Surviving Friendships
I notice my alarm go off at 6:30. I reluctantly, reach out for my phone to snooze the sound knocking my brain awake. My eyes resist the light of my touchscreen, My brain notices that I have a message form a half-friend of mine. He has sent a piece for me to read. It is 17 pages long.
Half-friend is a term I borrowed from Khalil Gibran's poetry. Half-friends refer to friendships that only survive under optimal conditions of time, space and emotional convenience. Due to my many re-locations across the globe: Bangkok, Dubai, India, London and now Philly, I've accumulated friends across time-zones. I've also accumulated some half-friends as well.
My cat hearing my quiet tussle with my comforter, has crawled into my bed. Her majesty, demands food. I am half-tempted to not read the 17 pager and play with her majesty, Mrs. Whisker-son (I think its a perfectly clever name for a cat). My brain, not fully awake, I notice is setting stage for a debate. This half-friend's writing in the past have elicited emotional discomfort in me. My brain starts the debate with, "Do we want to start our day with emotional discomfort of another or the emotional discomfort of our very own daily existence?" After a poorly held debate, by a barely functioning pre-frontal lobe, we choose discomfort caused by another! My cat has now started pawing into my comforter in an attempt to get me to feed her, instead of staring at the strange device.
I start my read, 30 mins in, I notice I am moved. I am moved by anger.
Anger fascinates me. Not the over-reactive, burn the place down anger. But the anger that is quiet, calm and dare I say, wise? The anger that moves the person to a state of calm, reflection and eventual, insight.
My half-friend, I notice as the day begins and ends, is someone whose friendship I have outgrown. There is this thing I am learning about friendships that only survive under the optimal conditions of space, time and emotional convenience, they almost never survive the test of time. The grief that follows the realization, is an awareness of an opportunity lost.
Today, I am learning to bear that loss with grace.
Penned by Noor Begum
