The Deceits of Friendship

My dad used to say that there are some people that feel so guilt-stricken from all the favors they’ve received from you, that they feel unable to somehow repay you back.

For them, it seems easier to distance themselves from you, or to talk bad about you. They need to give themselves reason to justify their sudden hostility towards you. To some extent, I see the truth in that.

Since childhood I have had strong emotional support within my circle of friends. I consider myself fortunate to have met good people in my life. I have mostly got along with females and older people. I have always been cared for because I always exhibited my vulnerable side.

As luck would have it, my family made the decision to move to England in hope of a better life for me and my sister. I was fifteen years old when I left my friends behind. At the beginning, I was excited in the prospect of making new friends, and exploring new places. I have always been an outgoing person, hence I didn’t think I would struggle with making friends.

My first interaction with the “darker”, most deceiving side of friendship was when I met a guy from my country in England. He was a much older guy, married with kids. I missed being able to interact in my native language and expressing myself freely. Therefore, when I met that guy, I felt relieved and I took him for a friend. Perhaps I even showed him my vulnerability, as I would with my friends.

Things didn’t take long to turn bad. Soon he wanted to see me alone. I should mention that I met him at a care home for the elderly people, as I was required to go on work placements, as part of the school curriculum.

He once asked me to come and meet him on a weekend on the pretense of exchanging music CDs (CDs sound so like something from the past now — I think I’m allowed to have a mid-life crisis right about now), which he knew I liked listening to. I was naïve to go, yes, but my gut feeling told me to bring someone with me.

I was right to do that. Along with me came three of my cousins. I still remember the utter shock that I saw registered on that guy’s face when he saw that I wasn’t alone. After that day, things changed between us. I knew I no longer felt right around him. Since it was the end of my school placement in any case, I stopped going to that care home.

I will admit though that it wasn’t years after that I truly understood his motive of trying to meet me outside of work. As a fifteen year old, I was too trusting and I was unaware of the dangers of being alone with strangers.

In my eyes, I looked up to him as someone who reminded me of home, and as someone that allowed me the space to glimpse at the life that I left behind, in an attempt to find better in a foreign land.

In an array of hits and misses after that, I did get better at opening up to people; males in particular, and at establishing boundaries. I still do have a flair of innocence in me, in the sense that I always try to see the best in people, no matter what they do in their lives, or how it affects mine. However, this is misconstrued as me being gullible.

Since the beginning of 2022, I can honestly say that I have distanced myself from two of the most important friendships that I have upheld in my life for a long time. I felt like I was being taken for granted, and I was given less and less dues as a friend.

I caught myself feeling lost and angry most of the time. I tried to reach out, to be a good friend but I was reciprocated with silence and feeling like a fool for trying. When I distanced myself, my “friends” didn’t notice much. They only reached out to make sure that I somehow still remember who they were.

Having to go through that experience actually opened my eyes on a lot of other friendships around me that were crumbling apart. Through a greater force, these people either showed me how little of an importance I had in their lives, or how they never really were my friends, let alone my well-wishers.

Life gets busy, and along with it, we set goals that we want to achieve, places that we want to visit. We all want to have a fulfilling life, and I totally agree that sometimes, people fall apart. Growth looks different for everyone.

Writing about this today, I reckon that I may not have been a good friend after all. Most importantly, I realized the only friendship that matters is the one that I should be cultivating within myself. I wouldn’t say that I am winning at that. I still get affected by change, as do people in general.

In an attempt to get accustomed with myself, I now see that I’ve dreaded this moment my whole life. Depending on people to always show up has somehow crippled me. I am anguished with the burden of wanting to show up in people’s lives, the way they have shown up in mine.

It wasn’t always easy being around me. For those who have stuck around, despite the sob stories, repetitive set of events, anger and frustration, I feel like I have a duty to give back to them. I am having a hard time right now learning to let things be. I should learn to separate feeling grateful with being of service to others.

Some people still view me like the image they remember of me from ages ago. Although they see me in my full-fledged evolved form, they still interact with me as the “old me”. I should remember to not react to that. Just because there’s ignorance in their dealings, it shouldn’t mean that I give in to my own anger and frustration.

I should normalize leaving people for my own peace of mind. I should normalize people leaving me for their own peace of mind. I should also know not to let them come back as they seem fit. I make the decision to open that door.