2. Honest - I guess this goes hand in hand with being trustworthy, in that a dishonest person is never trustworthy but an honest one might be. Hmmmm...let's take a moment to ponder...A honest person can be untrustworthy??? Oh yes!! For instance I could tell you something which I would rather you didn't share but not put that stipulation on you (because I am assuming you have the common sense to know that I do not want you telling Sarah that I think her boyfriend is an ass even though he is ). When I later ask if it was you who told Sarah my view and you tell me yes then you're honest but cannot keep my business to yourself. Now before people get up in arms, I will happily say I have friends in this category. I prefer the honesty about an inability to keep your mouth shut to the staring deep into my eyes to tell me you would never do such a thing when you have. I have evidence on tape.
3. Available - Now call me needy, self-absorbed, whatever, but if you are supposed to be my friend then when I am rushed to hospital/lost my cat/broke up with my boyfriend/bored or otherwise need you, you don't just become unavailable. Hold on a sec, I'm not a brat, you have a life, I have a life and we both need to live them but the girl who never makes it out to my birthday, never come to see me in hospital and refused to hold my hand when my cat died is NOT my friend. Busy is understandable, permanently unavailable is not.
4. Supportive - Again ties in with emotional availability, I have friends who have been in different continents who have supported me through life better than those who live up the road and round the corner. Being supportive is knowing I have exams sending me an encouraging text and promising to see me for post-exams tears/drinks. The unsupportive friend demands that I come out to the rave her ex-boyfriend's, younger sister's, bestfriend's boyfriend is throwing and saying that failure to attend means the end of our friendship.
5. Brutal - Now that sounds plain wrong! But if my supposed best mate is sleeping with my man, my uncle is hitting on you or you know why my lecturer keeps failing me because my work sucks you must tell me. It's imperative and very, very scary but it has to be done. The people who have kindly and tactful told me the painful brutal truth are people who mean the world to me. Better put, the people who have withheld this kind of information are generally considered scum of the earth material.
Now do I fit these categories? True question, am I? I mean I want to be the model friend and I'd like to tell you that I am. But honestly, I don't believe that to be the case at all. I do fail at each of the stages I am afraid to say but to all myb firneds out there, old and new, I pray that I can work on this part of myself and become the best friend I can be.
Love you all,
Nsoromma...Child of the Heavens xXx
2 comments:
I feel you on each and every one of these points. I hate it when a friend tells another friend my "news". I don't share the same info with all my friends so I don't appreciate it when the decision is made for me. I don't think anybody's perfect though and I think we'd all do well to try to follow these as much as we can.
But sometimes I feel it's all a little 'fake' should I say? In that the human 'condition is undoubtedly flawed and we expect so leeway for our flaws so is it a lot to expect your friends to stick rigidly to these 5 things?
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