Friends? … May be or may be not!!

I have been thinking about this topic for more than six months now; and I have been working on it for more than five months now, but I hesitated to write it over and over again, maybe because I didn’t want to admit it, but now, it’s about time!

What is a friend? Is he/she just a companion, just a colleague or a co-worker? Or is he/she just a person that you trust? Or a person that maybe you haven’t met personally before, but you yet trust? Or is he/she a person that turns you into the story that amuses him/her during the day? Or is a person who lies to you, uses you, hates you, and disrespects you without you even knowing that? Some of the answers to these questions might be yes and might be no, but the questions would never end though… 

Our beloved prophet Muhammad (Peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, “A man adopts a way of life according to that of his friend, so one should be careful about whom he chooses to be friends with”; which indicates the importance of friends in life, and how careful we must be while choosing them, and how a friend can affect you, we also know the famous saying that states: “The friend in need, is a friend indeed” and etc. we have all been taught these sayings while we were still kids at school, have been taught loads of lessons that state and affirm the critical position of friendship in our lives, but till now we still don’t know the true meaning of friendship, and we still don’t quite get how to be a good friend in this society…unfortunately and specifically in my life!!

Do you have any friends?  Do you have any good friends? Or do you have any best friends? Or let me rephrase that last question; do you have any loyal, best, who make you happy all the time sort of friends? If you do, well, thank your god; because that seems to be a hell of an issue in our society, and of course in my life this is not an exception!!

I have once heard a sentence in an American movie saying: “women hate their friends”, at that time that sentence was very odd to me; I was wondering how could that be? Is that even possible? Can a woman really hate her friends? And why would that be? But now, huh, tell me about it...

Oh Allah, when to begin with? Let me think...hmm, oh, I remember, since kinder garden; last day of the school year, my school was holding a party for kids, and teachers asked us girls to wear white gowns for that party, so mama had me all set up and ready for my first school party ever and I went to school, imagine how much my happiness and excitement would be, anyways when daddy, may Allah mercies his soul, dropped me at school, and I entered my classroom, sat next to my “best friend”, she looked down at me, stood up and walked away!! At that time, my heart was too small to be hurt, but it was anyway, and I couldn’t really understand the “mentality of girls”.

During preparatory school, kids were always teasing me by pronouncing my name incorrectly, as for my “girlfriends”, some of them were good, some of them were mean, and other were unbearable, they are probably the friends who lasted in my life for the longest time, until the last day of high school, two of them decided to turn up against me; they all went out on an outing together, but I didn’t go out with them, I can’t really remember why, but never mind, after that, I had a phone call from “M” telling me: “why did you do such a thing?! I can’t believe you did that!!” “What did I do? I am home, remember?!! I wasn’t even with you guys!!” I asked muddily-headed, the next thing is she telling me that I made up a story to make those two girls hate each other, and that’s why both of them were treating each other badly for our whole high school senior year, as if they were innocent and I suddenly was the bad guy that made them hate each other!!!! So I told “M”: you know me “M”, how could you believe those lies, I didn’t do that, I don’t even know how could I do that, she replied: “I know you, that’s why I called you, but anyways don’t do such a thing again, that’s wrong.” So I hung up the phone, burst into tears, even more muddily-headed. After calling the other two girls, one of them didn’t even pick up, and the other one said the same lies, telling me that I made them hate each other, and the “poor” girls didn’t even know that, so I hung up and burst into tears again, stood up all night thinking, again and again crying, telling myself I didn’t do anything, I didn’t say anything, remembering how each one of them both hated each other and talked badly behind the other girl’s back, and how I was trying to get them back together, but each one of them refused and continued to talk badly about the other one, and finally when they decided to get back together as friends, they made me the “bad guy”!!!!!!! As the sun was rising I learned a harsh lesson; which was: Don’t trust your “friends”, as hurtful as that might be, but IT IS unfortunately. After two years, I went to a reunion they had held, and believe it or not, both of these two girls started talking behind the other one’s back again!!

During college, at the beginning, I was a bit in-communicative; couldn’t really trust again, had locked my heart and thrown the keys away; disappointed with my “friends”; couldn’t let go of that actually, until, I got closer to two of my school friends that had become my colleagues, and we spent every minute with each other, after the first semester, we weren’t friends anymore, or at least close friends, because each one of us had her own perspective in life, and we couldn’t find a common point.

After that, I returned back into my shell again, thinking maybe I am one of those who will be a “friendless” person in life, maybe I am meant to be alone, and also maybe I haven’t meet the right friends yet. 

In college, we meet a lot of people, some stay friends for a long time, some stay for a life time, and some stay for a long time with intentions that won’t show for years, some go after a while, some go and stay at the same time, some we fall in love with, some fall in love with you, and some use you, some you wish you never met, some make you cry every night, and some make you happy all day long, and while I remember all of that, a new little piece of my soul fades away or makes me over the moon.

All of that was a bit normal, maybe!! Especially when I compare this to the “Bullies” in US or any other country, that severe phenomenon that made a lot of kids hate school, psychologically challenged, or even suicide!! So, we have two parties involved in that phenomena; “the victim” and “the bully”, and as much as I would love to put all of the blame on the bully’s shoulder, but I can’t just do so, because the victim won’t be a victim with only the bully bullies him/her; though the victim him/herself have to accept the idea of being a helpless victim to be one. Anyways, back to my so called “friends”.

After that I had a great friend, she was funny, humorous, beautiful, smart, she made me strong, and supported me all the way through, until, one day something happened, and that day was after three wonderful years of my life with her, but anyways, I can’t say what happened, so let’s just skip her…

Let’s move on now to a new lesson that my society is trying viciously and vigorously to teach me, which is: “let’s be friends until I get married or engaged!!” as funny as this may sound, but it’s true, here, in my society, to be more specific, in my community.

Egyptian girls have an odd mentality, I can’t really get it, and I am proud of that, always wishing for never getting it, because if I did, that will mean that I’ve become like them, and I will never ever be like them. That mentality, briefly is, a girl meets some great people, calls them “best friends”, hangs out and go shopping with them, and all of the normal stuff that any girl would ever do with her best friends, until that moment; when she gets engaged or married, she simply “changes”!! like they see you as a temporary period during their lives; when they find something better, they simply move on, but not even graciously, but they make you hate your life and yourself first, hate friendship and fiends secondly, third of all, make you lose hope that you will never ever have friends again, and last but not least, hurt you deeply, and leave a “wounded scar” in your heart that won’t ever heal by time!! Those engaged or married young ladies act like if they were the only girls engaged or married ever on this planet, she suddenly feels special for being picked out of the “market”, and I am deeply sorry for this metaphor; but I can’t help it, treats her friends like shit, suddenly she doesn’t have time for them anymore, and on top of that, when you once misses the old times and tell her that you need to have a talk with her about anything and that you miss her, she simply laughs in a “bloodless, soulless Dracula way”, who has sucked your soul and now ready to move on!!!!!!!!!!!!

Any girl would have a girly conversation with her “girlfriend” about a guy that she has a crush on; or a guy that she finds cute or whatever from that girly nonsense. The funny thing would be if you are the one who is living all of that and you are the narrator that would be perfectly fine; because you are the one who has been turned into the story of the day or your life has been turned into the topic of these dull days that amuses them, but when the day comes when you don’t have a “story” anymore, things change!! And they refuse to even share their lives with you, you are now useless, not interesting to them, they refuse to be the story of the day, which they have made you become into for a long time, while you were unconsciously trusting them and letting them know what is going on with your life!!

Once I was in a night gowns’ shop, and there was a bride to be buying her wedding dress, accompanied by all of her girlfriends, her mom and her sister, and they were living the joy of their lives at that moment, while, I was about to cry, because whenever I imagined my friends since I was young, I used to imagine the same situation, where I am with my best friend who is a bride to be choosing with her the gown that she would wear on her perfect day, or I am the bride to be choosing the dress to wear on my perfect day!! Though, that wasn’t the case, and that was despite of having been told that we will be together in each step of the way!! But I guess, our friendship's age has to be older than others to be the one who is picked out to accompany the bride to be, not older in age, but older in the friend’s list!! Apparently, friendship is now estimated by the years of it, not by the value of the friends themselves, and believe me when I tell you that I’ve been there for years myself; but as I said you have to be older, and maybe because you haven’t been considered as a close friend in the first place, we can say that you were just a phase or a person who I can be friends with in a certain place or time or field!! If you want to hear the proof; well, let me state the exact words which I was told: “she is my friend for a long time, and you are my friend too!!” with a slight deviation of voice and tune of speaking during saying the last phrase, that anyone who has read a book in psychology knows what I mean by referring to that. Damn….what a bunch of nice people indeed, one should be grateful for that!!

One day, I was having a real conversation with a true friend indeed about this topic, and she mentioned to me that she and her cousin were close friends since their childhood, can you imagine to be sharing your past, present and future with a person and not being honest with them, well, not really, those people can quite figure out how to crush these memories, so that cousin’s wedding was about a week later, and my friend didn’t even know except for a couple of days before the wedding, as far as I can remember!!!

Another time, I read on a face book page a status saying: “we salute every girl who wouldn’t change after getting engaged or married”, so I immediately said what!!!!!!!! That wasn’t only in my life, that is actually happening in other girls’ lives too, oh my goodness, what a bunch of true friends indeed that we are dealing with in “our” world!!!

What would you do if a friend tells you about her fiancé to be, though you both are not close friends?  ___  Well, I listened to her with every bit of attention that I can offer, listening to what she says about him, any problem they are encountering, who should she get some useful pieces of advice from, and she even invited me over to meet the guy and get to know him, pretty close friend, huh? Well, not so much! A couple of months later, I got a Facebook notification: “(A) was engaged, say congratulations to her.” OH MY GOSH, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL WORLD!!  WHAT A BEAUTIFUL WORLD INDEED!!!! She didn’t even tell me personally, and when I asked her, imagine what the answer would be; “I had no internet access and I was getting my phone fixed, and everything was in a hurry, so I couldn’t tell you.” And my reply was: “I thought we were close friends, anyways, whatever, congrats!!”

If only people would drop the act, my life would be so much easier, if only!

On the other hand of that miserable friendship life, when my girl "S" got engaged and even longer before that too, I was the first to know, she actually told me, oh my god, I am not insane, I am normal, why? Because there are pretty normal people like me in this life, they talk about their relationships with their close friends!!!!!!! I wasn’t actually asking for some friends from planet mars, oh my god I can’t believe it though! And boom another girl I found, she is from planet “normal” too, but she is not my close friend though, how would I know then?!! After she got married, every single time she meets with her girlfriends, she posts a picture of them together to her Facebook wall, saying what a wonderful outing, I love you girls. OH MY GOSH, a girl who actually meets her girlfriends after marriage, and when she was celebrating her first anniversary, and when she got pregnant, etc. OMG, I must be hallucinating!! Actually, I am not, that was true!! 

Enough with my “girlfriends”, let’s talk about my “guy friends”, to be true, they weren’t as much of a disappointment as the girls, and normally, I go along with them just fine! They respect, trust, listen to me, talk to me about their problems, they take my advice, they talk about their personal lives and relationships with me, I am like their sister, or their “buddy” and I am so happy with that, and they are like my big brothers too, see! The relationship is equal; no one is taking advantage of the other. Let me see, I have three guy friends, they were four until this week I lost one of them, two of them I consider close friends, and at some points of my life, one of those two was actually my closest friend and my only one.  

The great thing about guy friends is that they are not obsessed with “envy”; you never hear a guy says: “oh my god, this guy is envying me!! Totally”; they respect a smart girl, even if they pretend they don’t; they are protective; they are like a rock; you can depend on them; they don’t talk too much, one look to a guy’s face and you can know what is going on in his mind; this one is definitely different from girls, because girls can make you wanna jump over a cliff and kill yourself, rather than telling you what is going on in their minds; they tell you what is going on inside men’s heads; e.g. if you are having a crush on some guy, etc. The bottom line is guy friends are awesome. I think through all of these years of my miserable friendship life, I have gone along with guy friends better than girlfriends, because I am not like the majority of girls, I am not saying I am better than them, god forbids NO, all I am saying is that I get guys and guys get me, we find friendship a lot easier and simpler than most girls do, friendships simply is: “lasts forever, loyalty, comfort, companionship, relying on each other, even if you are not within the same country, giving unconditionally, always protecting each other, even from one self’s crazy ideas that could destroy your future”. It is really common to see a guy, who only has one or two guy friends throughout his entire life, yet they are pretty damn close; while you can see a girl who has a bunch of girlfriends who happen to be not so close after all, and it is so unlikely to see her with only one or two girlfriends who are sincerely true to one another; yet girls commonly prefer to have a bunch of girls around her as a proof of her success in her relationships! Pretty odd, huh?! Told you! You see guys how they deal with their friends, one second they are fighting like enemies, and the second after they become best friend again, with NO grudge in their hearts, while girls rather secretly fight with words for a whole year, than having a five-minute open-minded, open-hearted talk that clears every grudge away!!

Maybe I see things that bad because of what I have been through, you guys saw it through that six-paged article, and maybe things aren’t such bad after all, may be or maybe not! But on the other hand, Friendship is not something you learn in school, and if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship yet, you really haven't learned anything. If you have a good friend never ever let him/her go, good friends are hard to find, because you will regret it sooner or later sir/my lady; when you are in your 60s and yet you have no one to talk to, and you feel lonely, sad and bitter, because you didn’t invest well in your friendship, there is nothing much harder than trying to get your friend back, when it is already too late, and he or she had already left!!

 One of my friends and I have promised one another that we won’t let go of each other, no matter what, and even if -during our fights- we cancel that promise over and over again, we can’t really stand to be away from each other, and we won’t; another one of my friends, when we fight, we fight vigorously, and yet without even having a “talk”, we ask each other: “when will I see you?” and never look back, and that is our reconciliation, and sometimes that happens after one day apart from our fight, believe it or not, she is a girl, see?! Normal girls can be found; you just have to look harder!

 Just look harder for good friends and imagine them in their 60s and you along on their side. You have to work hard to keep them for a life time, don’t you ever dare take them for granted, ignore them, hurt them, or make them cry, if a friend doesn’t make his or her friend happy and comfortable, then why the hell is he or she still here for?! Please take the next exit and go out of your friend’s life and make some space for a better friend to fill in your shoes. Because good friends, better friends, best friends are yet to be found.

                                                          Friday, 22 November, 2013, 08: 13 pm.