It’s like we are taught from a young age that we will always be in a group of friends. I don’t remember ever being told that, but it was always portrayed as the ideal, wasn’t it?
Look at Sex And The City, four girls who are best friends.
They are a solid group who always meet up and are just always friends, no
matter what. And Friends, a group of six people who just fit together. They
have other friends who flitter in and out but those six always stick.
The problem is that this is unrealistic. But this is also
saddening. Most of us feel that if we aren’t part of some sort of friendship
group that we no longer have any and nobody really cares about us. We feel like
we’ve failed in society and that it must be a personal thing - we must have
something wrong with us?! Surely?! No. You don’t.
As I grew older, I realised it was less important to have
one best friend who fulfils every purpose. Now, I have friends for different
reasons. I have friends who I trust, these are the ones I would confide in or
moan about something if I’m having a really crap day. Then I have friends who I
primarily see to get drunk with or just go for lunch now and again.
Now there
are plenty of other roles that friends fulfil, and some tick more than one of those
boxes. But the point is, it doesn’t make them less of a ‘friend’ to you because
you can’t trust them, or you can’t say something crude to them because they don’t
quite have that sense of humour. This is normal. I promise.
I love my friends for all different reasons. I dislike them
hugely at times too, and this is a major thing I really picked up on at
university. When I moved away and started to make new friends, I realised
things I found there were things I desired in friendships – then I realised
that this was a really fixed way of looking at it. Why am I looking for
characteristics in people that I already have in others? Don’t get me wrong, I
have plenty of friends who are very similar to each other, and I get on with
them for those reasons, but it’s OK that some of my friends are the complete
opposites.
In fact, I love it. It gives me so much variety in what I
can talk to people about, I’m not flittering between people repeating the same
conversations and receiving the same answers. If I have some kind of issue I
want opinions on, I can gather a complete range because my friends aren’t all
clones of each other.
What I’m trying to say, is that at school it was drummed
into you that your best friends were the people you got on really well with, or
the ones that always invite you over to their house. This was incorrect,
because when I left school I soon realised that a lot of people were in my life
because of habit. This doesn’t mean I dislike them any less, it just means that
when we were taken out of normal situation, it turned out we weren’t that good
friends after all. It wasn’t fake, it was life.
Some people you will realise you actually have nothing in
common with, and in reality they are actually a pretty shitty person. They lied
to you, they were sly or they were just plain rude – either way, you’ve decided
you actually don’t want them around anymore. That’s fine. Sometimes it takes a
step back to realise what you were putting up with for the sake of a ‘friend’.
My advice is to evaluate what you want from your friends. If
that friend makes you laugh til you’re belly hurts, but she has a tendency to
gossip… then don’t tell her those really private things that you don’t want to
be shared. Nobody's perfect, it's unlikely that you will find somebody with no faults or annoying habits.
Oh, the most important thing - remember that you should be valued
too, if somebody wants you in their life, they will show it and they will act
on it. Don’t do all of the chasing, you’ll regret it one day.
Kirsti x
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