Friends

With everything that I go through with my husband and his PTSD I can't stop trying to help people through their struggles.  I cannot turn away when someone needs help through something.  It is a large part of who I am and admittedly, it took a long time for my husband to understand it.

I have friends who were in the military who didn't realize that they had a problem until it was too late so they are now starting over.  They now know what the underlying reason was but that doesn't help with processing the loss of a marriage.  It sucks no matter the reasoning or how amicable a split was.  My heart goes out to them and I do what I can to be there for them to talk to.  When I split with my ex, I fully expected that his buddies from the military would no longer be my friends.  I thought that the brotherhood would take over and I would be on the outside.  This wasn't the case at all!  There were so many of his military friends that came to my side when I needed them and I will be forever grateful.  I believe in paying things forward and so I will be there for them when they need me, that is what a friend is.  I know that these days, friends tend to be very fickle and don't see the problem with that.  I have a few of these but can say that the majority of the people I call friends will be there for me like I am there for them.  If that means a midnight phone call, so be it.  The time of day never matters to me, if someone needs to talk through something, I will be there.

My husband and I try to teach our children that a true friend will always be there and not to pour their heart into every person they meet.  I'm sure that seems contradictory but we are trying to shield them from the heartache of realizing that someone you thought was your friend, really isn't.  As I see it, there are two types of friends, those who will throw you under the bus and those who will pull you out from under that bus.  I make the conscious decision to keep those around me to the ones who would pull me out.  That is what I want for my children. and that is what I try to be for them.

So in reading all of this, what kind of friend are you to the people in your life?