A few days ago, a friend of mine was down. I asked what was wrong. They said it was just mood swings, and that they didn’t feel like talking to anyone about it.
I understood exactly what they meant, because I’ve been there myself. So I responded the way I know I would have wanted someone to respond to me. Nothing complicated, just genuine understanding. And it worked. They opened up, and by the end they told me they were really happy with how I responded.
That conversation turned into a longer one about how hard it actually is to open up to people. And that’s when it hit me. This isn’t just a random feeling, it’s something real that most people deal with and rarely talk about directly.
Here’s the thing. Most people don’t talk their minds to others, not because they don’t have people around them, but because they don’t know what they’d even say, or how it would be received. And honestly, that fear is not unfounded. There are people who will listen to you and then laugh about it behind your back. There are people who won’t even really listen, because they don’t care enough to. And here’s the part that took me a while to sit with: those people are still your friends. It’s not that simple, where the bad ones get kicked out of the category and the good ones stay in it.
What I’ve come to realize is that there are friends you can talk to, and friends you can’t. Not because one group is fake and the other is real, but because talking to someone about what’s actually going on inside you takes a very specific kind of safety. It’s not about how long you’ve known someone or how much fun you have with them. It’s about whether they know how to sit with you in something hard without turning it into gossip, or advice you didn’t ask for, or a joke to lighten the mood too soon.
It also helps to remember that people who don’t listen aren’t always doing it out of malice. A lot of the time, they’ve got their own things going on in their head, their own weight they’re carrying, and they just don’t have room to carry someone else’s too. It takes maturity to realize that your friends aren't always equipped to be your therapists. Sometimes they are just meant for laughing with, playing games with, or talking about music. Expecting them to be more than that only ends up hurting you. Even the ones who act like they don’t care about anything, they have someone. Somewhere, there’s a person they open up to when they’re down, even if it’s not you.
But one thing worth holding onto is that there is always someone who would listen. It doesn’t have to be a large number of friends. It can just be one calm, reliable friend. You don’t need a whole circle of people you can talk to. You just need that one.
I think that’s why I was able to respond to my friend the way I did. It wasn’t some special skill I have. It’s that I had lived through something close to what they were feeling, so I knew what I needed when I was in that place, and I gave them that instead of guessing.
So maybe the real question isn’t who your real friends are. Maybe it’s just being honest with yourself about which friends belong in which category, and not expecting the ones who can’t hold your hard moments to suddenly be able to. And maybe it’s also about becoming, for someone else, the kind of friend who can.