Friends
As an adult, I've found little success in making friends outside of a workplace. I used to get angry about that fact. Used to wish that work and pleasure weren't so tightly reliant upon each other. But then I realized that the few friends that I'd made - from work - that have lasted, have turned into truly deep bonds. Because those are the friendships based in honesty, in realness. Why? Well, because you can't be false about your temperament, your opinions, your capabilities, or your generosity to someone that you spent 40 hours a week with. Your coworkers, at least with occupations where you aren't isolated into individual cubicles, are the people we spent the most of our waking hours with. Oftentimes people even spend more time with coworkers than they do with family or a significant other! Coworkers see you day in and day out, through colds and hangovers, through personal celebrations, through the ups and downs of mood throughout a workday. They know things about you-- because you can't change who you are and how you function in front of them... not for eight hours a day, five days a week, every day of the year. No, in an occupation that requires ongoing interaction between coworkers, everyone knows everyone's business. To be honest, I hate that. And yet, I've accepted that it means that I don't have to second guess whether or not a friend I make at work truly likes me. And that, I love. As a person who struggles with social anxiety and a lot of insecurities, knowing that the people I've worked with who chose to hang out with me after hours (especially after years of knowing one another) based their interest in me off of a true picture, a true understanding of me is so reassuring. It means they saw me through frustrations, through mistakes, though awkwardness and still subconsciously said to themselves, "Yes, this lady is cool. This lady is friend material". And that, that's real. That's real friendship. I'm not mad anymore that all my adult friendships have stemmed from employment. It makes sense. And it's honest. And, I mean after all, all our childhood friendships just came from being the same age, stuck in the same homeroom class. At least the job is something we choose. In the end, our job is something we should love. And I say that means we should love the people we work with too. They SHOULD become our friends.
