The Kitchen Floor Friend

There is a type of friend, a very particular type of friend.

A friend who is always the first to arrive at your birthday parties, before all the guests (this friend does not count as a guest) to help you blow up helium balloons and put the chips and guacamole in bowls.

A friend who, after the party is over and all the guests are gone, is still there, now trying to gather the sad balloons that are drifting aimlessly away all over the dirty and sticky living room surfaces.

After all the hard work is done, this friend gathers all the rest of the broken nachos and the deformed hot dogs and sits with you on the cold 2 am kitchen floor.

You laugh, and tell old stories while trying to eat the pieces of nachos (that are mostly slipping through your now artificially flavored cheesy fingers).

At some point, you both realize you are sitting on the cold kitchen floor, all crooked and with the legs up on the fridge. You can even see some spider webs on the ceiling (and remember that you only convinced yourself of buying a $400 Dyson vacuum cleaner because you could exactly remove spider webs from the ceiling which you obviously never did).

You both laugh while remarking that there are 3 couches in the apartment, comfortable and ready for people to actually sit on.

Photo by Taylor Hernandez on Unsplash

And still, you don’t move. You stay there, watching together the spider webs. You are not even saying anything anymore, and you both feel like you don’t have to. Because it’s comfortable like that.

You see, this is the kitchen floor friend.

This friend is the one you call when you get dumped, with swollen eyes and a pot of ice cream on your lap. Or when you hear you didn’t get that job you worked so hard for.

And, just like basically anyone trying to comfort someone, you will hear¨everything is going to be fine¨.

The difference is, when the kitchen floor friend tells you ¨everything is going to be fine¨, you actually believe it.

When you realized you made a horrible mistake, the kitchen floor friends are also the ones you call. Because you know they will still respect you even at those moments in which you don’t even respect yourself. (for example getting back together with a terrible boyfriend).

If I try to get deep on what is the essence of that type of friendship, I would say is emotional safety.

You know you can be yourself around this person.You know you won’t get judged. In fact, you feel secure enough to bully them, because you know they won’t get offended.

Photo by Aman Shrivastava on Unsplash

For kitchen floor friends, things such as what do you do for a living, income levels, religion, fashion choices and musical taste don’t matter at all.

Kitchen floor friends are above all of that noise, because the only thing they care is about spending time with each other.

No hidden agenda, no networking interests, no dress codes, no expensive trips to the Bahamas needed (I mean, those would certainly be appreciated).

Just someone with whom you can eat disgusting party leftovers on the cold kitchen floor while watching the spider webs in complete silence.

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This post was previously published on Hello, Love and is republished here with permission from the author.
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