I have had a severe case of writer's block lately. Of course, I always have lots to say, but lately, I have felt uninspired by most topics and therefore, avoid them altogether. This leaves my diary empty, however, so today I stoop to using a prompt I found on Diarist.Net and involves sharing one's thoughts on the concept of friendship.

I have never had much difficulty making friends and lots of them. Many would consider these friends "acquaintances," but that term, to me, implies a lack of closeness that I feel with many of my "friends."

Take, for example, work related friends. I would hardly consider them acquaintances, as I spend more time with some of them than I do my real friends. Spending 30-40 hours a week with the same people necessarily means you will attain a level of closeness and openness with them, even if you would never spend time with them outside of work. Technically speaking, an acquaintance is a friend with whom one is not particularly close. It is such a loveless term, though, that I choose not to use it to describe most people I consider friends.

Developing lifelong, or even very close friendships, however, has always been harder for me. While I am a very social and outgoing person, I leave entire areas of my life guarded and secret. My online family is a secret to most of the world, save my mom and Scott, both of whom I consider very deep, personal, close friends (obviously my mom is family, but that does not mean one cannot also pursue a friendly relationship with their parent). Not even Morholt knows of this family, and he knows me better than anyone else possibly in the world, including my mom.

I made several of these types of friends in high school, but as with most relationships, they fizzled shortly after entering college. In college, our core group was and continues to be very close, even though we had a very wide circle of outside friends, mostly consisting of people we liked to party with.

My life remains much the same today. I have several friends I can call to party with if I am feeling social, but very few people I can pour my heart and soul out to, or expect to sit with me and listen if I am feeling down.

I love today's quote, because it really is apt. Everyone wants to be around when you are the life of the party, the social butterfly and in a big group having drinks, but not as many want to stick around when you really need a jam session to cure your emotional ailments. Not many will hold back your hair while you pray to the porcelain god and sob for no other reason that you are drunk and dwelling on everything bad in your life.

A friend does that - they are there, even when they don't truly want to listen, have heard it before and are generally sick of hearing about it. They are still there. They will continue to listen to the same old stories you have hashed out before, all the while wishing they could be at the midnight showing of Lord of the Rings, simply because they care that much about you. Friends will sacrifice their own merriment to make time for you.

Why all this focus on the gloom and doom? Because that, really, is how one determines who their friends are - their true friends. If they only stick artound for the fun, then they aren't much of a friend, and more of a drinking buddy.

My online family can be called a family, because we are always there for each other. We have heard the same stories hashed and rehashed a thousand times, but we continue to listen when someone needs to vent. We pull together to help friends in crisis, which can range from the small (taping the wrong show and needing a replacement copy), to the large (putting together a fund to help a friend get her first mortgage payment). We broke down age barriers, social barriers, aesthetic barriers and all other real life barriers, via the internet where only one's personality can shine. Nothing can overshadow who we really are on here, so long as we remain true to ourselves. We laugh together, cry together and yes, even get extremely angry with each other and pull 5 year old tactics, like rescinding best friend status for the day. In the end, though, I know there are at least a dozen people out there I can count on when I need them and even when I don't need them.

Meeting close friends online is about as easy as it is in real life. You are not sure whom you can trust with your most personal and vulnerable thoughts. You don't know who is who they say they are, or who is befriending you just to benefit themselves somehow. Sometimes you lose, but sometimes, you get very, very lucky. Like me.