove the distance theory wrong. (Note to person in question: Just because I’m being nice does not give you license to torment me about it later. I will retaliate, as you well know.)

There are others that I have occasional correspondence with and would love to get to know more. I believe there’s a wealth of possibilities here. A great big world of people that share the same sense of humor and aren’t afraid to say what they think. People that are open-minded and intelligent. People that when you finally meet them for the first time, it feels like the twentieth. And people that, even if you never get the chance to meet, change your life for the better.

Every now and then a commenter has said, “You should stop giving this stuff away for free.” And in the beginning I felt inclined to agree. But as you can clearly tell, if you’ve been paying any attention, I’ve been getting a lot more in return than meets the eye.

I have no idea how long I’ll continue to blog. I suppose as long as it continues to be something that makes me feel good, that makes me feel like I belong to something bigger. And, of course, as long as it continues to introduce me to some truly wonderful people.

Are you there God? It's me....just kidding.

I’ve never been a very spiritual person. I can tell you that when I was in my early teens I believed in God as much as a child that has no interest in him can believe. I was far more interested in the activities that believing allowed me to participate in: trips to amusement parks, concerts, sleepovers, softball games (for the boys, not the sport itself), and weekends in the mountains. Sure, I’d wave my hands in the air and sing a few songs in exchange for all that fun time away from my parents.

Forming a relationship with an entity I couldn’t see or hear wasn’t that difficult a concept as I spent half my time immersed in a world of fiction anyway. But I thought about God with the inconsistency of youth, usually when I wanted something that I wasn’t likely to get and prayer was the only bargaining chip left. It was a selfish belief and I imagine completely common among that age group. Going to church gave me a set of friends I wouldn’t have had otherwise and for that I was grateful. I was a strange mix of social butterfly and awkward outsider – sometimes outrageously present in a room and sometimes so in my head that you would’ve thought me deaf. (If that doesn’t scream bipolar, I don’t know what does.)

The summer I turned 16 my cousin Ben died in a Jet Ski accident. I’d had older relatives die – my Nana, an uncle, a great aunt – but Ben was just three months younger than me and there was no grasping that reality. I loved him fiercely. We grew up next door to each other and his absence was so close to intolerable that, in the weeks after his funeral, I recall virtually nothing – my memory is spotted with black holes.

Like everyone that grieves, I became angry. I renounced my tenuous belief in a God that would take away someone so good and so young. There was no one else left for me to strike out at. I left the church and the youth group behind.

However, Ben was still gone. And if I didn’t believe in God at all, how could I believe in heaven? I spent so much time sitting in front of his headstone, talking to the air and tracing his name with my fingertips – trying desperately to figure out a way to believe in the place and not the maker. Instead of imagining Ben within the pearly gates, I imagined him sitting on a low cloud, his ever present fishing pole in one hand. It was the best I could do.

I went through phases over the years – waiting on signs, believing in signs (there or imagined, I still couldn’t rightly say), and avoiding the question of God and heaven all together. If someone asked me, I would say Ben was in heaven. I didn’t want to explain my feelings or debate the bible. Still don’t, in fact. Theological debates interest me about as much as politics – which is to say, not at all. I don’t often think about where Ben is anymore, but rather just remember him as he was. Next month he’ll have been dead 10 years and with each passing season it’s gotten a little easier to let him rest, wherever that may be.

I don’t have any problem attending a church service these days. There’s no more anger or staunch refusals to be a part of it in any way. I can go to church on a Sunday morning with my grandmother and sit quietly in the pew, reflecting on what we’re going to have for lunch or my new handbag. I can hang my head and close my eyes during a prayer, stand up and sing, and warble the sing song “Amen” with the rest of the congregation. Church is just a place, God is just a name, and prayer is just a moment of meditation. It’s safe to say that since my breakaway, I’ve thought about religion as much as I’ve thought about the mating habits of beetles. Until the past few weeks, that is.

Now I have a daughter and I’m supposed to be the person that shapes her into the woman she’ll one day become. That’s difficult enough without the question of religion.

For the first few years of her life I was quick to say that, no, I didn’t intend to take her to church and no, I didn’t intend to have her baptized, and as far as I was concerned she would be free to choose her own spiritual path when she was old enough. This, of course, did not go over well with my family.

My grandmother is, for lack of a better description, a loyal Lutheran. And while I’ve made fun of her sayings and speeches in the past, I don’t actually belittle her faith (Or anyone’s, with the possible exception of a Kool-Aid cult). But honestly, anyone who says to me “Red underwear is the devil” or raises their arm and proclaims in a reverent voice that they hope the drivers of cars with loud “boom boxes” will be struck by the “mighty” arm of God...Well, they’re just asking for it. I will laugh. I’ve exasperated her with my unwillingness to budge on the topic of religion (and politics, but that’s another story).

Recently my mother, unbeknownst to me, signed my daughter up for a week of vacation bible school. Now, she’s been to church before a few times and she’s been told stories about God and Jesus by my grandmother and mother, but I generally stay out of those discussions. I always felt that she was too young to understand anyway, so it wouldn’t make a difference what they said. But this was a first.

Starting last Monday at 6pm, I dropped her off at a church down the road from my house. (One of the doctors that work with mom is a member and invited her.) I walked her inside the fellowship hall behind the church, exchanged pleasantries with some of the women I knew by the door while I made sure she was where she needed to be, and returned home until it was time to pick her up at 8:30.

Each night I picked her up she had a smile on her face and some crafty thing in her hand. I liked seeing her excited about coming back. She was like me when I first started years ago – more eager about the company I was keeping and the fun things I was doing than over the reason behind it all. She asked me a few questions about heaven, but thankfully they were mostly rhetorical or required only an “mmmhmm”.

Saturday night I went with my mother, sister, and grandmother and sat in the sanctuary. I watched and smiled while Hannah sang and did her little dance routines with the other kids her age. Afterward I shook hands with a few of the members, smiled, and participated in the southern chitchat required of church functions.

And in the car driving home, while Hannah sang to herself in the backset, I wondered:

Should I join a church for her, even if I personally am not sure I believe in a higher power? Should I pretend for her benefit, will it be good for her? Will it confuse her when she’s older if I go along with it for now? Should I answer her questions about heaven the way a believer would, rather than a cynic? Should I continue to avoid them? What, if anything, should I do? Isn’t laying the basis of belief the same as telling her what to do? I would love to let her decide what to believe when she’s older, but I’m just not so sure anymore.

I still haven’t made a decision and maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just be the procrastinator I’ve always been and put it off until she’s grown and then the decision will be made for me.

Only God knows, right?