“Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend."-- Albert Camus

Ever since I was a child, my mother has always emphasized the importance of being a good friend. I was taught to always share my crayons while coloring and to never un-invite someone to my birthday party when they refused to play with me on the slide.  I was even scolded for biting my best friend when she stole my French fries.  But as time passed and I grew, life got more complicated. I no longer dealt with girls excluding me from tag, but with girls excluding my feelings. “Kill them with kindness Emily,” as my mother always said, became the theme of my life. Some may say I’m a pushover, and maybe I am. Or maybe I was?

In the past two years I’ve gone through more friends than plausible. I was friends with that one girl who everyone hates now, and the one girl who everyone loves. I was friends with someone who tried shoving religion down my throat, and another girl who didn’t believe in any God at all. I’ve had friends who I meant nothing to, and others who I meant the world to. I know I have those friends who I can go to when the world feels like it’s all going to crumble in my fingers, and I know I have those friends who I can go to when I need a good laugh.

If I’ve learned anything in my ten years of schooling, it’s how to deal with the annoying, the abusers, the users, the fakers, and the flawless. I’ve learned how to treat friends and how I want to be treated as a friend, not as someone’s therapist or doctor. I always try to be a shoulder to cry and lean on, but through their despair, my feelings tend to get lost, and we drift apart. What the people tend to forget most through hectic lives and sleepless nights is that the world doesn’t revolve around them. Credit isn’t given where it should be, and the sweet and senseless get taken advantage of. All because people fail to remember that friendship is like any other relationship: it requires work, ethics, and patience.  Friendship is a two-way street.