I owe a lot to the power of friendship. Multiple times, I thought about killing myself or something. But I realized that my friends would be hurt too much by this. The power of friendship has saved my life multiple times, and I feel that I can't repay them enough for this. Especially since they have to put up with the anger problems I used to have and my occasional anti-social nature or quietness.

This troper had a seventh-grade English teacher who, in trying to relate with the students, does the work with us. In our personal essays, she made a rather laughable one about ThePowerOfFriendship.

This troper's friends are his most prized possession in all the world. Seriously, they're more loyal than than the crew of the ''Enterprise''.

ThePowerOfFriendship caused {{Nomic}} to regain some trust in humanity. Ironically, it's also caused him to consider himself evil, but evil!Nomic is actually nicer than jerkass!Nomic.

This Troper has only ''one friend''...but said friend is the most important thing in this ol' world to her. She's known him since grade three and is now going into grade eleven with him still by her side. Said friend is essentially her brother, only not genetically. I also hope he doesn't read this, since he's a Troper as well and I'd probably break out in LuminescentBlush...

RelationshipUpgrade?

Inverted. No, I'm not just being a misanthropic emo, projects I had in school really did go slower when I had a partner.

Ibid. This troper loves his friends, but has learned that everything goes twice as slowly and usually has to be redone from the ground up should he ever be so foolish as to delegate anything.

ThePowerOfFriendship is sometimes the only thing keeping this troper from cracking up.

Both averted an upheld. This troper had trouble making friends, but the friends he did have made getting up and going to school just a little bit easier.

This troper had a best friend he met when he was 5 years old. When said friend he moved away and the journey was about 1-2 hours. However, he stayed at his dad's every second week. This troper is 19 and he is still my best friend. While we nag at each other more than a married couple we can't be separated.

Averted, subverted, and inverted to hell and back with this troper. I don't think anyone in my generation has had so many people betray and use them before the age of 15. This led to a brief period of distrust for most other people.

This troper, unfortunately, isn't so sure.

This troper and two of his classmates formed a study group that met occasionally after class and on Sunday afternoons. While they learned quite a bit from their group studying, it was AllForNothing for this troper, who got a [[supersecretspoiler:'''[[PopNMusic NORMA NG.''']]

Subverted in that people in school actually went so far as to use friendship ''against'' this troper. Three out of her five PTSD-inducing bullies were her closest and only friends for brief periods. People used power of their own twisted friendships to make sure no one would ever be nice to her by using it as emotional blackmail: they either bullied me or ended up like me. The worst part was that she never even really wanted friends. She just wanted to learn in peace.

A chilling reminder that just because friendship is incredibly powerful doesn't mean it's always good.

To counteract the above rather depressing stories: this troper had a similar experience in middle school, where the dozen or so friends he thought he had were just jerkasses who were nice to his face, but then made fun of him behind his back; the realization that he was in fact a friendless ButtMonkey eventually made him into a confidence-lacking, paranoid loner through the rest of middle and through most of high school. Then, of course, there was senior year, and a classmate that this troper had met but never really talked to. What started as a mere coincidence of shared interests eventually turned into a partnership of mutual support. After half a decade of helping each other with college work, getting and keeping jobs, finances, relationships and more, the two of us have become "brothers in all but blood", bordering on HLP. And through this friend's constant and loyal support, this troper has gone from being a paranoid social outcast to a Stoic yet friendly DeadpanSnarker with a modestly large social circle filled with reasonably good people eager to keep him around and do right by him. ThePowerOfFriendship indeed.

A similar thing happened to this troper at the end of middle school. All through first school, and until I was 12 years old I was picked on by people who I thought were my friends, and this made me very angsty and antisocial. Not being brave enough to stand up to them, I waited until we broke friends (for the millionth time) and escaped them without confrontation. I then found my real friends, and things got a hell of a lot better from there! I'm still not the most sociable person, but I'm far more friendly and relaxed because of my friends- I can't repay them for all the help they've given me, but I'm fiercely loyal and would fight tooth and nail to defend them. PowerOfFriendship has been subverted and played straight for me, but I don't regret it too much :-)

The PowerOfFriendship has helped this troper become a better man several times over.

This Troper has had the same friends since elementary school age and is in grade 11 still with them. I've known them since 1st grade.

This Troper quite literally had no friends that were both actual friends and stuck around for more than a few months all through preschool and elementary school, and the bullying for her... interesting body proportions (being a 5'11" eleven-year-old is not the best way to get accepted) only got worse as she entered middle school. She has since met two people who she really trusts; one of them can literally make friends with ANYONE and the other is the first's friend who kinda stuck around when she was with me in the beginning. Moral of the story: ThePowerOfFriendship ''does not exist'' between first and sixth grades.

This troper and his friend beat a HouseOfTheDead arcade game with a more practical and jocular application of this trope by using multiple swipe-cards to bypass the time limit imposed to balance the awesome power of unlimited lives. (Senior After-Prom at Dave and Busters. Much fun was had.)

This one really hates the thought of being alone, and tries to make as many friends as possible. The friends that I have are really what helps me cope with the day.

I'm a total JerkAss. Sometimes JerkWithAHeartOfGold. I have rage and bile cooped up within me, threatening to suffocate my soul. That said, the people who have befriended me are awesome distilled. Awesome to the power of awesome. If we ever find ourselves in a post-apocalyptic situation, I'll do whatever it takes to keep them safe.

This troper's closest world-wide friends are the only thing keeping her from killing herself, mangling herself, slashing her wrists and everything else she could possibly do to harm herself.

This troper likes to make speeches inspired by this trope. Then again, her friends are pretty important in her eyes.

This Troper survived college because of his friends. Sadly, Merlin's Rangers no longer exists to terrorise the north of England, but their memory lives on, both here and in the Flight Operations department of HMS Kent.

This Troper's gave him the confidence to be himself and also helped him to some much needed social relationships 101. This translates to knowing when and where he can let out his cynical and sadistic side without being misunderstood into getting his butt kicked for casual rude remarks.

This Troper moved to one of those small towns when he was in fifth grade. It was hard to make friends not only because everyone only had known each other forever, but because I was short, chubby, and liked to read. Yeah. The few friends I had made fun of me behind my back for years, and it wasn't until high school that I could actually name people I considered friends. FYI, being the new kid sucks.

Friendship has helped this Troper in a myriad of situations. In 8th grade, this Troper's friend was very suicidal and tried to hang herself in the girl's restroom. Had it not been for this Troper loyally staying by her side and going with her to the office every morning for a while, she might still be suicidal. However, I agree with the inverted example farther above about group work. While I love working with my friends in groups, we usually take longer because we goof off. And I despise working with assigned groups. UGH.

This troper showed up at a party where (unknown to me), I was only invited by a girl to make the host (her boyfriend) jealous. When the host picked a fight with me, his two closest friends recognized me as the best friend of their brother and shifted their allegience.

This troper's friend has unfit and abusive parents, who both have the maturity level of maybe a five to seven year old. The friend has gone so far as to cut herself, and when her parents found out, all her father did was show her a scar he had from a prior attempted suicide, and waved it off as natural teenage stuff. Her dad constantly threatens suicide, tells her that her mother should of had an abortion instead of give birth to her, and that if she disappoints him, again (she's never really done anything less than natural teenage stuff) she should not call him "dad" anymore. He, also, threatens to send her to a boarding school if she screws up again. Basically, being high school freshmen, this troper is the only one that she can count on to provide unconditional love, support, and advice, along with explaining to her that it is not her fault (what her parents do -- they tell her it's her fault, and that she causes them pain), and that as with all parents they do love her, they are just extremely unfit parents and need psychological help that they will most likely never receive. All this troper can do is give her the support she needs to survive high school, and hope that when she starts leaving the high school life, she will finally be able to thrive. Oh yeah, and her parents basically keep her under something reminiscent of a communist regime. This troper basically must act as a parent to her; give her someone to count on, no matter what happens, or even what she does. In short, this troper is her parental substitute; even telling her that if the situation ever necessitates it, she could stay with her, at her house (this troper has her parent's permission, as long as it's legal or severely crucial to her friend's ultimate well being). By the way, this troper also has a nakama and close friends besides this, that she would apply unconditional support to, they just don't need it as much. This athletic honor's student also has straight A's, and a six-pack through gymnastics & soccer, but without her friends none of it would be worth it. She is happy to take on this responsibility, as she hopes her friends would for her, too.

Not really an example in the "having friends makes you emotionally stronger"-sense and also not something I have experienced myself, but here's a story a friend told me: A guy he knew, in a large city (where, I don't remember) owned a restaurant. At some point the local mafia tried to set up a protection racket against him. He told them that, yes, if they came back tomorrow, the matter could surely be discussed. Incidentally, he was a member of a weightlifting and boxing club. So he invited the other club members, all of them tall and strong guys, for free dinner that evening. The two mafia guys came in, looked around slightly intimidated, drank one beer and went again. They haven't been seen again.

This troper '''hates''' the thought of being alone. There is one friend of mine--he and I have been friends for many many years now and we're still close as ever. I think of him as a brother. He's gotten me through many a dark hour. And he'll be cheering me on at graduation, as I managed to get him a ticket. =D

This Troper talked a suicidal crush off the tree with this. #QUOTE# Me: You know...life isn't easy. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's boring or sometimes it plain sucks. But listen...there are reasons, why you should be happy about life. It doesn't always go like in the movies, but that's why there is friends. If something bothers you, we'll make it okay. If you feel bad, we'll be there to cheer you up. If someone is rude to you, we'll kick his ass. Why? Because we friends think, that you are a perfect, wonderful person and at least I am happy, that I have had the fortune to meet you. Sometimes you might feel like crap, but we'll be there to support you, even if you yourself won't notice it. And we'll know when you feel despair, and then we are sad too, and we'd move a mountain to make you and your life feel better. And we - and I - would feel completely devastated if something bad would happen to you. Life can sometimes feel like that you just want to end it all, but if for nothing else, then live for friends...for me. The night is the darkest before sunrise...you'll just have to keep going and hope that it will happen. Don't give up...please.

(Added) And this trope came to bite me in the ass shortly afterward after said crush hooked up with another girl and threw me into a corner like an used sock. Fucking bastard, now that I look that post I really wish I would've told that bastard to go fuck himself and jump off a roof. If I'll ever see him again, I'll fucking kill him. NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished, indeed.

The power of friendship has saved me from being squished by several buses.

Seconded. For me, it was several cars.

Once, when this troper was a bit younger, she and her 3 friends were on the play ground. Currently she was the Shrinking Violet of the class. After a group of other kids challenged us too a game of four square, we won, and I proceeded to lecture the other children on The Power of Friendship!Needless, to say, she is now the class weirdo, and has a somewhat larger circle of friends then before.

I have a best friend. Her father tries to keep us apart, but that doesn't work. And even if it did, it wouldn't matter. We could never get the chance to talk again, and we'd still be best friends. That sounds nuts, but it's true. I guess that doesn't exactly accomplish anything, but having a connection like that, where you don't need to do a damn thing, and nothing you do around them feels like work, and you both know you're in the right place with each other, is very powerful.

This Troper has a best friend and former neighbour who actually introduced him (him as in me) to TV Tropes. The story of how we met is heterosexual MeetCute: my family had just moved into the apartment building, and soon-to-be best friend's mum comes up to tell us our bathroom is leaking into their ceiling (okay, maybe not so cute). She invited us to their house (which was directly below ours) where I met her son. We had exactly the same interests at exactly the same periods of time, from dinosaurs, to Star Wars, through to Batman. We enjoy alot of word and pun-based humour. His Mum once remarked "I'm sure in a previous life you two were brothers".

This troper's had a few moments but this is one of my favorites. I ran a club full of geeks in high school. I talked several of them into going to Homecoming when they originally weren't going to go. So I'm out on the floor dancing when I keep feeling small things hit me in the back of the head. I'm not sure what it is but when I go to see how my friends are doing they're all on one end of the dance floor glowering in the direction of someone. Turns out it was the kid who'd consistently been giving me problems and my geek friends (about 4-5) were seriously considering going over and kicking his arse. Later, this guy tried to rip off another kid in my club and one of my friends stood up to him (I was out that day or I'd have handled the situation myself), and got into a fight. This kid had been causing problems for a while so I used some of the pull I had with the administration. My friend was back in two days. The other kid got expelled.

Subverted in me and my friends big writing project. The character I'm writing as is an IdiotHero who's sweetly naive and chivilrous and believes himself to be a knight destined to protect people. Fitting with his overall optimism, he very much believes in the powers of friendship, trust and love. The subversion is that the other heroes of the story don't like him nearly as much as he likes and trusts them. While they like him, they're not really THAT bothered, whilst he'd gladly give his life for all of them. To make things worse, the one person he sees as his closest friend, the one person he cares for and trusts the most, only became friends with him so that he could get information off of him and overall use him for his own gain. He has no idea about any of this, and he often ends up guilt-tripping everyone without meaning to by saying stuff like "It's okay, I absolutely trust you with my life!" and "I know I can always count on you guys!" (at the very least, his dialogue guilt-trips the other writers).

Subverted in this Troper's case. Said friend asked a question, Troper gave a brutal honest answer trying to help her friend out, comparing to what she'd done in the past (there was a romance going on, so NOT a good idea as far as this troper was concerned.) Friend accused troper of being a GreenEyedMonster (kind of true, we were a PowerTrio and she was reducing me to 3rd Wheel), flung something else in my face to show me how awful I was being just to be mean. Troper realized that while she was wrong it takes two to tango and told her to either grow up or get over herself first. This Troper lost two good friends that night.

I would not have gotten through my fifth grade year - Worst. Year. Ever. The last third of fourth grade sucked too, but being in semi-shock cushioned things - without two girls I met at a playground one day. Thank God for Harry Potter, it was the first thing we clicked over, and if I hadn't had the weekends those two girls were with their father and could see me to look forward to... I'm fucked up enough thanks to that Grade School of Hell; I don't want to know how much worse it could have turned out for me. Haven't seen them much lately, but I'd still have their backs and I believe they'd have mine. Also, high school would not have been the best part of my life so far without my crazy circle of friends.

This Troper spent all of middle school in the shadow of a bully who decided to make me his own personal ButtMonkey. I couldn't even make many friends, because he threatened to harm those who associated with me as well. Come high school, he was in a different district than me, and I spent freshman year extremely happy, and building a large network of friends. Sophomore year rolled around, and I found out he had made a minor move that happened to bring him into my district again. The first day of school, I'm saying hi to one of my friends I hadn't seen that summer, when he tapped me on the shoulder. One of my friends goes "This him?" And when I nodded, the classic "Don't F with us" line of people formed behind me, with over thirty other students, from sophomores to seniors. I have yet to see him say a word to me, and I'm a senior now.

This troper recently had a reaffirmation as to ThePowerOfFriendship when she left her job. She worked in a place where she was not only an employee, but a volunteer and a regular "customer" (for lack of a better word), and everybody knew her. It therefore came as a complete shock when she left ''for health reasons'' and found out how little she was valued by the people at her job, nearly none of whom have made any effort to communicate with her or even verify that she's recovering. Contrast that with the true friends who touch base with her almost every day, make a point of including her in their plans, and give her the encouragement and support she desperately needs right now...suffice it to say that this experience has taught her who her friends really are.

I'm not even kidding--there have been a few times I came close to having nervous breakdowns due to stress from school and a long-distance relationship. One of the only things keeping me sane is my circle of friends, who never fail to cheer me up when I'm close to tears--especially my vitriolic pal.

Subverted all the way to fucking hell with this troper. Every time I depended on someone to help me, they either stabbed me in the back or left me to face my problems alone, watching from away while people mocked and or beat me. In fact, the guy whom I thought as friend is the one who pretty much turned me into ADarkerMe. This all brings this troper to LOATH the very idea of PowerOfFriendship or PowerOfLove or HumansAreSpecial, cause all people I called friends so far ditched me or betrayed me. And personally, I think this trope overall infantile. If you depend on and trust people and friends too much, they will end up letting you down one way or the other, just like the Troper with the Suicidal Crush turned Cheater. If you don't fight for yourself the most, no one will, and if you let someone too close, they'll use you and ditch you when they're done. And, ironically enough, I was mostly bullied because I read Harry Potter. The only REAL friend I have is my Father and he's not exactly the defender of the Idealism side of the Scale, cause he also got his trope subverted on him. Hard. Couple with BigScrewedUpFamily, HumansAreBastards and my grandma that puts Medusa Gorgon to shame, my Father pretty much stomped over this trope and became BadassNormal and IronWoobie in my eyes, for the simple fact he didn't go crazy and killed himself. And he did it alone, with no one to help him, so he picked up all tropes on depending on friendship and love and told them to stick it the fuck up.

Present and averted for this troper; I was thrown out of a private school for hitting another student with a book without knowing that that student's father is a prosecuting attorney, and the testimony of several people that I once considered friends has ensured that I am now known as an AxCrazy utter maniac at that school, the two friends from that school that I have kept in touch with kept me from actually going stark raving mad during the transition.

This is pretty much the only reason this troper is a KnightInSourArmor instead of a completely sociopathic NietzscheWannabe.

Bless this troper's long term friends and partners. Life savers, sanity savers and geniunely open minded blessed angels.

I owe the few friends I have my sanity, and the fact that I haven't turned into someone like Lucy, ''yet''.

I'm seeing a lot of listed aversions/subversions/inversions on this page. I just want to let all of you out there who feel this way know that things can still get better. I've been through quite a few groups of friends, all with varying degrees of true friendship. People can change and drift apart over time, and those changes are not always for the better. Despite all of this, it is possible to find people who you care about and who care about you to the point that one will drop everything to go to the aid of the other. Because this is real life and not a storybook or movie, ThePowerOfFriendship will not miraculously show up every time you want it to, but it does exist. For every time I have been let down, betrayed, or rejected by supposed friends, there have been as many or more (non-corresponding) times that my real friends have talked me out of depression, saved my sanity, and jumped in to help me with something when they could have just let me struggle along on my own.

Like you said, it's not a movie or book. Which is why, in some cases, ThePowerOfFriendship just ''never'' shows up, or when it does, it's already too late...