We Do Not Throw People Away
I must confess, I wanted to break up with a friend. A really good friend of mine. As I think more and more about my finite life, I feel less desire to hold on to things that do not appear to serve me the way I would like. This time it was a friendship.
This friendship felt like a burden where I am constantly confused at the lack of happiness in someone who has such great potential. My frustration with their lack of drive led me to weigh a decision to let them go. I have been listening to a lot of podcasts about the self care aspect of being selfish. However, I recall a moment not so recently where I felt that I was on a chopping board.
A friend of mine felt that my space of suffering wrapped in studies, work, poor diet, and a roughly budding relationship did not match theirs. This was tossed back to me as an imbalance of energies which lead me to put the relationship on pause for a couple of months to reassess and hold responsibility for my affect and actions.
Fast forward to January 2019, I was considering doing the same thing but more drastically. Being dumped by a friend is possibly one of the worst type of rejection. With a romantic partner, the reason behind a break up is more obvious and understandable. The love may not be between the two individuals as it once was or there may have been infidelity. When a friendship ends in the way of “I don’t want to your friendship anymore” , it may leave someone feeling like an old tuna salad. It has lots of fatty acids that can help but it reeks and is unwanted.
People are not tuna salads. They are human and deserve respect and open communication. Since then, I have decided to be open in communication with all of my friends. Unapologetically. Oftentimes, “sparing someone’s feelings” does them not good at all. Censorship can be done at their detriment.
Before tossing people aside, show humility and humanity, consider if you have enabled them. Holding back from moments when you wanted to say, “Get real” or “Maybe you are the problem” is not being a supportive friend. It is enabling and not expressing love the best way to your friends. Yes there is a fine line of telling them what to do and being genuine in offering genuine unsolicited opinion.
The goal is too try before you trash.
