Annyeong1
I should have written this four days ago but my problem is that I'm perpetually waiting for something interesting to happen. It is a weird kind of newsworthiness. An instinctive knowing of what will cut it and what won't.
Let us conveniently ignore the fact that I exist between my bed, faculty of law and burnout. There's nothing remotely interesting about chasing deadlines but allow me my delusions.
Right now, I should be in two other docs either doing a job or doing research for another thing. Did I over load myself again? Yes but that's a story for another day. All you need to know is that I'm as disoriented as a newborn kangaroo and I have horrible time management skills.
Will I die or will all the things I'm simultaneously doing kill me? Stay tuned!
I came with a bitter pill and a half today. I stole an idea I really liked and it is with great joy that I'm looking forward to using it to remove the stick in your eye. I'm here with more problems and probably no advice.
A few days ago, I took a nap from hell (I slept without electricity in this heat) and I woke up thinking that I really had migrated to hell because of all the ruckus I woke up to. It didn't help that it was dark outside.
I was having a heat stroke but I thought I'd died and gone to hell. The demons arguing about where to put me were really just my friends in a heated argument about friendship or more accurately, what it should be.
There are two sides to this argument. Tinu's side and Inya's side.
According to Tinu;
We don't often start out with reasons to be friends with people. I could make friends with a girl I met on the bus because I saw a Jon Bellion sticker on the back of her phone.
All I need to know to be friends with her is that her name is Ewa and she loves Jon Bellion. As much as this sounds like blasphemy, sometimes talking about ‘all time low’ gets old. The excitement gets old.
Next I find out Ewa likes books. Then we talk about books until Ewa gets angry about noodles one day and I learn she has a half brother and only one kidney.
Next thing, we're four years in and through a third heartbreak. We're two years away from getting a degree and all Ewa wants to talk about is how to carpool money to buy new wigs.
But it gets old and nothing is working again. When we fight, we have nothing but all the years we've spent together to hold us together. Time is not enough glue to hold a friendship together.
We have no plans to do better. All we have are years of conversations about terrible taste in men, pop culture and good times. I'm itchy because Ewa is fine with standing on a spot and watching the world pass her by but I want to reach places that are too tall for my hands to reach.
Sooner or later, my patience will run thin and Ewa will get tired of my pace. Someone will become bitter and we will disintegrate like fine dust because Ewa doesn't want the risk that comes with moving and I'm too headstrong to stand still but too frail to carry her weight.
Friendship needs more than vibes to weather years. Sometimes love is not enough and walking together is the glue that cements the friendship.
Your friends are powerful. How high you can reach sometimes depends on how far your friends are willing to pull you up.
Without the glue, there will be cracks in the walls and space for dying things to crawl through, rot and stink up the walls.
According to Inya;
The girl on the bus with the Jon Bellion sticker behind her phone and headphones in her ears should remain the girl on the bus if she's perfectly content with staying there.
She has no desire to move and it would be incredibly callous of me to try to pry open the fingers holding on to the seat in front of us. She is under no obligation to walk with me and I should be ready to deal with the resentment if I push her far more than the bounds of her love will allow.
I should leave her on the bus and walk alone to wherever I want to with the comfort that there will always be a girl on the bus listening to Jon Bellion ready to go halfsies with me if I want a new red wig.
If I want people to walk with me, I should go where people that walk can be found.
And then there's the halfway
There’s a meeting point between Inya and Tinu. Friends are not clothes to be organized in underwear drawers. ‘For church’, ‘For class’, ‘For a good time’ but at the same time, friends you're afraid to share your journey of growth with are not friends you should keep.
But again, not all of us are lucky enough to find people to laugh with in the same set of people we work with and not all of us have enough discipline to not take love for granted in working situations. If you're one of the few that have found growth partners in your life along with the people you party with, keep them.
If you're uncomfortable with people who like to sway on a spot, leave them alone. Don't try to make people what they aren't. If you're afraid your growth comes across as obnoxious, you really should leave rather than hide it from the girl on the bus. She deserves more.
Friendships are like blankets or underwear (yikes. Bad analogy. Scratch that one out), they should be comfortable, warm and they should grow with you. They should be like branches connected to a tree but growing in different directions, not tangled and twisted at the base of the tree in a clumpy mess.
You should keep friends you love enough to carry placards for on election day and friends that love you enough to do same for you.
Love/hate,
Gbemi
Hi in Korean
This is so true, thank you for this Gbemi❤