The Messy Thoughts Of A Blooming Adult.

Topic One: Friendship.

To her friendship and love are two sides of one coin, there is no friendship without love as there is no love without friendship. Love for oneself, for the other person or the process in general. 

She doesn't believe in the idea of best friends and a friend for life, but she does believe in companionship and love between two people that could possibly last through time and changes.
She believes in the importance of having someone in your life, who you can rely on when things get tough. Someone you can talk to when you need to vent, without fearing any sorts of judgemental words or stares. She believes in someone having your back when in the right, and confronting you when in the wrong. She believes in the shared love and respect between two people. The love and respect that could last a lifetime.

She believes in the responsibility of a friend, but she finds it annoying when people seem to forget that we are all humans, and we aren't always there, no matter how much love we share, we are still only humans.

We almost always forget that people wouldn't always be there for us whenever we need them to be, and it's okay. It's okay to have to deal with some stuff on your own, for people are not always free to come to your aid and some have different ideas of what being there means.

Others, just like she is, have their own worries, fears and commitments. They have responsibilities and capabilities that allow them or deny them the chance to be with us on our time of need. That's why we should forgive that one time our friend forgot to check up on you after your dog died, or that other time when they couldn't say goodbye in person before they left the country. We should forgive the small stuff for the sake of the bigger ones, like the time they stood by you on your father's funeral or your sister's wedding.

As a friend, she likes the idea of being there for her friends, the idea of offering her love and support in whichever way possible. But she knows she can't always be there for whatever reason it may be. She knows it was one reason she lost friends before? but she never regreted losing them. She never regreted losing the anxiety and fear they created in her life. The need to fulfil a list they provided or a need they commanded.

For many years she thought that's how friendship works, the constant demands of being friends that tires her soul and body. She thought that the person who loves the most makes the most time and effort, but it's not always the case. Sometimes they are just free! Or they need the validation and attention.

She recalls a situation she went through a couple of years back, when a girl in her department started to get closer to her, greeting her in between lectures and acting in, what she thought then, was a clingy manner. And she couldn't for the love of her accept her as a friend, eventhough she wasn't but goodness and beauty but she wasn't fair to her.
So she tried to avoid the girl in any way possible, walking in the other direction whenever she spotted her, memorizing the girl's timetable so that she would avoid walking into her in between lectures. She even remembered making up all sorts of excuses as to why they shouldn't be friends, to the point of sending her a long descriptive text on why they shouldn't be friends and how she already got her fair share of friends and how she couldn't befriend her because she wouldn't be giving her what she thought is the minimum share of effort and time in this friendship. Which is something she truly and honestly believed at the time. She believed that no friendship can happen without being one hundred and ten percent invested in it.

A few years forward and they are good friends, despite the fact that they don't see each others months at a time, but they appreciate and take care of one another.

Knowing her and meeting new people as she grew older, introduced her to the real meaning of friendship, the meaning that we sometimes forget. Friendship is not about the time we spend together, it's about our ability to appreciate and respect that time and the effort we both give for the friendship. Sometimes it's a lot sometimes it's little, but effort is effort and it should be appreciated.

As she grew older she realized that not all the people we know are friends, but some people can be good aquiantices, if not friends, if you give them a chance to be and this relationship may bloom into a full on friendship. It was just as that girl said to her at the time, time and effort are relative, you can love a person you don't meet on daily bases and hate the one you see every second of the day, or you can put too much effort into a relationship only to discover that it was a huge waste of time later on. 

And now she is open to love, respect and appreciation as a concept of friendship rather than her usual concept and it only made her appreciate friendship a little bit more.