If asked, most people would tell you that their friends are one of the most important parts of their lives. If you asked me, I would say the exact same thing. Having people in your life that are willing to support you, stand by you and love you is important, but friends are more than that. They are the ones that see you more clearly than perhaps any other. Your family, your parents and siblings they see as they’ve always seen you but with friends, you learn a whole new side to yourself. You bond with others who are equal to you; you bond over music, movies, books and everything else you can’t discuss with your family. Your friends are the people who see the raw, real, crazy side of you and that is why everyone should have friends.
While most people say they have a friendship like Chandler and Joey from Friends or Jon and Samwell from Game of Thrones, there are certain times when having friends is not the vigorous bond that most are lucky to experience. See, there are sometimes when a young person trying to fit in, trying to make friends ends up befriending those who are not the right fit in their lives. Like everything else in the world, friendship does have a flip side, a darker corner that is hardly ever spoken of. While Friendship Day is an occasion to celebrate the intricate beauty of companionship, I believe it’s also important to talk about friendships gone bitter, the crush of peer pressure and how it’s not always easy to say no to a friend.
Let’s take a trip all the way to the 2000s, the peak of teen movies. There were simply so many: Step up; Mean Girls, Wild Child, the Princess Diaries. There were dozens and dozens more, and they usually all had one element in common: a pair of friends who drifted apart and then spent the entire movie hating and competing with each other. Although these movies fall into the category of fiction, friends falling apart are all too real. I have this friend who told me a story of his best friend he met in kindergarten. Let’s call him Dev, and his best friend Arjun. They met when they were around four years old and until High school, they were close as brothers. But when High School began, Arjun seemed to drift away from Dev. Dev tried to hold the friendship together, but Arjun wanted to reinvent himself and that included snipping away a few friendships. And so Dev and Arjun both lost someone that had been a brother to them. To this day, they still haven’t spoken and they hold a sort of bitterness toward each other. Losing someone who you still see every day is one of the worst pains a person can feel because losing a friend is like losing a piece of yourself.
Then there come the times when you befriend people who are not the kind of people you need in your life. People, especially young people, have a hunger and desire to fit into society, into the world. That means people will want to make friends at all costs. But sometimes, young people are coerced into doing things they perhaps don’t want to do and it’s difficult to say no to a friend. When you want to fit in when you don’t want to be left out, when you don’t want to be alone, you will do anything to keep your friends by your side, even if it means doing things you’d rather not do.
Having friends is a happy privilege that every person should have. There are little few things in this world to be prized more than true friendship, but not everyone finds true friendship and that should be normalized. It’s alright to say no to your friend. It’s okay to let go of those friends who may not be right for. A real friend is the one who understands your tears and does not cause them.
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