It was a dark Monday afternoon; the clouds were relentless and the sun failed to peek out over the dark grey masses. The wind was blowing through the dying trees allowing the leaves to sink slowly towards the filthy ground. The six small words kept resonating in my mind. “I just want to be friends.”

We’ve all been there, we’ve all grow a little too close to our best girl/guy friend. Some of us have admitted to our feelings while a few lucky ones have escaped that embarrassment. But for those who have proclaimed their feelings and did not receive the expected results (shout out to the so-called ‘nice guys’), we tend to dramatize our experience of being rejected as though the pain and embarrassment is “literally killing us”.

What I’m not quite sure of though is why the “friend-zone” is such an awful thing. I mean, you can moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly about the inability to be romantic with your best friend but why wouldn’t you want to be in something called the “friend zone.” It sounds like a place where the animals talk and animated flowers sing as you skip through fields of joy and happiness; in other words a far more magical place than those five minutes in the back of your moms SUV and the awkward tension of not only a broken relationship but a broken friendship as well.

We need to learn that maybe confessing our love to the person we’ve grown up with isn’t the best idea, and complaining about being referred to as “just the friend” isn’t something to complain about. Throughout our life we will have relationships that grow and fall apart, trying to find the one sempiternal relationship that will almost entirely define our existence. We all need to learn that sometimes home isn’t four walls, but two arms and a heartbeat. We also need to learn that we don’t need to be infatuated with a person to make them our home; friendship is way more fun and it will last you far longer.