Saturday 11 June 2011

Lesson of the Week: Maturing Friendships

MATURING FRIENDSHIPS
Friendships can last Forever.

There are lots of quotes out there that try to 'define' friendship, but a true friendship doesn't stick to boundaries, it's not predictable, and it certainly never ends. If you and your best friend/s feel passionate enough about the friendship it WILL last forever, no matter whether you attend different schools or live far apart from each other.
Something a lot of people don't forsee is their friendship maturing. It makes sense that if we as people mature, so should everything around us. 
This reminds me of a situation I had with 2 of my best friends, we've known each other for almost 5 years now, we all met on the first day of Year 7, and the rest they say, is history! The three of us have been through some TOUGH times, and each one of us has questioned the friendship in some way, but thankfully we managed to put aside our differences and after we all ended up learning something about each other. It's strange because out of those 5 years, we all agree that we became truly best friends in the last 2 years of our secondary school lives.
Our friendship was put into question when 1 of us left the other 2 on the last day of school for a guy. I won't go into details but let's say it was messed up. So messed up in fact that  I began to wonder whether our friendship was real and whether I even wanted it to continue. The friend who left us tried to explain herself but each time I just shot her down because I refused to accept her excuse. This went on for maybe 4 days, and in the end she deactivated her Facebook account because she felt so bad about what she'd done. Eventually I began to miss both of my friends, so I texted them saying we should sort it out, so we sorted it out and met up one day to talk about it. Only this seemed to make it worse, and my bitter/sad feelings came back! This was confusing because I didn't know why I felt so awful and unable to forgive.
Me and my 2 friends go to bible study, and the 1 time I went my other friend didn't go, because we sort of weren't speaking again, we were watching a video and the Pastor was talking about our thoughts, and how sometimes we have to think about the things in life that we want to happen in order for them to happen. This made me think about our friendship and my feelings. Eventually I concluded that I wasn't prepared to let the friendship end, so I thought, well how am I going to move on from this? I sat in my living room alone and just began to think, I let all of my emotions out and I worked out why I was feeling so upset.
I realised that I wasn't mad because she'd gone with the guy, she knows me and my other friend completely approve of him, and even though leaving us was bad, it wasn't bad enough to cause the falling out we'd had. I realised that my friend being able to speak to this guy meant she'd matured, because they'd gone almost 4 years wanting to speak to each other, but being too nervous to. It makes sense that if we're in secondary school our friendship would be a secondary school friendship. We're all about to go into sixth form and do A levels, this means we're going to have more responsibility as we grow up. And we all have to accept that the other 2 will get into relationships and eventually have families, it's all part of growing up, but this does in no way mean we can't still all be friends.
So after realising this I told them my thoughts and when I did the sad and bitter feelings were gone! It was amazing that just delving into my own thoughts could turn the whole situation around and make me forgive and forget. And the best thing? Is that our friendship moved up a rank, and we're all certain that we're going to stay in contact, even if we do go to different sixth forms, no-one can break us apart, we've been through too much together.

Having a lasting friendship isn't easy, what's easy is stamping the best friend tag on someone you met a week ago, what's easy is arguing about something and giving up. It takes strength to keep a friendship going for 5 years, and it takes even more strength and courage to keep it going and make the friendship work. Our next challenge? Long distance friendship, I'm looking forward to embarking on this next phase with my best friends, I'm sure it will bring bad and good times, but I know that at the end of it we'll still be together.

If you have a friend you don't want to lose, make the effort to sort out a silly argument you've had. Because trust me, life is so much easier with your friends by your side.
-EG

P.s. When I was going through the tough  time with my friends, listening to this song made me realise that our friendship was special.

Image: This is us by Gibsonclaire.

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