Grab a cup of tea to read this. I want to have a bit of a heart-to-heart about something that happened today.

There are so many days where I wish I could just sit on the sand and stare out at the ocean. I feel as though, when the ocean ebbs and flows, reaches my toes and disappears so that I can think clearly. Ocean waves can be metaphors for so many things. I have learned that just as the waves reach my toes and touch me, so do humans. We meet so many people in our lives and they come and go but some stay. I have been extremely cautious about who I spend my time with and how much investment I want to make. I don’t want to continue making meaningless friendships. I used to think that having more friends meant that my life was full. I realized that once entering college that it doesn’t matter how many friends you have if you can’t be honest, open, and non-judgemental of them.

I have a friend who lives in Georgia and he and I have our ups and downs. We were quite close in my first year and I had a huge crush on him. I realized that I was being too naive and selfish when it came to our friendship. I didn’t know how to rationalize and work through feelings of jealousy. I stopped talking to him for a bit, we would talk on Facebook and see each other in our theatre building but it wasn’t the same for a year. I lost a good friendship for a whole year because I hadn’t grown up. I hadn’t figured a way to be honest about my feelings, not romantic, but just finding out how to have close friends. I also thought that he didn’t want to hang out with me because he probably thought I was too clingy. I tend to self-sabotage friendships. I am working on it.

I decided to reach out and realized that we hadn’t talked to each other because we thought we hated each other. We had grown close as friends again and it has been great for two years now. He is moving again down to Florida but I know that I can message him on Facebook whenever I need to. He is someone who will randomly say hello to me when I am having my roughest days. I don’t know how he does it. He is my anchor because he isn’t someone who has the influence of the people at school or my sister. My sister is my rock, I know that she will be there forever but he is my anchor.

To find an anchor in life is to find someone who won’t let you go so easily and is willing to take the good and bad even when they are not there. However, I questioned my anchor today. I posted something on Facebook and the way that he wrote a comment seemed sarcastic. Normally, I wouldn’t think anything about a sarcastic comment, I would even find it funny, but this was about a serious topic. I decided after sitting on it for the day that it bothered me so much that I just asked him.

I think that if I couldn’t ask honest questions that weren’t about how life was going or positive things then what is the point of having someone be your anchor? There is too much going on in my life to keep friends who don’t matter. I can honestly say that having a few good, close friends is the best thing for me. I know that I am still growing to this day and things will change but I hope that my friendship with my anchor will not change too drastically.

So, I want to know, who is your anchor? I want to know who your anchor is that isn’t your sibling or parent, someone who you met by chance or through someone. Let me know below!

-Tiffany