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Friendship is Worth it

"Ya think that you two have enough eye make-up on?" Oh no. It had just slipped out. I clamped my mouth shut as time seemed to slow down, contrary to my accelerating heart rate that became increasingly loud and throbbing within my head.

It was like the scene in a movie where everything goes fuzzy and starts spinning around the main character, the creepy violin music starts to play right before the screen goes blank, and the next thing you see is the character being hurriedly wheeled down the hallway in a hospital.

I hate the fact that I always find the right thing to say, fifteen seconds after I've said the wrong thing. And I hate the fact that I can't reverse time; that no matter what I do, I can never take things back.

I used to take friendships for granted, running off at the mouth whenever I pleased. I guess I assumed that my friends would always be there for me, regardless of how I treated them. I was so angry that they were making my life so miserable, without stopping to think; what was I doing to make their lives better?

It was all about me and I was too proud to even admit it. It was a breezy Tucson morning on the red brick plaza of Orange Grove Middle School. With a mere five minutes until the electronic buzz signaled us to grudgingly move towards our first class, I slouched upon one of the numerous plastic blue benches with spare books in hand and sleep on the mind.

Herds of students filed off of the yellow limos with backpacks sporting all the different colors of the rainbow. Two of my best friends approached me, chattering excitedly at a furious pace and oddly awake for this time of morning.

One stopped to groom the other, removing a single strand of walnut hair from the other's 'burnt orange' Abercrombie sweater. "Hey Kendal!" The shorter of the two girls greeted me, with a grin that seemingly stretched from ear to ear. I looked at the two giggling brunettes with eyes which said, "What morons."

I paused for a moment, before responding. "Ya think that you two have enough eye make-up on?" It was true that they had an excessive amount of thick black mascara and eyeliner plastered on to their childish faces, but my sarcasm was permanent. In ten words I had managed to create a mountain worth of damage. The smile dropped. The bell rang. They turned to leave with cold shoulders, and I was left alone.

I've said many stupid things in my time, but this was the big Kahuna. I expected the wound to heal itself, but it didn't. These two girls meant the world to me, but it would take years for me to gain back their complete trust. I had to truly devote myself to the random acts of kindness which make for friendship; the note in the locker, or the call just to talk.

I made conscious decisions, and learned when to bite my tongue. It was the end of my first semester in high school and here I stood, with twenty five beady freshmen eyes focused on me, smack dab in the middle of my writing and literature classroom. Our final was to do a project about our lives up to this point, and I had chosen to write and preform a prose piece. "Here goes," I thought as I dramatically opened my black notebook and instantly assumed character.

The first parts of my piece flew off my tongue with ease, and the class followed with me through the wacky stories of my childhood. Then came the hard part. The fifth part of my piece consisted of my regrets and included a public apology to my two friends for all of my mistakes. Neither of them were in my class that day, but they have read my piece time and time again.

As one of the girls first saw it, tears streamed down her face, and months worth of chips on our shoulders were lifted. We new that the grudges were too heavy for us to bear by ourselves. We've been through it all together, and what they've taught me has been invaluable.

They've taught me patience, through the times when I know that I should just shut my mouth, because they need someone to spill to. With calls of, "Hey shmen, can we talk?" I gained satisfaction within myself by knowing that I am who they want to talk to, I am who they want to confide in.

That friendship is worth the long haul which it took to get us here, and I will never take it for granted.

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