R has this friend who has been An Issue for the longest time. We call him The Nega Star. Haha. He’s user-friendly, unreliable, abusive, and self-destructive. He tells R, ‘you’re the only one who understands me’ (translation: so you are obliged to understand me). He acts like he’s the only one in the whole world who has problems and hence the only one who has the right to be sad. He even had the temerity to say mean stuff to and about R. To top it all off, he ran away with R’s money.
How do we even manage to get stuck with this kind of people? I guess we all have our lapses in judgment, including judging other people’s character. And after a while we’re just too nice to drop them, or maybe we keep wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt, that they’ll come around to being better human beings one day. We can all be so stupid, really.
I tell R, for me, friends are optional, unlike family. Your family you’re stuck with no matter how uncool they are. But friends are entirely up to you. You have the right to choose them. And they need to have value-added in your life for you to want to make the effort and spend time with them. They need to make you laugh, or feel loved, or be a whole lot smarter than you and teach you many things, or whatever, to deserve your friendship. It’s like the ad in Debenhams: brassieres should be like friends – supportive, comfortable, and uplifting. (Haha.)
Which is not to say that friends should be all good times. In fact, I have found that my closest friends are those with whom I’ve gone thru the darkest of days. I have a friend with whom I became close to when her son got sick. She eventually lost her son, a year after she lost her dad, and two years after that she lost valuable possessions during Ondoy. Of all my friends, she deserves to be The Nega Star, and yet she remains one of the most open, giving persons I know. She gets sad and cries more often than my other friends, but you feel privileged to be allowed to share in her grief. Other people would just suck you in to their negativity.
I tell R, for me, for a friendship to thrive, as in any relationship, it has to be give and take. Even someone like R with a good heart and no mean bone in his body needs something back from a friend. Like concern, affection, appreciation. Something like that which doesn’t even cost one peso. Or something basic like decency and manners, asking how you're doing, telling the truth and paying up a loan. Bcoz if you’re just on the giving end all the time and do not receive anything in return, then that kills the joy right out of a friendship. In fact, it ceases to be a friendship and becomes a simple case of parasitism.
R has given up The Nega Star. Unfriended. Disengaged. I’m glad. I didn’t know he had it in him, coz he is always too goodie goodie for my liking. (I have all these friends like him and I believe I was sent into their lives to influence them with my evilness bcoz they are just too kind for their own good. Ha ha.)
At the end of the day, all R could tell The Nega Star was: you disappoint me. I guess bcoz you always expect something from your friends. It’s the whole reason why strangers become your friends: bcoz you expect that you’re going to have lots of fun with this other person, and he’s going to treat you well, and in return you open yourself up and let him into your life. So if he falls short of that expectation, then you get hurt. It’s not like someone in the office who has been your enemy since day 1 – that kind of issue hardly hurts bcoz he was never your friend to begin with and you never had any expectations of him. Only issues with people you already love can truly break your heart.
This brings to mind something poignant I read before. Something like this: holding on to a friend is sometimes like clenching your fists till your turn knuckles turn white. Letting go is like opening your fist – it feels good, but your hand is empty.
It’s sad, but he’s gotta go.
No comments:
Post a Comment