Life is a battlefield, depending on how we handle it… We can mismanage our struggles and end up alone in battle or we can take our time and rally for help to take on battles with a balanced party. Ultimately, how we rally an army is up to us.
I preface this with a dedication to two wonderful people: Psyche and Tonberry. They are fast friends, but they have opened their hearts to reciprocate me opening mine to them since I have met them almost a year ago. I am grateful for the threads of fate for bringing them into my life and I look forward to what the future will bring to our friendship.
My life as a child has been a tumultuous one with regards to friends. I concede that I am unique and my views can certainly polarize people. This sadly has lead to clashes that has caused me to lose friends as my quirks are not ones I wish to lose. They are my identity and I will not bow to others who wish to take what makes me unique for the sake of “friendship”. I have always held the romantic ideal that I love my friends as they are and that there has to be mutual reciprocation in the overall friendship.
With the years… I have seen friendships wither and die; live and flourish; or stagnate and languish. Some of the friendships that I have seen stagnate or die are either from a clash of values/ideals or from a person being too arrogant to take the first step to admit they are sorry with a follow-up of redoubling their effort to reconcile the friendship. It’s a bit sad on reflecting on the thought. The true shame is when a friend who hasn’t put in full effort into a friendship with me feels they deserve preferential treatment for some distorted reason… Honestly, it’s a situation that is pitiful and in some situations… it’s downright shameful. Friends in my book are judged on a merit system on how much I have invested to them with how much of a return I have received from them as well. If a friend has done their due diligence on meeting me on my input for the friendship and possibly exceeding my contribution… I will probably see them like family, because they have contributed to the friendship much like a family member would.
The common theme I see with lazy friends is that they seem to operate on some base need (calling on a favor, only being selectively available, etc) and at the same time knowing nearly nothing about me while making no effort to foster a relationship. They see friendship as something of a ethereal commodity that will always be there for them… Then when they find out that I don’t take too kindly to it and relegate them to the status of chopped offal… They cry foul because of some petty reason. Like recently, a “friend” of mine had told Psyche and Tonberry that they were upset they weren’t seen as family in my eyes where Psyche and Tonberry I recognize them like blood family… The irony was the fact that the lazy friend never really seemed to want to get to know me as a friend, only cared about when I was holding a game day gathering, and has (recently) shown herself to be a person with a poor temperament. The biggest irony was the fact that for making a big fuss about me not recognizing her like family was the fact that she hasn’t since reached out to attempt any sort of reconciliation. If her assumption is that I will “crawl” back to her graces… She’s horribly mistaken as I’d rather write a lazy friend off as a loss than do any sort of reconciliation.
In contrast, Psyche and Tonberry have done exactly the opposite… When I had met Psyche and Tonberry last year, it was a clear line of communications with them. They wanted to get to know me as a friend and I reciprocated the same fascination with getting to know them as people. In investing some of my energies, time, and material resources… They have reciprocated accordingly with the same or more intensity. I know one of the bigger surprises was when Psyche randomly sent me a birthday present of a Senran Kagura art illustrations book just because he wanted to and it was certainly a welcome surprise. The irony of this was the aforementioned lazy friend around my birthday gave me a poor natured response of “I don’t have anything to give you for your birthday because I have no idea of what you want and I’m also broke.” The thing is that I take slight issue with her rationale because she had overheard plenty of times a few friends at the game day events asking if they could either bring a birthday present late or hand-make something as a present (since they were broke) which I don’t care the cost or date… as long as the intent is there, that’s the most I care about. To really put a cherry on top of this irony was the fact that she had also been lazy on getting to know me otherwise she’d have been able to make a better gift giving assessment.
All in all… the past few months have been a watershed moment on who are my true friends are and who all is just coasting along to hitch a free ride. I am grateful for my friends and I am ashamed of any friends who are hiding in the shadows of my friendship… Those who are lazy and complacent will eventually be rooted out in due time.