Friendship

I’ve discussed my family and I’ve discussed my therapy journey and now I have a million and one other things to talk about. If you’ve read my other journals you’ll know I have a lot of trouble staying focused, so makes these journals a lot more difficult to stick to one point. But I’ll keep trying.

I think friendship is a really important aspect of a person’s life and I do believe in the notion that one person can make a difference. One true friend can be the factor that stops you from going through with that car crash, popping those pills or slitting your wrists. One genuine person can make a difference. Today I have three of those, but until I met them six months ago, I had no one.

Growing up as I mentioned before, I wasn’t a popular kid, in fact I was probably the class loser. I was very overweight, very self-conscious, shy, and for as long as I could remember hated every aspect of myself. So no matter what I did, I never felt comfortable. The combination of bad experiences with "friends" and my lack of self-confidence did not sit well with me. I constantly doubted the people that befriended me, always thought 'why would anyone want to be the friend of the fat ugly loser? Why would they want to associate themselves with me? And they must want something from me, but what?' To be quite frank, these feelings didn’t come from nowhere, they're there for a reason. The people I called friends seemed to make plans without me, talk crap about me, bully me at times and well I guess they seriously damaged me. I can remember several situations in which I made plans with two friends (who by the way I introduced to each other), call them when it’s time to head out and then one of the moms would tell me X left with Y to wherever they went and I’m left looking like an idiot in front of my parents because 5 minutes ago I was going out with these girls and now they're both out, together, without me…

It sucked as a 10 year old and it sucks as an adult too. It really sucks when this is the case throughout most of my life because you begin to believe, well if all these people who are not related to one another do the same thing and the only common denominator is me, then the problem has got to be me clearly! I’ve moved around a lot and I’ve made a lot of people I called friends at different stages. Until I was 15 it was X and Y. After that we moved and I had four people who I went to middle/high school with that I considered somewhat close, only to realize how untrue that is. Later in university I had one really close friend and her boyfirend. I considered her my first best friend, S. She's going to be popping a lot in my journals. We're still friends but we have a lot of issues these days. When I moved back from university to the Middle East, I thought I was going to be back with the group of fake friends from high school and I had a perception that everyone in the city had basically a similar shitty personality. Well not about how fake they are, because that I was right about. A few months in I had a huge fight with that group and now we only speak formally (happy bday, congrats, etc.) I was wrong about the part where I thiught I'd never make good friends here though. In the last six months I met the three people who I can honestly say are real friends. This doesn’t mean I don’t still have my insecurities, it doesn’t mean that I’m not terrified that all the shitty things that have happened in the past could happen again, but it does mean that I have seen them stand by me in the past few months more than anyone else and they have pushed me to get better and they've accepted me with all my issues and my crazy fucked up personality and still care about me. Something I haven’t felt before. I think what brings us all together is that we're all messed up in our own little way that we just accept one another, no questions asked. I think it's a rare thing.

S, who I had considered to be my best friend is someone who partially accepted me; however, I always felt like I needed to get her attention by asking/talking about something that affects her. The friendship, now that I look at it from a little bit of a distance, is much more giving her what she needs and being there for her, and not a two way relationship. I mean I literally spent months with her working on a paper instead of searching for a job that could have kept me in North America instead of being back in the Middle East right now. So basically I risked what I truly believed was the worst possible thing, so that she doesn’t fail out of school, because that’s how far I am willing to go for someone I really believed was my friend. She on the other hand, does not even pick up when I call 99% of the time, doesn't answer my texts until hours -sometimes days- later unless there’s something in it for her. There were a couple of times when I first moved back where I was having major panic attacks that I couldn't control on my own and I would text her because at that point I really need help! As a reference, I want to note that back then, only her and my GP in North America were the only two people who know I had anxiety and it really does take a great deal for me to go to someone for help when I have an attack, because I usually keep it to myself. I hide in the bathroom and wait it out by talking myself down. So messaging her was a big step for me. The pain came when she didn't responsd. It wasn't because she didn't see her phone, or because she was busy, or whatever, she just didn't feel like dealing with me. I wanted to test if my theory that she was ignoring me on purpose was true or if it was in my head and my insecurities, so after sending a text related to me, I wait 10-15 minutes then send another text asking about her… for example I’d say, have you finished XXX paper or how is the studying going… and majority of the time she IMMEDIATELY responded to the questions related to her! Now you may ask then why did I consider her such a close friend? For the first 2 or 3 years of our friendship, I never shared anything about my life with her, but she shared hers. I have a lot more walls and so my maximum level of sharing was I hated high school and I’m dating this guy and I had a fight with my dad. All vague, all not important issues to me personally. But a few years later, I decided to share with her that I cut, a little while later I started having nightmares about a past experience and would wake up screaming a certain name and so I shared with her that I was once assaulted, and also shared with her the level of depression I was in was quite bad. Though I told her those things, I never gave her a lot of detail - just the bare minimum because she didn't ask and I was afraid to tell. I always gave the minimum amount of details possible.

At some point during the time I began opening up to her my anxiety began. At first I hid it from her, but then I had one or two while she was there and she identified what it was because her sister had panic attacks as well. As with the case with a therapist, I was terrified of going to a doctor and telling them that I was depressed and that I had panic attacks. I took multiple appointments and cancelled them until one day she took me to the clinic, walked in with me and sat there with me and spoke with the doctor. She told him I was depressed, that I have panic attacks, that I was terrified of going and answered questions. I was there, couldn't speak for the most part. Embarassed partially. Greatful partially. Scared a lot. In the end, this allowed him to diagnose me and give me the right meds to control my anxiety and mood. This is the main reason I thought oh now this is a real friend. But sometimes, I feel like that may have been the only thing she’s done for me that didn’t have something in it for her.

So now looking at the friends I have, I think well real friends are supposed to be there for you when you need them. Why can’t you treat me the way I treat you? Or even give me 70% of what I give you? I would literally go to the end of the world for my friends, I’d drop everything to help them, but for some reason it seems that the people I befriend don’t usually care about me as much as I care about them. That is until I met my “squad” here. These three have pushed me to get better just so that I get better. If I need anything, I know that they’d be there by my side.

Mo took me horseback riding the other day, something I hadn’t done for about 10 years, but something that I had repetitively spoken about passionately and he wanted me to explore that passion again. Start practicing again. And I have to admit it was extraordinary. It felt beyond amazing. I felt happier than I had been in a really long time when I was riding. The three of them are always pushing me to believe in myself, support me when I hit my difficult points, and push me to believe in myself. And I think what they’ve done for me makes it more clear as to how my prior friendships were not as good as I had though they were. That friendship is not a one way thing, it should mean that I can be broken and a total mess and still be both accepted and supported regardless of how fucked up I am. They showed me real friendship and that is something I feel really blessed to have.