Rare is true love, True friendship is rarer

Yes, I am choosing to illustrate a blog post about friendship with a video of otters holding hands. You're just gonna have to live with it. It is also a piece that I wrote on my Tumblr a few months back, just spruced up a little. (It's Tuesday, I think I have a cold and there isn't enough coffee in the world to activate my brain today).

The internet is overflowing with quotes about THAT special person. Coming up to Valentines it increases in intensity, the desire to find true, Disney-perfect love is everywhere (I can honestly blame Disney for SO MANY unrealistic expectations, mainly to do about hair).

I’ve loved. Loved, lost and grown into a better person for it. But to me these quotes don’t make me think about a boyfriend or a past or future dream prince. I think eternal, true love is more fluid than that. I think it can be applied to other relationships than the norm, and I think you can feel it for several people. 

Let's make something clear, I'm not poly-amourous. Fair enough if that's your thing, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I just want to take the concept of "the one true love" and shake it up a bit. Because true love does not neccesarily have to be a romantic love.

My friends are my greatest loves and in spite of every flaw I’ve got they still find me amazing. And I know that they are the stars in my sky and the blood in my veins. The people I can text whenever I've done something extraordinarily stupid. The ones I can have a drunken cry to at 4AM. The ones I would kill (or at least seriously damage) for.  They make me realize how goddamn LUCKY I am everyday, these people who truly love me, flaws and mistakes included. 

I can see myself growing old with them, and I suppose that, my friends, is what so much of this hunt for the ideal partner seems to be about. And if I shall ever be so lucky that I find someone who I feel even half of the connection to that I have with my friends (and also fancy the pants off) then maybe I will look at those romantic quotes with different eyes. 

But you know what? I'm pretty chuffed that I have found the loves of my life. They're sweet, smart, funny, caring, insane, beautiful and open-minded. Basically, I've scored.