Today is one of my best friend’s birthday. Over the last two years, Warren has become one of my closest friends and shown me what true friendship and loyalty really are. Even throughout our time on the Race and all my tough calls, bad decisions, and idiotic words, he stuck by my side. So today, I’m able to celebrate his birthday with him for the second year in a row, but Stateside this time. As close as Warren and I have gotten, it didn’t start out that way.
We both enjoy a good laugh when people ask how we became friends. There are some people out there that you instantly connect with and gravitate towards. I can’t say either of those were true with Warren. We couldn’t really be much different, and I’m pretty sure we annoyed each other to an extreme. However, when it gets down to it, we really just saw each other as competition. I didn’t really want anything to do with Warren and when I became a team leader, I thought I had won the battle. That was until a couple of months into the Race.
Warren went through a lot of pride struggles when he wasn’t asked to be in leadership, and so did I when I was asked. Unfortunately, his were calling out his pride and mine were fueling it. A little over two months in, Warren came to apologize to me. Up to this point, Warren and I never really talked or connected so his apology confused me. He apologized for being bitter with me and never giving me a chance because of all this competition animosity. Every bit of me wanted to shrug it off and blow him off in my pride, but I couldn’t. And wouldn’t you know it. Our teams got paired together that next month and I was sharing a room with him.
Over our first month in Romania, I realized I was starting to like this guy against my “better” judgement. Before long, Warren began confiding in me and proving that he really trusted me. I’ve never really been one to trust anyone (you’d think I was playing Survivor or something in real life), but Warren wore me down. Just like that, he became the first person that I would go to when things came up, and the trust that grew made me nervous. I fought his friendship for a long time.
Now, Warren and I meet at least once a week to talk through EVERYTHING. Literally. This guy knows more about me than I think I do at times now. He hears about all that I’m excited about, struggling with, and questioning. This friendship has been a total change on how I view trust and relationships and it’s with a guy I didn’t even like not too long ago. It’s crazy the route we’ve taken. But I guess friendship is developed through proximity, but brotherhood is often founded in adversity.
So today I get to celebrate his birthday, and in a little over a week, I’ll get to stand beside him at his wedding. I can’t believe this is the same guy I met almost two years ago. We need people we can trust and most of that comes by getting over ourselves. Before all this, Warren wouldn’t have been my pick for this close of a friend, but because of how we were both humbled through each other, something developed. We need people in our lives we can be honest with. But we also just need people that will have our backs through anything. Trust me, it’s a nice place to be…
