People do not want friends
Who has a best friend? Because I do, I have known her since kindergarten and we have learned to grow with each other.
But the more people I meet the more I realise people don’t want more friends or people around them.
Everything comes from a personal experience. I started my first year of university where I met 4 people, whom I considered friends, others who I talked to more, but I treated all of them equally. I was thoughtful, helped extra when needed in group research, I worked for that group of friends to work. But then something happened, tension between people started to rise, and problems were our new narrative.
I can remember picture clear the moment where I sat people down to talk, like adults would, and the words of a girl in the group hit me like ice cold water: “We are not friends, we are just classmates”.
Of course I felt hurt, most of the people there felt hurt, we considered each other friends, made time out of our schedules to go for lunch together, stayed up late in calls to finish projects, but now out of the sudden, we weren’t friends?.
That quote haunted me for a while, but tried to forget it, the same girl lost her grand parents during the year and I send her all of my notes from class, little gifts, anything to make her feel better, another girl in the group was being mistreated by her toxic boyfriend and I invited her to stay with me for a while, another girl in the group had three jobs at the same time to pay for her studies…And I helped them, I tried to be there for them because even after the problems I considered my friends.
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Suddenly one day, I was the problem, and the whispers behind my back started, the sensation made me feel nauseous like I was not in university but still in high school.
I was forced to talk things out, where in their eyes I was the villain, I was the one who made them feel stupid by sending them my notes, I was the one that overwhelmed them with attention when something bad happened, and a lot more hurtful things were said.
I froze, I mostly could not answer just listen to this people whom I helped, tear me and my world apart, when the quote repeated in my mind “We are not friend we are just classmates”, but since that day, the quote changed for me, it was in fact “We are not friends”.
The problem seemed to go away while time also passed, then one day talking with one of the girls in the group, I came out sincerely, I straight out told her that I knew that no one would do for me what I did for them, that I was kind of trapped in that group because of the projects, and that the feeling was not nice. To my surprise she told me that she felt the same, and since the day when the issue erupted.
More complicated stuff happened, but now, the girl that happened to have a bigger issue with me, my boyfriend, my opinions and my lifestyle, unfollowed me from everywhere, after I told them I would not go to a meeting since I felt a bit uncomfortable.
At this point I know that my so-called friends from university have torn me down behind my back, but I don’t care, I have friends that love me and support my decisions.
This whole experience only taught me one thing, that somehow people do not want more friends, they want people that are useful to their cause, people they can manipulate and use, if you don’t play by their rules or act how they want, you are automatically the villain in their eyes. And that’s fine, I am who I am, and I don’t need fake friends.
