On Maintaining Friendship

It’s been so long since the last time I had a meaningful conversation with my friends, especially the ones I used to be close with. I’m not gonna play victim and act as if they treated me so bad and left me behind. In fact, I’ve been acting distant lately, and perhaps so have they. It’s safe to say that I have no faintest idea of how they’re doing if it’s not with the help of Instagram and Twitter. Social media indeed has strange way of making us feel like we still know each other’s life when in reality we barely do anymore.

To begin with, in the past several months I haven’t reached out to some of my friends and haven’t replied to their messages to the point where they might assume I ignored them on purpose. Maybe in a way, I did, but not to all of them. I’m a horrible friend and seriously screwed up. I’m really sorry for that. I’m sorry that things haven’t been so great lately. I might come off as uncaring and selfish. I won’t be surprised if some of them no longer consider me as their friends. I get it. I can’t expect anyone to stick by me when I don’t do my best to keep in touch with them and give them the attention they deserve to get.

Friendships are fragile and require active maintenance, or they’ll die. I guess I’ve let it happen more than once. I started to read some articles about how to maintain a friendship so maybe I can still save the remaining friends that I think I still have. Keeping in touch is said to be the fundamental aspect of it, especially when it comes to maintaining a long lasting friendship. It sounds pretty doable though, but I don’t know how to do it. The people I’ve been best friends with until now are the kind of low maintenance friends, and I’m also a low maintenance friend. We don’t always talk to each other every day. We could go months without seeing each other. But we always give the reassurance that we still have each other.

As a trash texter with mild depression, it’s hard to imagine what I have to do to keep the friendship alive when the very basic thing like reaching out to friends, responding back to their messages, or making phone calls can feel so overwhelming sometimes. My close friends came from various background with various upbringing. Each of them carries different set of personality. I have friend whom I can do crazy things together, and I have friends whom I can sit for hours doing nothing but enjoying each other’s company while telling about our secrets. As much as they seem to be diametrically oppisosite, they’re very understanding towards my habit. They never call me out for being not fun when I’m not really up to do anything. That’s the kind of friends that I need in my 20s. I’m only two years away from quarter life crisis so I’m constantly trying to avoid the gravity to fall into it while preparing myself for the probability of experiencing it. No wonder I’m always exhausted.

Talking to my friends has tremendous benefits for my health and psychological well being, as well as broaden my knowledge and perspective. But the crux of the matter is, what kind of friends? Obviously not the ones who drain my energy, make me feel uncomfortable, guilty, insecure, and remind me of all the things I don’t want to be associated with anymore. Even though I’ve forgotten about why I stopped talking to certain people, not all of it was due to some major or minor problems. Sometimes it just happened. We lost the interest to continue the conversation, we started to reply a little longer than usual and finally we never heard anything from each other until our birthday –if we both happened to know each other’s birthday and remember it.

Humans are changing throughout life. The friends you used to do crazy things together apparently have changed and no longer into it. They friends you used to see eye to eye might no longer be on the same page as you about everything, or no longer share the same interest, value, and point of view, which later cause the friendship to be no longer enjoyable. The friends whom you used to stay up late with and talk about everything became person you no longer feel comfortable to spill your guts to.

After witnessing the end of my friendship with a few people, I came to realization that not all friendships are meant to last forever, no matter how good it used to be. Sometimes things are better left as mere memories. We aren’t meant to keep every friend we make, sometimes their chapter in your life is done because they only belong to certain version of yourself. Maybe someday they will end up showing up again in another chapters of your life.

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I’m a Trash Texter

pict source: pexels.com

Judging by the amount of time I spend to check my instagram, double-tapping on good photos on my timeline, and seeing almost every insta story of people that I follow (minus those accounts that I muted), I won’t be surprised if anyone thinks that I have a lot of spare time, that I’m on my phone all the time, that I always reply to messages immediately, that I always pick up every incoming calls, or that I’m only one text or call away when you need someone to talk to. Well, it’s partly right. Sometimes I do reply to a message in a blink of the eye. But please keep in mind that sometimes I also turn off my Line notification so I don’t know I receive a new message. Sometimes I have works to do so I can’t check my phone every two minutes. And sometimes I don’t even bother to reply to an incoming message that doesn’t need an immediate answer and choose to stall to the point where I forget to reply to it.

Additional information to make everything sounds more convincing and dramatic: sometimes  I don’t reply to my boyfriend’s message for a week or more. No, we’re not in a fight or anything, I still tag him on a meme. That’s purely me craving for my own personal space to breathe and for temporarily solitude. Even if you’re my boyfriend and I’m crazy about you, I still need space away from you.

Texting –and talking to people as well– can be so stressful sometimes, especially for someone who easily gets sidetracked doing other things. I often read a text, and then get distracted and forget to reply until a few hours later. If you consider that as a sign for how I am in other aspects of life, well, you’re right. My mind is constantly bouncing around. I know this behavior can cause problems. Some of my friends who don’t know me really well once thought that I ignored them. This mostly happens after seeing my last seen on whatsapp and seeing that grey check mark has changed into blue while they still left with no response, or after knowing that I liked a post on instagram. And to minimize the minunderstandings, I turned off the read receipt and last seen on my whatsapp. Gosh, I can’t believe I had to do that. Social media has unfortunately given us all sorts of reasons to be anxious about things that are probably non-issues. The reality is, you don’t have to respond to a text right away and we have a right to respond when we feel like it, right?

We tend to change a bit when we have a new partner. We try to adjust to their habits. One day, you find yourself binge-watch an entire season of Shameless because your boyfriend loves that serial (lol that’s my favorite, he’s into k-drama actually). You attempt to learn about basketball because your boyfriend happened to be a basketball player (even though I never really tried to get to know more of it as well, sorry babe). You try to reply to his text as fast as you can because he’ll double texts you, or bombard you with 20+ messages if you don’t respond within 5 minutes. You always pick up his phone calls every night to listen to his story even though you’re way too sleepy to function. To be very honest, I’ve never been that kind of person, especially the latter. I will be out of breath within the first week. Communicating continuously with someone is never my strongest suit. And constantly bugging me to reply to your texts isn’t endearing at all. It’s not going to magically transform me into a textpert, it’s just going to really really make me want to stop talking to you.

There are lots of people out there who are awesome at responding to messages in a timely manner. I’m simply not one of them. I’m a trash texter according to buzzfeed quiz that I took just now. But it’s not that I try to ignore people.  I’m just forgetful and lazy, when it comes to communicating. Sometimes I don’t know what to reply. I don’t know the answer and I need more time to think of it. Every best friend, beloved family member, boyfriend, and ex-boyfriend has seen my horrible texting habits firsthand, so you’re not the first to receive a few hours of silence after sending me a message. It’s really nothing personal; it’s just who I am, and whether you consider it a flaw or a virtue, it’s a part of me you’ll have to deal with if you want to be my friend. But if you really need me, I will try my best to respond to you as fast as possible.