With friends like these ...

Veronica: “What are you doing?”

Shannan: “I’m lying in bed drinking strawberry milk.”

Veronica: “How much strawberry milk?  It’s not a 2 litre bottle is it?”

Shannan: “Nooooo ... I’m not THAT pathetic”.

These are the sorts of conversations that good girlfriends have.  They make sure that when you’re ‘eating your feelings’ that you’re really not going too overboard, they encourage you to have a drink to forget a bad day but they’ll also tell you to get your fat ass out the door and go running.

It’s a fine line sometimes with honesty in friendships.

Recently Veronica decided to break up with her boyfriend of about 6 weeks.  She had been a little not so sure about him at the start but Betty and I had encouraged her to pursue it.

We’d said all the right things:

“He seems like a nice guy”

“I’m sure his dreadlocks are very clean”

“He has a 4 year old kid? Fantastic, you like kids!”

“Dude he has a job and can afford to buy you beer, he’s ticking all my boxes!”

And he was a lovely guy and they were having a nice time but she just didn’t feel like he was the right fit for her.

She said to me, “But everyone’s met him and they all like him”

“You haven’t asked me what I think of him”, I said.

And so she asked me.

And without even pausing I said,

“I think he’s beige (boring) and I don’t like his teeth”

BOOM!

There it is.

Friendship at its finest.

And also its scariest.

It’s that awkward moment where you’re being incredibly honest with your friend because you really want the best for her but you know that what you say might totally backfire in your face.

Recently I had kept a secret from a good friend of mine.  And she had read my blog and contacted me and said “We need to talk”. 

I waited until we all went out on the Saturday night and we’d had some shots and drunk some beer and played a very dodgy game of pool before I said …”alright, let’s have this conversation”.

The reality is that as a good friend she already knew what was going on and she knew what I was going to tell her but then I had created this other issue by not telling her and admitting that I was fearful of doing so.  

Because good friends will tell us the things we often don’t want to hear.  And most of the time the advice they give is stuff we already know but unfortunately sometimes we have to hear it from someone else (often multiple times in my case) before we make the change we need to.

And then there’s friends like Anja.  Who will turn up on my door step on a Sunday morning with hot coffee and Kahlua, lie on my bed and laugh at my stories and then point out the ugly hair that grows out of the mole on my face.  “Oh look, it’s a whisker!”.

And as I reach for my mirror and tweezers I know deep down she has my best interest at heart.  Because I wouldn’t want a friend with a hairy mole either!