^I would do the same as you, I would probably help the person, unless I saw that plenty of people who knew her better than me already volunteered. She
asked for help, therefore I would be there.
However, by all your standards, I would make a lousy friend. I can live 2 streets away from you, but if you don't engage me yourself, I won't come over on my own. I won't keep in touch, and I will probably forget your birthday. Why? Not coz I don't care, but coz my concept of time is just warped. I know when your birthday is, but that doesn't help if I don't even know which day we are at the moment, now does it? And although I'm sure you have a lovely home, I'd feel like I was barging in if I just dropped by. As for initiating...I get lived. I don't really plan my life, I take it as it comes. If you contact me on the day itself and I have nothing to do, I'll instantly meet up with you and be happy to see you. If not, I'll find something else to preoccupy myself with. On the other hand, when we do meet up, I'll be genuinly happy to see you and catch up with you for hours.
However, if I can tell by a single word, tone in your voice or bodylanguage that you are emotionally hurting, I will be there without you even asking. I'll clear my schedule, take a rain check on whatever I can get out of, and go without sleep. I'll walk you through it all, till I feel you can handle yourself again. And even then, my door will be open to you, day and night. Just ask. This also means that if you are in the hospital with your leg broken and you sound distraught, I'll come over instantly. If you sound like you have everything under control, I won't. There's no point imo. As my friend, I expect you to be able to ask for help if you need it, and know that I will gladly drop everything for you if you need me to. And yes, I will actually
say this during my friendship with you and no, they aren't empty words or polite gestures.
Stupid example: one of my friends cats escaped and was on the roof. There was no getting her down. Since I'm the resident cat expert in the group and she looks to me when it comes to her cats, she called me at 11pm. I dropped what I was doing, went over there and stood with her, for2 hours calling the cats name. There wasn't anything else I could do. But my presence made her feel like she was in fact doing everything she could. Eventually we were able to get kitty off the roof, I checked if she was physically ok and saw that her husband was up to the task of comforting his wife and the cat, so I left. Crisis averted. She could've called me at 3 am if she thought there was something wrong with her cat, no matter how small, I would've been there, coz I
know how important those cats are to her.
On the other hand, she knows that if she needs me to plan something, remember something, or be routinely nice and go through the pleasantries, it aint going to happen. And not coz I don't want to (I grew up with a Fe-using mom). I *just* seem to not be able to remember this stuff. It costs me an incredible amount of energy and effort to keep track of all of this. And I'm bound to fumble up and stress bout it. I'll make an effort for things I know are very important to others (visiting a new baby, going to a funeral, stuff like that). But the daily stuff...I'm sorry, I just cannot seem to do that stuff without fumbling up. Does it really matter though? Is it more important to send you a birthday card in time, visit you coz you live closeby etc? Or actually be there in your hour of need, whenever or whatever it may be? Coz that's real friendship imo. I'll pick the latter
So look at your history with this friend. Has she been there for you when it mattered? Has she rearranged her schedule just to do you a favor or be there in your hour of need? And for that matter, if you have known her that long, what does she hold as true? What are her core values? You should be able to see if you are a trusted friend
according to her definition of friendship