The other day
Somebody asked me
Why my “friend-tree” is so exclusive
Why there are people I’ve known since childhood
That I still won’t call my friends
They asked me
To define what makes someone my friend
And I spent some time
Asking myself
This is what I came up with:

There are five people in the world
That I can call my friends
By my standards
They care
I trust them
My friends know my each and every layer
They can see when I’m hurting
Can see past all the paints and masks
I wear for the world
In fact
They let me take off all those paints and masks
And just be me
They know me
The real me
My friends
Bring some light into the darkness
Take some of the weight off my shoulders
And generally take away
Some of the pain of living

We are all
In essence
The same
We are all
Emotionally unstable
We are all
Broken
And find almost...comfort
In each other’s brokenness
We have been to the edge
And have lived to tell our stories
We have no secrets
We all speak our own languages
But are fluent in everyone else’s
We don’t know how it feels to be truly happy
But we make it so that we are not alone
And for now
That is as close to happy as we can get

When I’m with them I don’t have to hide
I’ve let them into my castle
Past the gate impenetrable to everyone else
I’ve built them into the very framework of my existence
I can talk to them
Really say things to them
That I can say to no one else
I can come to them when I am falling apart
And they can hold me together
I am their savior as well
We can all come to one another in times of need
My friends can cause me so much joy that it hurts inside
Can cause me a blissful pain

Sometimes they’re all I’ve got
In this crazy, messed up world we live in
I said they could see past all my masks
Well, deep down under all that shit
My friends found something beautiful in me
They are warm hugs when they’re needed
Healing the cuts from so many cold knives
They catch me when I fall
And teach me to fly again

My friends are the legs to my table
They keep me stable
(well, as stable as a broken person can be...)
They opened parts of me
I didn’t know I had
I wouldn’t trade them for anything
Not even for everything
My life wouldn’t be the same without them
I wouldn’t be the same person without them
I can say that I love them
And I can always hear it back

My muses
My cement
The artists to my clay
My bridges across the chasm
They are my best friends
My soul’s mates
My “friend-tree” is a small, exclusive group
But it’s a group I know I’ll always have
You know who you are
And from the bottom of my heart I thank you
Just know one last thing about me:
You aren’t the branches,
But the roots to my tree.