THESE are true friends.

I had a discussion the other day about friendships.

Old friendships and new friends…best friends and acquaintances. I feel so lucky to have friends that have been by my side for years and years now. Take my friend Christina for instance. We’ve known each other for 15 years; through boyfriends, breakups, living across the country, good times and bad. She tweezed my eyebrows for the first time, helped me smoke my first cigarette, drank countless Mountain Dew slushies with me, vacationed with me…and I’m pretty sure she taught my sister what a yeast infection was while I was fetching Diet Cokes for my mother.

“If lightning struck the earth and it split into eight pieces, I hope I’m your piece,” were my famous drunk words one night.

We don’t talk on the phone everyday. We might not even see each other for a couple of months. We lead fairly different lives and have different interests. But I do know one thing: she’ll always be my best friend. If I ever need her, I know she’ll be there. Whenever we’re together, it’s like nothing has changed. It’s friendships like this one that mean the most.

Do you have a friend like that? I feel like everyone should. My “new” friends are great, and I don’t cherish those friendships any less. But it’s nice to know someone who really knows you. Who knows the you before college and before you entered the real world. The one who knows your embarrassing secrets and has blackmail photographs of you wearing clothes you thought were cool at the time. Take my friend Cameron, for instance. She loves to tell people that I used to be in orchestra, and she didn’t even hesitate to post a picture of me wearing overalls from high school.

Even though these friends have known you at your worst, they’re still there. They’re the ones that know your family as if it was their own. You can go to their house and know which cabinet the glasses are in if you’re thirsty. You have inside jokes with their parents, who treat you as their other child. My friend Lindsay has some awesome parents that always greet her friends with a smile and open arms, back in school and still to this day, always extending an invite to their Christmas party.

It’s people like these that you can’t take for granted, that you should cherish and put in the effort to keep in your life. I’m not always the best at doing that but was reminded of its importance recently. What kind of life would I have if I didn’t have true friends such as these?

“There are good ships and wood ships and ships that sail the sea. But the best ships are friendships and may they always be.”