In the past year or so, I’ve come to find that our 20’s are very much the years to find out who our friends are. Of course, they’re also the years where we come to know who we are as individuals; to find what matters to us, what doesn’t, who sticks, and who has a limited day pass in our lives because of it.

It’s all a part of the huge shifts in our lifestyle, our thinking, and our purpose. We move away from the safety net that is our parents’ house (at least for a little while since more often than not these days, we come back home for a time), high school, and the friends we have had to make by default.

A small selection of people limits our options but that doesn’t mean true friends can’t or aren’t found there; they are/ However, it does mean those people we were only kinda, sorta friends with because they were close with someone else in the larger group will likely go their separate way just as we do and move on with life without any hard feelings or sense of loss for the other. These are the people who become our acquaintances – the people we don’t hate to run into in the aisle at Target but that won’t be catching an invitation to our future wedding.

No, our true friends are the ones we choose and who choose us right back. They are the ones who’ve seen us at our absolute worst. Yes, they’ve witnessed the ugly cry over that jerk we didn’t really love but know it still hurts to have a dream slip a little further away. They’ve seen that and much, much more and not only do they still love us, but there is no judgment. They make us laugh about it while simultaneously letting us know how much blackmail they have on us; the best part about this scenario is we’ve seen just as much of them. Ah, mutual blackmail – the foundation of all the best friendships! They send us pick-me-up texts everyday when we’re depressed and heartbroken until they know we’re better and can space our communication out to a more normal schedule.

Yes, these are the people who, over the course of time, come back into our lives after a period and we pick up right where we left off; push our car out of a flood; kidnap us for a weekend of fun we desperately need; pour tequila down our throats and subsequently hold our hair and rub out back while we toss our cookies as an alternative to kicking our ex’s ass for being such a jerk; lend us shorts and a T-shirt and let us crash in their bed and hold us after we yell, “Somebody snuggle me!”

They will also debate our choice of significant others, our happiness, and our general path in life out of genuine love and concern and set us straight when we are settling for, doing, and achieving below the bar they know we are capable of reaching. They are honest with us – sometimes brutally so as the words, “It’s because you date losers” come to mind – and we appreciate it and value it is because who wants a friend that won’t tell us their honest opinion or put us in our place when we need it? Okay, there are probably a number of people in the world who like their friends to be their “yes men” and blow smoke up their ass on a daily basis.

I’m not one of them.

I depend on my friends to be the ones who will tell me what I don’t want to hear. They love and support me, but they’re also not going to let me get by with lying to myself or ignoring the giant red flags glaring in my face as I set down a path that isn’t right for me.

If we’re lucky enough, we find these people relatively early in life and we hold onto them. If they come later, well, we just thank God and our lucky stars that they came at all, and then spend our lives making messy mistakes and beautiful memories together – the kind we can’t tell until we spill our secrets to our grandkids. And these, my friends, are true friends.