Through the filter

| What quality do you value most in a friend?

Sometimes, most times, I don’t know why my friends are friends with me. So, one day I reversed it, and I made a list of all my friends and tried to write out exactly why I’m friends with each one of them. Like a sociopath would.

It feels like an odd and narcissistic exercise. If they woke up and didn’t offer me those qualities anymore, would I just stop being friends with them? Maybe.

I used to find the common denominator among my friends, who often weren’t friends with each other, to be that they actually heard me and they persisted. I have existed through this world with what feels like a filter surrounding my voice. Few people manage to hear my real voice through the filter. Even fewer people persist as the filter gets finer. I don’t know why, and my therapist is working on it. But so far, it’s led to a shortlist of lovely, diverse individuals, so the filter is doing some valuable work.

What I value most in a friend is their ability to find value in me.