Friendship

If there's anything that I've learnt in my 19 years of life, it's that friendships are important. If anyone else out there is like me, you'll go through phases where you think 'who cares I don't need friends, I'm quite content being alone blah blah blah' but at the end of the day, you do need friends. And you need fabulous ones at that. 

I've struggled a lot over the years (especially in high school) to either make friends or maintain friendships. There's so many reasons why and here are the main ones:

1. I would always choose the wrong people to be friends with. There's clearly plenty of reasons that define the phrase 'choosing the wrong friends' but a main one for me is that some of the people I was friends with on/off throughout high school were just genuinely uncaring, nasty people. 
2. I give people second (and third and fourth and twenty fifth) chances when they don't deserve them. I'm too forgiving. Someone was mean to me or said something nasty that I didn't deserve? I'd forgive them and keep being friends and telling them secrets simply because I'm too forgiving (and naive). I'm not saying there's anything wrong with forgiving people and giving them another chance, but I've learnt I need to be extremely careful with who I give those chances too. Oh and if they make the same 'mistake' twice (spreading lies about you, saying nasty things behind your back), odds are they don't deserve a third chance. 
3. I look for the good in people. Pretty self explanatory but allowed me to overlook the awful qualities that some friends I chose possessed. 
4. Lack of things in common. One thing I've learnt from being out of high school and being an adult, is you can't be friends with someone who you don't have things in common with. Sure you can be superficial friends for a while but you'll get bored with each other and move on pretty fast. 
5. People who don't put the same effort into the friendship as you do aren't worth it. If you're always the one calling, texting or trying to make plans with people who just don't seem interested or never do he same back, forget them. Same goes for in a relationship. You deserve people around you who put 100% into a friendship just the way you do. 
6. You only get back what you give. Same as above it works the other way around. If you can't put effort into a friendship, don't expect them to either. And if the other person is the one always making plans and trying and you don't, you need to either: be a better person and make the effort or gently let the person know you don't think you're compatible friends. 
7. Never choose friends for convenience. It's stupid and it's not real friendship. In high school most people will become friends with each other because they are in the same class, or they saw each other in the playground and want someone to sit with. High school friendships don't often last after you graduate unless you have developed real friendships for reasons other than convenience. Believe me when I left and started my 'new' life I stopped talking to all but (maybe) 10 people. 

I'm lucky that I've found some extremely good friends in my life after high school. It's okay not to have many friends, because I believe the more friends you have, the harder it can be to keep up with them in a realistic world and the friendships can become superficial. I'm still getting to the point where I discover all of the bad friends I have and get rid of them for good like I've done to so many others (see seven reasons above). I want to be able to say you're either my bestfriends or we are acquaintances. It's hard to have a middle ground. Some people won't agree with this but it's MY way of seeing friendships. 

Thanks for reading! 

                                                      

                                  

                                       

                             

                               

                               

P.s there's more pictures I wanted to include but of course I can't find them on my phone when I need them!