"You can pick your nose,

you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your friends' noses."

Can you really pick your friends? I don't think so.

It's just one of those things in life that just happens. You get squished together by some turn of fate--a mutual enemy, a mutual friend, a seating chart, a class schedule. Slowly but surely a friendship develops.

The book I just finished brought up an interesting concept, the differences between platonic and romantic relationships. People don't often look at friendships in the same parameters as romantic relationships, but they do have their similarities, and are in their own way, harder to maintain. This is especially true of "best" friendships (a term I do not very much like, but that's another blog entirely).

Friends can break up, and these break ups can be every bit as tumultuous and emotional as a romantic break up. Even more so because friends tend to stay in your life longer than any boyfriend or girlfriend (unless you get married and even then, childhood friendships can last longer). They take up a bigger chunk of your existence.

When you break up with a significant other, people just kind of infer it after they notice you not mulling about together anymore. But if you suddenly drop a friendship, people aren't so quick to realize what might have happened. They tend to go on thinking everything is fine, and make the assumptions that follow. As they go on as normal, it makes it even harder for the two ex-friends to move on. They're expected to be a duo long after they aren't anymore. Friendship break ups are never a clean break.

I believe that every person in your life serves a different purpose; you get something that nobody else gives from them. When that source runs out, or when people find somebody else who feels that need better, they move on. Perhaps this a callous way of looking at it, but I see no evidence to the contrary. Perhaps they hang on longer than they should sometimes, and that only breeds sitcom-esque problems.

I've moved on from quite a few friendships, but I've noticed a quality in the ones that hang around. They are the people that you don't necessarily have to talk to every day, but never let that awkward layer of distance pile up between them. They are the people that don't need reminding. They are not the people you chose, or the people that chose you. They're simply the people that choose to stick around.