The WordPress Daily Prompt for July 25 asks: “Do you—or did you ever—have a Best Friend? Do you believe in the idea of one person whose friendship matters the most? Tell us a story about your BFF (or lack thereof).”

I have been quite blessed when it comes to friends and I seem to always have had a couple friends whom I could count on for anything and share any fun. The “couple” of friends has always changed in personnel, however, and not grown, which is not a complaint, just a description. For much of my life, I was profoundly self-obsessed, and the thing about being self-obsessed is that, for a while, people who are very generous and warm-hearted will be generous and warm, but some will realize that they do not need to keep throwing love and attention down an ever-deeper well. Some will start to reflect what they are being given. In many cases, fairly or not, it could be said that we train the world in how to treat us. And in many other cases, fairly or not, we do not train the world in how to treat us. Not at all.

I have had friends abandon me when I was still present and available for them, and I have abandoned others. Neither type may have been friendships. When I was younger, I did not think “friendship” was a word that I needed to define; one had friends and that was that. Like furniture. It is only logical that I did not think one needed to cultivate or work on friendships, any more than one needed to make sure a chair remained a chair. Thus, I did not have a definition of “friendship.”

I am with two great friends in the photo at right, taken recently. Through the years, life has beaten me into a state of reasonableness, and I am capable of being present for myself and thus, for and with others. (Cubby, the friend in the middle, has a blog. It is worth visiting.) In the photo, one can see the affection, but you can not see that I am holding myself up with two folding chairs I had grabbed because I left my cane somewhere in the room there. My condition, called spinal muscular atrophy, is slowly robbing me of balance and stability and the use of my legs.

Each of these two friends has helped me physically walk, even when they were annoyed at me over something. That is a pretty sweet definition of friendship. And I hope I have been there for each of them when crises came, and even when life just got irksome and irritating, which is sometimes a more meaningful part of friendship. I hope I am becoming a more meaningful friend than the one I had been for many self-obsessed years for many best friends.

My one best friend is my great love, Jen, but in her case, “friend” is exactly what she is and yet it does not say enough.