Friends and Making Friends: 11 Realizations

I’m not talking about Friends as in the TV series. I’m talking about real life friends and friendships. As I near the end of high school (in my country at least) I know that I may not have exhausted my ability or willingness to make friends just yet, but I also know that I have most certainly lost the momentum I gained just a couple of years ago. In retrospect, I’ve had two of the best years spent with my bestest friends yet. Guys, they say if you can be friends for 7 years straight, nothing can tear you apart. We’ve got the majority left, but I know it will be easier for me this time than it was the last. This blog post is a tribute to us and our friendship.

On a very deep debate with myself, I’ve come up with these realizations, compiled together from all my years’ experience (though it really isn’t much). I don’t have anyone’s offense in mind, so, if I end up hurting you I apologize in advance.

1. Life is all about finding your kind of crazy.

In the past two years, I’ve heard a lot of people say we – me and my group of friends – were crazy. It may not have been said directly if it was an outsider who said it. They most often just implied that we were an unusual bunch, with seemingly little in common. The greater number of times, it was said inside our five man army (and circus when we wanted it to be). I often found myself wondering how on earth we became friends.

No matter how many friendships you have, no two of them will ever be the same. Just like no two people on earth could ever be the same. We could be as different as the two poles of the earth itself, but we could get on better together than we would with someone who was more similar. Then again, we could practically have the same lifestyles which brought us together. I’ve found my family, and I love every person in it!

2. People who claim to be your friends aren’t always your friends.

This is one of the places I’m risking being judged. I haven’t been lucky enough to be able to stick with one childhood friend who stuck with me till the end. Things changed, and we had to consider other options, whether it be for personal or familial reasons. It hurt. Because I didn’t want to think of life without them, but I had to. In retrospect, we weren’t the best fit. We weren’t the complimentary shape that enzymes and substrates take. We were pretty close, which is why it hurt more.

We had potential, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I still do my best to be my best to you guys. Maybe it was my fault. I’ll never know.

3. If the other person wouldn’t do the same for you, you shouldn’t do it for them, for your own good.

This I learned the hard way. I won’t tell you the story. It was only one of the first blows that slowly made me shock resistant. It doesn’t matter as much as it used to.

If my friends would listen to my advice on friendship, they’d all leave me because honestly, I don’t think I have it in me to do for them what they all did for me. They changed my life. Now, they are the most precious things to me, and I can’t pay their price. If anyone offered me something I really wanted in exchange for them, I’d choose them any day.

4. In the end, your only going to end up with a small cluster (if you are an introvert or a pseudo-extrovert).

I tried being best friends with more than four people at once. I was frightfully aware that I wasn’t giving any of those friendships my best. I wasn’t being honest with all of them. I was preferring some of them over the others, and it didn’t feel right. Then the ones I was paying more attention to stopped paying attention to me, and boy am I glad that happened. I’d be different if it hadn’t. I don’t want to think about how I’d be.

5. You CAN’T be friends with all the people out there.

From time to time I find myself thinking about the people I haven’t spoken to in a year or more. Most of them used to be my best friends in kindergarten. The biggest reason we haven’t communicated is because we lost track of our friendship in the everflowing river of new friendships and new people. When we did have a chance, we lost interest in trying to revive something which was, by then, dead for almost a decade. That is a long time, to know that you were once best friends with someone and that you can’t be the same why anymore. I think I know her, and if we both tried, we could still have something. Something new, perhaps.

But we’re too occupied with the lives we have now to even consider the possibility. Right?

6. There will always be people you judge, and there will always be people who judge you.

The other day one of my former best friends told me that she and her gang called me and my group the Mou-Gang. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.

Judging others by their external appearance and their actions is an old way of deduction, most famously used by Sherlock Holmes. Average human beings aren’t as good as Mr. Holmes, but judgment is a natural flaw in the human character which, no matter how hard we tell ourselves to, we can’t avoid. Sometimes it gets in the way of who we want to make friends with. Recently, I began communicating with someone I was previously envious of. Turns out, we have more in common than I could’ve ever thought.

7. Do your best to never lose contact with the ones you connected with the best.

This one is important because you don’t ever want to lose the people who gave it their all to make your life better. Chances are when you’re stuck, they’ll be the ones to pull you through. They say that knowing there’s light at the end of the tunnel in keeps you going. I think it’s better to know also, that there are people who want you to get out, who are waiting at the other end, to cheer at your victory against the darkness. They’ll kick darkness’ ass with you if the could, and they’d do it for good.

8. Never let crushes have you forget about them. They were there first.

This brings me to the life-changing events that took place in my life in the past 4 years. Things I never imagined would happen happened. But, as I said before, I became a shock absorber way before, probably Allah preparing me for these times. One thing though did cause a bit of a mayhem in my life. My first major crush. I was willing to go to extreme lengths to get him to notice me and in the process, lost one best friend. She left the country, and things haven’t been the same. I almost lost the other one too, luckily though, someone decided to plaster our hearts in superglue.

9. Communicate with them as often as possible.

At around the same time I was working my hardest to catch my then crush’s attention, there formed a communication gap between me and my friends. He didn’t like them, and they didn’t like him, but my girls were willing to put up with him for me. He, on the other hand, made it obvious he wouldn’t put up with them. He didn’t have to. It was never going to work out anyway. But in the middle of it all, the three of us all ended up misunderstanding one another. That is one of my biggest regrets. Since then I’ve vowed to never let a guy get in between our friendship. Never. They were there first. They saved from a life of devastation. He didn’t.

10. Be grateful for their existence.

They are the greatest beings I’ve met (besides my family, of course). They are my angels. When I’m surrounded by them all flooding with happiness, and when they turn to me and say, “Mommy, (and I’m hearing your voice here Maeesha) you should have fun too!” I just can’t keep from smiling. These kids (they’re all younger than me) were my lanterns in the dark. I couldn’t be more grateful for anyone else’s existence.

11. Life will never be the way it was before you met them.

And if you’re anything like me, you’ll never want it to be. Life is way too short to go backspacing and living in the past. I’m not saying I want to live in the future, I’ve suffered the consequences of that as well. Living in the now, and appreciating what God has given you, beats any other form of prayer anyday, when ou know that you are in the best situation you could be in at the moment.

And if I could wish for one thing, I’d take they’re smiles any day.