Filed under: General
There are times in your life as a friend when you don’t know quite what to do, or say, to try and comfort those around who you hold most dear. You know that whatever has happened to them, at that moment, feels like the end of the world - although it isn’t - and that they are sure they will never recover from the shock of it all. You know, however, that they will pull through. You know this because you always have and you’ve become stronger in the process. Just at that moment of deepest despair, however, you do whatever it is that you think will somehow paper over the cracks and allow your friend to take the next step.
Of course, you don’t always get it right. Sometimes you buy the drinks, when what someone really wanted was an arm around the shoulder or a kind word of encouragement. Sometimes you tell them what you really think, when just at that moment they needed you to be silent and morn with them for whatever they had lost, whether it’s a person they’ve loved or a loss of innocence in the chaotic world around them. Sometimes you say nothing in the hope that this will help - and it causes them more pain they you could ever have imagined. At the worst times, your best intentions lose you people you love, never to be reclaimed and causing you the heartache you tried to save them from.
Sometimes, you don’t know if you’ve got it right and probably never will. In a way, the fact that you still have the person around as a friend is testament to the fact that, buying the food and making sure they got out, is what was needed, with them never conceding that you’ve pulled them through. The day when you are no longer needed - and the food has arrived in the cupboard without you putting it there - is the time to walk away and resurface as their friend rather than their crutch, enjoying the smile that broadens across their face as they tell you - as if you didn’t already know - that they are back from the darkest of places.
The fact, with some, that you know from a flicker across their face or a stilted half conversation that all is not well, whether they want to tell you about it or not, and that you follow this with an arm around the shoulder, a pat on the back or even a brush of the hand, is enough. They will come back when they’re ready and then you can try to be the friend they deserve. The friend they have, at sometime, been to you. The shoulder, the ear, the body to hold against theirs.
On occasion, we don’t really listen to those around us. Don’t hear what they are trying to say - or convey with their silences. Sometimes we don’t truly allow them the room to speak, the time that is needed for them to sort through their emotions and lay bare what is troubling their souls. This is the moment that a deep friendship is made or broken. The moment when, without any intention, that bond can be shattered or never fully formed. At these times, it is only the bravest of people who will try again, knowing that, if they can just succeed, the rewards will be a friend for life.
When you need someone to be that friend but don’t know where to turn, the sense of lonliness can be soul destroying. You know that, with the wrong person, a shared experience or emotion that they cannot understand can never be taken back and you can lose their true friendship. This only has to happen to you once and you become forever more cautious in what you feel able to say and to whom. New friendships are rare, but those we have had for years often become cluttered with unexplained motives and undiscussed feelings of loss.
Although I have been fortunate in my life to have some of the truest friends, most are still labelled with my own sumations of their ability to understand. Whether my estimations of their abilities are fact or fiction, I have done this to them without recourse to any further discussion, unless they initiate it.
As time has passed, only one person has ever done this - and our friendship is now maturing into something I never thought it would be - something I never thought either of us capable of sharing with the other. There are still hurdles to cross, but nonetheless, I firmly believe we will get to a place where we can provide a level of support we have both missed, but both desperately need. This, at a time, when a shoulder, an ear, and a body to hold may be more necessary than it has been in some considerable time for me, in particular.
If I have learned nothing more in life than one thing, it is this. Friendship is something that you have to work on and never take for granted. It is something that can only live if it is nurtured and tended by the people who love it. Take away that love and it will wither, and finally die. In death, not only will it affect the people who have starved it of the attention it deserved, but it will also impact on others, whose friendships may, likewise, not be strong enough to survive. If nothing else, a friend is someone who deserves a call out of the blue to ask them if they are well, a hand around the shoulder to tell them you are there or a long embrace to tell them you will never leave.