Earlier this year, I read anxious people. This was a line that appeared in that book that stuck to me long after I finished it. I particularly do not memorise or recollect lines and quote them like writers often do. If it naturally happens, it happens. I don’t force it. But the true understanding of what this means comes to me from the friendships that I’m surrounded with.
As I grew up, my father ensured that he emphasised the importance of friendships in life, to hold it at the highest precedence, at all times.
He said, “Friendships are the only thing that do not have a motive”
I listened intently and adapted that to my life without the realisation that it is the single most thing that would keep me alive as an adult. It certainly is the greatest romance of my life. My future partner would truly find it tough to meet the standards that my friends have set.
Mostly, unachievable.
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When I met A, I was 22 – young and naive. We went on one date, realised we were the same people, and decided to be friends. It was a mutual, amicable decision. Certainly, one of the easiest, and best decisions I’ve made in life. She visits me often and every time she visits, she brings me something. It’s not always extravagant but it carries a meaning with it. It carries the concern that she has towards me. I keep telling her this is so unnecessary and how overwhelming it makes me feel but this is a habit I want to adapt in my life. I wish I had it in me to be able to walk around the world and give like she did.
Last week, she stood in the kitchen, frying chicken because I was having a terrible time and everyone knows how much I love chicken.
I kept looking at her. I couldn’t help but wonder, “Who the fuck are you?”
I have several friends. To this day, she’s the only person I’ve looked at and questioned my generosity. She makes me feel when I don’t want to, she teaches me to love effortlessly with no expectation, and she shows me by example that life is not so bad after all.
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Never fuck around with friends. It can seem cinematic, close to ideal, with moments filled with adrenaline-rush. There are only two sides to this story. It will either hit it off or everything you built over the years will go down the drain.
Testing times. But friends who hold friendships at the core rather than circumstances, and problems are the ones you should not hesitate taking a bullet for.
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A friend told me, “Be cringe or be cringe and happy”. One of those.
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Adulting makes me want to not pursue friendships anymore. I do not have the time or the energy to start a new equation from scratch. M came off the hook like a person who suddenly resurrected from a disease. A miracle. She was unplanned, organic, and grew on me with time. I refer to our friendship as “That adult friendship”. 0 drama, no bull shit. M does not realize that she has the uncanny ability to make almost everything around her better than how she found it to be. She walks in with a routine of her own. First thing in the morning, she lights an agarbathi, our room smells better. Plants are then blessed with water. The curtains are opened to draw in light, naturally making us feel better. And her, infectious smile. You can’t help but genuinely smile even if you’re having a miserable morning.
She does this religiously. There was one day when she walked in, rushed over her routine, stepped out and never came back in. Unusual. I stepped out for a tea to find her sitting on the stairs. Something was wrong. I didn’t want to intrude her space nor pry on her personal matters. I texted asking if she was okay, and if she wanted to talk. She replied saying, you come after tea, we will talk.
She started the conversation with “This might seem stupid.” M’s friend’s mother had passed away. There was a period of time when she constantly checked in with her friend if she was doing okay and if she wanted help. The last time she checked in, her friend gave her the bad news.
M was guilty. M said we get entangled in our problems that we forget to check on our friends when M actually did check on her friends. Her tears sting me, I want to make it go away and allowing her to feel things the way it has to be felt is the only way to go about this. I held her and we sat in silence.
To me, nothing about this seemed stupid. Not her tears, nor her guilt.
I’ve seen G and R experience this as well. They want to give everything. Later that day, I thought about M and how her guilt was beautiful in such a profound way. In a world where people argue that they did enough, here was M, on a random Wednesday feeling guilty because she felt she couldn’t show up for someone when she actually did?
She is the kind of person who would show up in 20 mins because your father had a medical emergency, who would do everything in her power to make your silly dreams true, who would never judge you or fix you but listen intently, and be gentle with everyone even about trivial things. I hated that she felt this way because someone as considerate as M shouldn’t be feeling this way. But I also loved that she felt this way because it made her so human.
M’s guilt is valid. But I wish M and lesser women felt this. How should I tell her that she’s already enough, that she’s easily the greatest of friends you can cross paths with, that when life puts her in a place she leaves it better than how she found it to be.
She knows to just be there, in that moment, with you.
How should I tell her that’s all this world needs?
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What does a friend do when two of their friends have a fall?
They remind themselves that they are humans and are allowed to make mistakes. But more so, that both of them are their friend.
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My colleagues/friends have taught me to fail and be comfortable with it. They trust my ideas however lame it sounds, they hop in to see it take shape only because I believe in it. They take the seed of a concept and improvise it like their very own. There are several days I don’t want to move or feel motivated enough.
Just being around them, watching them persevere, unhinged, unafraid, makes me want to join them.
Makes me want to try.
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Some friendships I take for granted – it has been through every phase, every change, that mentioning it would be of no justice.
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V stayed on call three nights in a row because she feared sleepless nights would become a closer friend to me than she was.
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S wanted to make out. But he waited at 2 in the midnight for me to reach home safe before he could show up for the woman he loved the most.
The grandest of gestures. I will remember that night fondly.
To be his friend, is only my privilege.
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They would take turns to go through the same problem, allowing me to dismantle it piece by piece, walking me through it, taking the child in me home, time and time again.
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The reason I sat down to write this piece today is because a friend pointed out that I have not been writing at all.
I replied, “I don’t know what to write. There is nothing I feel or want to articulate.”
Write anything, literally, anything, but write, she said.
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Fuck everything, invest in friendships.