Friendship…..over rated much?

I find myself thinking about friendship a lot, these days…don’t ask me why I know not. I think about the people who call me friends and people I call friends, are we really friends, friend? I think about the thin line between friend and acquaintances, I think about how some people are circumstantial friends because of work, school, church etc, some are genuine friends like there is mutual affection and some are just contacts (in my phone). Now the ones I think about a lot these days are “obligatory” friends.

Seasonal friends are the best kind of friends in my opinion, you know they are here today gone tomorrow so you really don’t expect much from them. When you share information you are kind of wary of how much of yourself you give away cause deep in your heart of hearts you can just sense where the friendship is going and usually not very far. Sometimes it’s as shallow as a kiddies pool and sometimes that person might actually turn out to be a lifelong friends.

The worst kind of friends are obligatory friends, these friends are dangerous cause you don’t know where you stand with them. They treat you as an afterthought like, “oh hey I my 21^st birthday party is on Saturday” and this is like on a Wednesday and you are left thinking, “erm are you inviting me or are you just informing me cause erm you have obviously beeeeeen planning for this party so a heads up sooner like 2 weeks ago would have been nice!” These people feel bad about not inviting you to things or telling you about anything because well “you have been friends since high school but a lot has changed since then, you went your separate ways, found new friends but you still talk here and there and they feel some typa obligation to keep you in their life because when times were hard you were there for them but now honestly things have changed, you have sort of outgrown them but do not want to break up with them because you will feel bad cause they gave you food once upon a time when you were hungry” blah blah blah …..so exhausting

I always think to myself that probably one of the reasons I don’t have friends is because I am not a friendly person lol which isn’t true although I know of one person who would disagree her name is Zandie looool but I think the reason is cause I care and I care a lot about people, like I will check on you and stuff and not wait for you to text me first and all that jazz. If I share me with you no barriers then I expect the same from you but hey it’s a tall order believe you me. My husband said to me “you should really not care to be honest, you should just be a if you need me I am here kind of friend.” Wisdom, right?!

From now on I am just a “if you need me friend, I will be there kind of friend, don’t feel obligated to invite me to anything, don’t feel obligated to tell me about your life we good honestly, in the meantime until then I will give you your space, do what you gotta do, be with who you gotta be with until you need me.”

I thought long and hard about this and thought am I not opening up myself to hurt and disappointment, then I was like no actually it protects me from expectations because it’s a decision I made on my own, it’s the route that I have decided to take because the last thing I want is to burn bridges and really whether seasonal, obligatory, acquaintance or whatsoever the minute you say hi to me, take my number and occasionally text or call me you have become a part of my life and I already care about you, I am concerned with what happens to you.

What I am not going to do from now on, is share my life with someone who doesn’t want to share their life with me, nah boo been there, done that, bought the t-shirt and burnt the damn thing. I am worth more yazi, my life story deserves to be shared with someone who values me too na mean?? Or is it not that deep this friendship thing at the end of the day?

• acquintance
• friends
• love
• obligatory friend
• true friendship
• worth