By Silas Nyanchwani via FB
Yesterday, I asked this girl where her friend went. They used to be so tight. Life of the party and all that. Then one day, they were no longer together. And in the last two years I haven’t seen them together at all. I have always wanted to ask, but there has never been a right time.
“She went cold on me, and we no longer talk.”
That made me think a lot.
Because adulthood has these shocks that we deal with. There are certain friendships that die a natural death. Natural attrition. Because we grow into different things and follow different paths. Some people are changed by marriage, disease, economic situation, family situation, immigration and life goes on.
And there are friendships that are meant to last a life time. The tighter, the better. But the tighter the friendship, the more likely that one day, it will grow colder than the heart of your ex. If he or she has one.
And it scares me. I always wonder who is to blame? The party that withdraws suddenly or the party that is abandoned? Or no one, just carry on with life.
Because sometimes we don’t know how to communicate our feelings. Maybe you said or did something that made them go away. Maybe you were toxic and they needed to find healing. Maybe they were transactional and you are no longer useful in their larger scheme of life. So many maybes, but if you have ever have a friend go cold on you, you will know what I mean that it can bother you for sometime, before you replace the friend with others.
A while back a newspaper columnist said the friends you make in college will be the friends you will have for life.
Nearly ten years after undergrad and four years after graduate school, the statement becomes untrue to me every day. In the last three or so years, I have come to have an entirely new crew that I hang out with. Some I didn’t even know four years ago.
Their friendships are not any less pleasurable than those from college. It is not like I lost my college friends. Facebook and WhatsApp(especially whatsap) ensures that we keep in touch. But physically, the friendships are not possible because we all live in different parts. And grow into different things.
But man. The synonym for Adulthood is Pain. What a heavy load people carry on their shoulders? What a pain people harbour in their hearts? People are hurt daily for shit they never signed up for.
Like Chadwick Boseman doing all those movies while wasting away in cancer and not throwing any pity party.
But as my niece Stella Kay always reminds me, ” Si ni life.”
Because, the most troubling thing about life is that it goes on. And if you live long enough, you will look back and appreciate the cliche, what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. Or more aptly, what doesn’t kill you, will kill you softly over a long period of time.
But gin and tonic works all the time.
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