Friendship Day!

[.Brittany.]

Today is Friendship Day! I know things are tough right now with the pandemic and you might not get to see your friends as much as you'd like! What are some things you can do to show your friends how much they mean to you?

[Dawn.]

I love this!

I just am there for my friends and I listen to them.

[Silvan]

I often text my friends to ask what's up and how they're doing. I sometimes send them uplifting messages/pics and memes to brighten up their day I also love to give them gifts. My friends are the most important people in my life and I'm happy to have them.

[.Brittany.]

I'm extremely thankful for the technology we have these days so we can keep in touch with our friends. Here in Ontario we have been through several province wide lockdowns, which means there are many friends I haven't seen in MONTHS! However, with phones etc I am able to facetime with them and talk to them via text.

[Ennui.]

Happy friendship day to all of the wonderful people I've met on here!
I love sending memes and TikTok videos that make me think of them.

[Rivière]

I'm really funny about friends, if I'm honest. I have such a busy life schedule and Sunday is my only time off. This means I tend to only put a lot of energy into the closest of friends. These being my online and overseas friend in California, and a friend I made at work and have become quite close to.

I try and come online to chat with my friend as much as possible. Sometimes even when I'm tired I try and come online and let him know I'm thinking of him and want to say hi. I have to be extremely deadbeat tired to end up not doing so.

As for my other friend, I message her practically every day. Especially since this most recent lockdown. We've bonded a lot and shared a lot of things. We have a system where I tend to go to bed late, and wake up late. However, she goes to bed early, and gets up early. So she wakes up to messages from me from the night before, and I wake up to messages from her from early in the morning. Our messages are usually us complaining about stupid things like the gym or our sleep. But it's nice to have a friend to be able to share silly stuff like that with and not feel like I'm annoying them.

Honestly my way of showing love to my friends is through sharing memes. I often tag people or DM people things that are funny or make me think of them, and they do the same for me. We may not talk a lot, but it shows we are thinking about one another and still have a connection.

[Everglow.]

I only have a couple of very close friends who I speak to almost every day. We check in on each other constantly, send each other funny videos or photos, tell each other stories about how our day is going. It's like living with them because of how much we talk! Now that lockdown has lifted I also see them a couple of times a week, even if it's just to chill in the garden at one of their houses with the dogs and eat snacks. Over lockdown we played a lot of online games though, and this was a good way to be there for each other when things were hard.

I find it really hard staying up to date with many people all at once though. I try to check in on some other friends from time to time, just to see how they are, how work is going etc.

[Celyn]

I have very few close friends and we've all gone through stuff in the last few years and some of my closest friends aren't online that much or don't reply for a while for whatever reason. I try to be as understanding as I can. I do have other friends that, while I'm not really close to, I should make more of an effort to check in with from time to time.

I also like sharing funny pictures or things that made me think of them sometimes. I'm not the best at that though and I worry that I don't 'give' much in friendships.

But then, an alternative thought I have, is that my giving looks a bit different. I'm known for sending long messages so if a friend wants to really talk about something, I'm more than happy to listen and send a detailed response back to them, even if takes quite some time to type!

Over the years, I've also struggled with opening up to others because I feel like I drag them down or I'm a burden and they don't need me bothering them etc., but I'm starting to realise that my friends do actually want to listen to me and do want to be there for me...it then dawned on me that by not opening up, then I'm keeping them at bay and denying them the chance to be there for me. So maybe, one of the gifts I can give my friends is to show that I trust them and value our friendship by opening up to them and let them help me....which is a rather ironic gift when you think about