Sara Zarr
So you learned how to make friendship bracelets. Cool. They’re very cute, and making them will keep your hands busy during those late-night babysitting gigs when the only other option is raiding the fridge. (Speaking of Things to Do While Babysitting, please stop watching movies like Poltergeist and The Amityville Horror when you’re alone in a dark house! Just because this family has HBO doesn’t mean you have to watch it.)
I just want you to think about this: What is a friend?
It can be hard to know sometimes. The nature of friendship changes as you move toward adulthood.
Childhood friendships were often based on proximity, what you like to do for fun, how your moms feel about each other. Don’t get me wrong—a couple of those childhood friendships were great, memorable, so much fun, and so important. Rachel, for example. And of course Christine, who you’ll still be in touch with when you’re forty—and even though you aren’t best, best friends like you were in childhood, it feels so good to still be known by someone who knew you when you were four.
As you get older, what you’re really looking for is someone who understands you, with whom you feel a flash of recognition and a sense of home. And Sara? I’m going to tell you this, and it’s not a criticism: You are not a person who is easily understood—by yourself or by others. But being understood matters enough to you that you’ll go through a lot of pain and work to know yourself, and you’ll make some missteps in your efforts to be known by others.
I’m not going to tell you about those missteps, though, or warn you against them. Each misstep shows you something about yourself that you needed to know, and refines your vision of what you want in a friend, which brings you closer to finding those people, that person.
As for what makes a friend, there’s no ultimate definition. Friendships come in a lot of shapes and sizes. There are friends that are perfect for eating lunch with, friends you meet in a mutual endeavor—like at work or in theater or music—friends to party and play with, friends who are good companions on road trips. The longevity of these types of friendships tends to be limited by their context, but there’s no shame or failure in that.
If there is any definition of a True Friend, maybe it’s this: a person who understands the kind of person you want to be, and whose words and actions toward you are always guided by that understanding.
I do want to tell you what a friend isn’t, though I know you’re going to have to do the work of figuring this out on your own: A friend isn’t a person whose attention and approval you depend on to feel okay about yourself.
This is a hard one to work out. Because Dad rejected you—not outright, not intentionally, but through neglect and the effects of alcoholism—some injured part of you is always going to be looking for someone (usually a man but not always) to make you feel okay. Even if everyone in the world tells you that you’re okay (and you are going to have a great career that earns you a lot of attention and approval), sometimes it’s not going to feel like enough.
This is going to lead to pain.
I sort of wish I could save you from that pain, but to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the pain now is part of the joy later. And there’s going to be joy, too, in the very midst of pain, because you are going to be blessed with a number of very meaningful friendships—some of which began from that place of needing approval but then grew beyond that and became real.
However, not all of them are lasting, and even though you’ll think you’re going to die when some of those friendships come to an end, you won’t. You’ll come out alive, stronger, better for the years that you had together, full of self-knowledge you wouldn’t have discovered any other way. And self-knowledge is going to be really important for the work that you’ll end up doing.
No, I can’t save you from pain. But maybe you could at least think about these words from Naomi Shihab Nye when you’re trying to discern who to share yourself with:
You Have to Be Careful.
You have to be careful telling things.
Some ears are tunnels.
Your words will go in and get lost in the dark.
Some ears are flat pans like the miners used looking for gold.
What you say will be washed out with the stones.
I do have good news for you. Despite that injured part of you that sometimes gives too much of yourself away to the wrong people, despite being gun-shy because of past friendship debacles, when you’re—no, you know what, I’m not going to tell you when or how or with whom this is going to happen. The utter unexpectedness of it all is part of what you will love, part of what will be so—I’m sorry, I know this sounds kind of woo-woo—so healing.
I’ll just say: It’s going to be sweet. There may even be friendship bracelets involved. And here’s the rest of that poem, my promise from me to you. Me.
You look a long time till you find the right ears.
Till then, there are birds and lamps to be spoken to,
a patient cloth rubbing shine in circles,
and the slow, gradually growing possibility
that when you find such ears,
they already know.
Sara Zarr is the acclaimed author of three novels for young adults: Story of a Girl (2008, a National Book Award Finalist), Sweethearts (2009, a Cybil Award Finalist), and Once Was Lost (2009, a Kirkus Best Book, Utah Book Award winner, and INSPY winner). Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Image, Hunger Mountain online, Response, and several anthologies. Sara’s fourth young adult novel, How to Save a Life, was published in fall 2011. She lives in Salt Lake City with her husband. You can find her online at SaraZarr.com.