Nine (Friends)

Staring at the laptop screen at 4AM, as I listen to Telegu songs from my favourite movie on Spotify, I wonder why I don’t write so much anymore. I remember what I’d have said a few years ago: “Joy is not as bold a stroke on my heart as grief.” I shake my head with a smile. I was so naive.

The problem with being able to recognise emotional patterns faster than anyone else means that you become a trauma-dump at the convenience of the society. By the time I realised I needed boundaries, I’d given away the fences in donation (lol). Like an exploited garden that, without getting to choose who eats its fruits, only knows to produce fruits and die if it cannot, I suffered from the lack of care shown by the people who would never stop to consider what their constant trauma-dumping did with my mental health. I am glad I’ve established a few boundaries now (and cut out a few people). Y’all should know that if you consider me your friend, I hate you if I seem invincible to you. I have chinks in my armour I would never let those see who never reach out asking “Hey, how are you?” without a problem they need to cry about and get guidance from me. Sorry, but friendships are quid pro quo to me.

On the flip side, the profits of being able to recognise emotional patterns faster than anyone else are the friends I’ve made and stayed with through the past one-third of my life. I recognised what qualities I wanted in my friends, went after anyone who I assessed to have those qualities and shot them with the question, “Do you wanna be my friend? Are we friends?” pretty early in our acquaintanceship. A lot of them were taken aback but only one has refused till now (the person regretted it later on, but the train had taken off by then).

So, what about all those people I chased after and forced into a friendship with me made friends with?

They’re why I never have a dearth of people to turn to when dealing with intellectual anguish and emotional complexities. My friends are diverse, from sportspersons to artists, from writers to singers and dancers. One even crochets. (Haha, I really collected a wild set.)

I don’t believe in the natural progression of a friendship, the slow cruel method in which I’ve been let down a thousand times as a child. Why guess when I can be sure? Why invest time in someone who doesn’t see the same future as I do? I don’t ask for a forever, only a promise to put effort in appreciating whatever the friendship produces. Some friendships produce writing battles, some produce wholesome roasting, some produce museum visits, while some produce philosophy. There’s so much to be found in conversation with people you love that I don’t believe in loving anyone unworthy. Why not get the awesomest friends ever? After all, I’ve seen enough to know what works for the exact type of friends I need.

Drawing the circle back to where I started, this is just a thank-you post to my friends, I guess. In the end, I did not know why I didn’t write in joy because I had never experienced enough joy to crack the pattern. But you, my friends, you who support me through thick and thin, who always want to talk to me without any ulterior motives, who want to share with me fun from their own plate of conversations, laughter from their own showcase of memes, and tears from their own rainy days – you have made me understand it finally.

Why I don’t write in joy is because joy cannot be written out: it repels the creation of records just like the tastiest food makes you forget the will to take pictures as you scarf down the whole handi. The liveliest moments make you forget typing away at 4AM like the forever friend-simp I am, so much in love with life just because I have been blessed in emotional intelligence and in my pursuits of friendships. At the end, only the handi remains and a contentment which you can only feel in the nourishment of your bones, the lack of pain in your chest and hunger in your intestines, the soothing energy being filtered out through your ribcage to the outside.

(Just a little note: I get intense cheesy garlic bread cravings these days and I’m writing this through it like a hunger-warrior. I need a word of encouragement from all of my friends who read this in no other terms than “Hey, I ordered you cheesy garlic bread”.)

What separates loneliness from being alone is how wanted we’re made to feel. By “we”, I don’t mean our calculated actions that bring benefit the other party but our presence around them. Sadly, there has not been any invention yet to measure how fun we are objectively and we wake up daily only to pin our self-worth on strings that attach us to those we are in constant contact with. Being in the wrong environment has been the cause of self-destructive activities in many individuals (please read that with NatGeo channel narration). Thus, to y’all who don’t let me feel lonely anymore, I am grateful. I am grateful to luck that I found people like you, I am grateful to my emotional capabilities that I could recognise you, and I am grateful to your trust in me as you said “yes” to the weirdest question someone ever asked you. I am grateful for how fun y’all have been and how unconditionally you’ve always loved me.

My chats are a book of pinterest posts I keep sending to my friends with each friend a separate chapter on their own. I never before knew the joy of sharing what I felt with others because I never considered my joy worthy of another’s glance. But y’all changed that. You’ve made it possible for me to stand in the face of adversities, and handle being called out for enacting the same bullshit I personally adviced you against a minute ago.

My friends, you are a sentence each in the poem of my life. You are my saviour, my family, my place to lower my guards and exist in vacuum because it just doesn’t hurt anymore. It doesn’t hurt because your constant appreciation for who I am makes me feel worthy. I am one of those who had their hopes pinned on the strings that we shared between us, and you all painted the strings silver: just to denote how valuable our friendship is to you. Now each of you is a silver lining, and I have too many of those to be able to see a dark cloud more than once occasionally.

Thank you.