friendship

Friends come in all sorts of sizes and shapes, they last for different durations and each accomplishes something different, be it in our life, our thoughts or in theirs. It can be very difficult at times to connect with enough people and to make new friends so maybe when we do we grab onto a new friend and maybe hold a little bit tight. Maybe some friendships creep up on us after a long while and we don't realise it has happened, whatever the reason friendship is precious and should be cherished, however it comes about or however long it lasts.

Many articles are written in magazines about how to say goodbye to friends who have no place in your life or who you have no feelings for anymore. Yet these articles seem not to bother mentioning how painful and difficult it is if you are the friend that is deemed no longer a friend. It is hurtful when people leave our lives and give no warning or no reason why and we are left wondering in the dark about what we have done wrong and how to make it right. We may not of course have done anything wrong but it is human nature in some of us to automatically think things are our fault. We look inside ourselves and question what we have done and said, could we have done it differently, could we have tried more? many soul searching questions keep us awake at night and yes we get angry as well as hurt and it colours our life. It is a process very similar to grief, well after all we have lost someone, and just as we think we have cracked it a stray thought pops into our heads and all the angst comes back.

It is unfair of people to treat us with such lack of respect and decency, okay we may not be what they want in a friend anymore but before ignoring communications or changing phone numbers they should stop, think, and then have the guts to let us know that we are surplus to requirements. If we were good enough to be their friends at one time they owe us this. Would they like to be treated that way? I doubt it.

Even as we struggle with this loss we can find a semi silver lining, a way of looking at things so they do not seem so brutal. Life only gives us what we can deal with, yes it doesn't seem like that at times but we cope, we learn and hopefully we carry this lesson on with us. Take for instance the short lived but intense friendship that appears, we give it our all, this person is needy, they need us we can help them, we don't necessarily see this at the time we are just being a good friend but once our usefulness has finished we are no longer their friend. They no longer need us and they can move on. We are left feeling abandoned and wondering why. The why is easy, we were there to help this person, give them what they needed to see them through a difficult time in their life and help them cope and when that was done they go on emotionally fixed and we count our emotional cost. It doesn't seem fair, and is probably not but after the fact it is possible to look back and see the good that has been done. Nobody said being a good person was easy.

Whatever the reasons people decide to drop in and out of our lives we must always remember that we are worthy of being loved, that we are capable of helping others, that we will be hurt again, that we must try not to hurt others. After all we should treat others as we wish to be treated....