The Bonds Between People; How They Can Strengthen & Shatter

Howdy ladies and gents, time for another personal and opinion-based blog post. Now friendship is a big deal to me, I consider it to be just as important if not more so than family. For those who have read this blog for at least 2 years you’ll know what I’m talking about. So today I just wanted to talk about the connection between friends and how it can be strong or fall apart.

Friendship (When It Works)

There’s no secret to a successful friendship, all you need is the following things: love, trust and commitment. If you have those 3 things you’ve got a friend for life.

For me, my friends are my lifeblood and even though I only have a handful that I adore to the highest degree, I love them all. I have made many friends over the course of my young life, ranging from old school friends to recent work colleagues. Now while I can be a bit lazy and overly emotional, at the same time most people tell me I’m great friend material.

Besides a few school friends, most of my best and most trusted friends I met when I was in college and university. It was in higher education where I met some of the most beautiful and amazing people ever and I consider them to be my family. These are people I have known between 3-20 years, and can spend endless hours with and they just kick ass. When you have people like that life is always good.

Friendship (When It Fails)

But then there are the times when things don’t work out, when the friendship tank runs out for whatever reason. Whether you grow apart or fall out, when It happens it’s never a good thing, well sometimes.

For me, most of my friends that I’ve lost has been down to growing apart after leaving school which sucked, and while I tried to keep in contact, some of these people just never hollered back. Now I hate to lose friends and it is only recent years I’ve learnt to let go of certain people. And in some cases it is actually good to let go, sometimes people who you call your friends actually can actually mess with you mentally. Some ‘friends’ can stress you out because they don’t keep in contact or choose not to, some will even go as far as to say that you’re the bad friend when clearly it is the other way round. That shit I cannot stand.

This year I had another loss in my friend circle, basically I’ve known said person for nearly 4 years and I considered us to be tight as hell. However due to a questionable conversation a few months ago, we never spoke after and now I don’t know what we are. I would like us to be friends again, but I assume they want nothing to do with me. While I understand why we are where we are, at the same time I don’t. It is not like I haven’t tried, the problem has been one of financial and distance-related issues. Plus it is hard to commute to Sheffield to London on a continuous basis especially during university time. And to say that I’m a bad friend and that I wasn’t putting any effort into is just unfair and totally bullshit. This could have easily been sorted out with a civil conversation, but alas I feel like things may be beyond that stage now.

It really is lame when someone you thought you’d be tight with forever ends up cutting contact after a short time. But when it comes to the loss of a friend I always think of the song “Drifting Apart” by Alien Ant Farm as  that song’s lyrics have always stuck with me and helped me to accept things beyond my control.

In the end friendship is great thing and all people deserve it, however sometimes it cannot always be sustained. It just depends on how much how much effort people are willing to put in.