Forever Friends?

I've been dwelling on the issue of friendship lately. What is a friend? What's the difference between friends, acquaintances, colleagues... When does a friend kinda stop being a friend? When does a mate become a Best Friend Forever (TM)? And if you are a BFF, can you ever unbecome one?
Also, if you share friends with your partner, when does the pre-existing relationship take precedence over the tacked-on friendship?
Hmmm... The dilemmas...

I don't have any friends left from primary school, but that doesn't worry me at all. And I am in awe of people who have managed to keep friendships going for that long. The shared experience of an entire life, it's kinda cool. I do however have a few friends from High School that will remain in the BFF section of my heart. And it's Cathy, my BFF that I met on the first day of Year 7, all those long years ago (OK, scarily, it was 20 years ago) that I've been thinking about a lot recently. I got the new Dixie Chicks album, and the title track 'The Long Way Around' just says 'Cathy' to me:-

My friends from high school

Married their high school boyfriends

Moved into houses

In the same ZIP codes where their parents live

But I. I could never follow

No I. I could never follow

I hit the highway

In a pink RV with stars on the ceiling

Lived like a gypsy

Six strong hands on the steering wheel

I've been a long time gone now

Maybe someday, someday I'm gonna settle down

But I've always found my way somehow

By takin the long way round.

She's over in Marjorca now, doing, um, stuff. She's worked on the huge yachts that berth there, working as a chef. She's taught English in China. She's been married and divorced. She bought a place in Little Eveleigh St. She just did, does, whatever the hell she wants. I admire that in a girl!

We were inseparable throughout high school, provoking the usual Shire suspicion that we were in fact... (whisper it) Lesbians! We weren't, of course, but it kinda amused us that our classmates just didn't have the same depth of friendship with each other. And of course, we had a MASSIVE fight just before the HSC, mainly due to the fact that we would shortly be headed in very different directions... We didn't speak for about 8 years. Then I rang her, while I was living in the UK. She was in Spain. We caught up, and it was like... it was like nothing had ever happened. We slipped back into the knowing exactly what each other thought, picking up on every little nuance of character. I played 'Articulate' with her, and we blitzed it! One word could convey a multitude of things between us. So much more so than between MrB and I.

I need to email her... I miss Cathy.