Frankly Put: Am I Ready For Friends?
So flies by another year of life, the interesting thing about it being the number of relationships that seem to have fallen apart around me and no, I’m pretty sure I am not the cause, not even remotely.
They say your twenties are not for chasing love and relationships but for focusing on yourself, your goals and ambitions, and enjoying life to its fullest. Commonplace conversations seemingly villanizing the value of the four-letter word, sometimes makes me doubt the high standard I have come to hold it to. Yes, we live in a totally different time from our parents and their generation, where “love” came just as campus did and the life after, there is no denying the fact; life gets in the way. Now it times of where they moved to settle, we are moving to travel the world.
These days, your twenties are a time for healing and unlearning and learning a lot of things, habits and lessons, before you even begin to consider those who exist outside yourself. The majority of the reasons I have been given as to why a relationship would not start let alone end is, “I am still finding myself.” or something along those lines. It is almost inspiring how in some cases that could roughly be translated into I am trying to come into my own being, realise my own potentials and flaws so I can be the best version of myself and I support that. On the other hand, some use it as an excuse to wave the banner of “Nai-roo-bi!” I digress.
As I lay in bed late at night, scrolling through social media as you normally would, post after post I see is young people - young couples, living that beautified image of relationships that I am pinching myself to stop from merely chasing. I mean in essence, do I really want to be with someone for the shared connection or just because I have found myself fed by the highlight reels of someone else's love and I now crave it? Now don’t get me wrong, this is not to say that what they portray on their feeds isn’t really what they live through, perhaps it is because hell, love is beautiful. I am not going to front that it isn’t. I would only ask, am I open to the possibility that sometimes it isn’t?
I have been asked repeatedly, what I look for in a significant other and with every passing year, answering that question becomes both easier and harder at the same time. See, it is very easy to state qualities we want out of someone we wish to share our hearts with but it is difficult to come to terms with the fact that, what we want isn’t always what we need. We can demand whatever we demand out of our partners but the question can also be asked, do we demand the same out of ourselves?
Eli Mwenda of @mantalk.ke once properly put it when he asked, “We as guys always talk about what we want (…) but do you deserve that?” Admittedly, we do talk about it. Some on the superficial, “sounding like what a lot of songs describe” and some in the confines of their groups of guys, the substantial flesh that one can sink their teeth into, the “deep” things and it is all fine and dandy to know what you want, it just becomes a question of “what do you have to offer?”
You could want all these things but give nothing in return, then should you really cry for them? Should you be entitled to them? No. A relationship like alchemy is of equal trade (shout out my FMA fans out there). Although, I shouldn’t talk of the romantic alone. What about the platonic? Do we hold our friendships in the same esteem?
Can love be found in our friendships and chased as in our romantic relationships? In the questions asked about partners, one could just as easily replace the word partner for a friend. We give and receive love from our friends without realizing it because of how greatly we glorify romance. I don’t blame us though, it isn’t as firey to romanticize friendship. Only on the occasions where there is an extravagant show, do we then turn and retweet under the caption “I hope my friends see what other friends are doing.”
Being a friend isn’t just a title we should throw around either, in my opinion. I remember back in primary school, being told about how the definition we came to use for a “best friend” should have been the one we used for friends and anyone else is a colleague or an acquaintance. A couple of questions the person asked to summarise what was put across were; Would you truly, genuinely give your life up for your friends? Have you been to the houses of those you call friends? Met both their parents? Would you be loyal even when they have nothing to offer you? Are they people whom you trust? Trust in this sense being more than just wishing they would not lie, it also consists of being comfortable talking about difficult things, being your true self around them and keeping you in check.
Relationships end because we “are still trying to find ourselves” so I ask, can friendships begin for the same reasons? If we are somehow all trying to find ourselves, it wouldn’t hurt to have the help of a competent search party with you, right? A group of humans you are willing to extend love and care to and in the same breath, receive from. I mean, am I ready to face the sometimes awkward discomfort of giving love to my friends in the way they need to be loved? Am I willing to do it enough times to have it read as nothing more than platonic care? Am I able to receive that love without craving the romantic? Am I willing to find where exactly that line lies? Am I willing to accept that this may raise the standards of a romantic partner because I know better how I wish to be treated?
Forgive the ramblings of a sleep-deprived student here, but I would like to try and answer these questions. Friend-ing as an adult is difficult, like please take me back to when a simple “Do you want to be my friend?” on the playground was enough to plant the seed of beautiful platonic love. Where care came so naturally, it was like a personality trait and the effort to be in each other’s life consistently was not needed because we were joined at the hip. Shukisha because we are now heading to the age of throwing out those very hips. A time where not caring seems easier than caring. A point where we are glorifying loneliness and ghosting people.
All this is to say, am I ready for friends like I know I should define them? I want to be but change… knowing my thoughts to it, to put it Frankly.
