What's A Friend?

The word "friend" is overused. I've had perfect strangers put the term "my friend" into conversations and it means nothing. Some people tell me they have "tons of friends". You can also "befriend" someone without actually knowing them very well. The other day having had to end what I thought was a friendship, I began to think seriously about that word "friend". When it became clear that the reality of what posed as friendship, was something entirely different than I thought, the question arose. Defining what friendship means is complicated. Friendships have levels. We can have light ones or deep ones or ones that we know will be temporary, others that turn out to be mistakes and yet others, while rarely, that are dangerous and distracting. Fiction writers create mysteries around friendships that are actually enemyships and lovers decry the term in such phrases as "let's just be friends", while still others total how many "friends" they have on line when most of them have never met. So, what's a friend? When young, I had friends, lots of them, and we cruised about in our teens sharing every precious experience and thought. Later on, as an adult, I had fewer but closer friends. Some of them  remained my friends all our lives to date, even now in our nineties. Why do I call them friends? They are constant. None of them betrayed me even though many times, our friendships changed as did our life styles and locations. My friends and I  spent time together, not constantly, but when we did meet again, it was a joy that was acutely mutual. Friendship is a feeling of a oneness together in a loyalty that is never shaken even though it might be stirred. My recent ending of a friendship was a shock to me because I had been led to believe until the moment of crisis, that I was as warmly accepted as I accepted my friend. The sudden revelation that what I took as real, was not. The worst part of ending friendships, is first, knowing that the end has come and second, that all guilt is required to be dropped. No one needs to feel guilty, either party, when the decision is made that unhealthy friendships have to end. It doesn't mean making enemies, it simply means that one learns appreciation of  the best parts of  the old friendships in  gaining the skills to make new ones.