우리 마음은 변해갈 테니
how many friends do you have?
my dad always sets aside the lunch of chinese new year eve for a gathering with his secondary school friends. by a rough estimate, he’s been in the company of his buddies for the past 40 years or so. a truly amazing feat, considering that i only speak to a select few of my secondary school friends — the number dwindles with time, and i only graduated from secondary school four years ago.
i have thought to myself on more than one occasion, is there something fundamentally wrong with me, or am i just inept at keeping friends for more than five years? it feels like i’m stuck in a cycle of new school, make friends, graduate, lose old friends and make new ones at my next institution. even after the cliche promises made to each other that we’ll stay in contact even after graduation, or make it big together in the fields of our dreams, more go than stay in my life.
as part of my self-improvement movement i implemented after that horrible fiasco of a crush (hi d!), i made it a point to start standing up for myself in friendships. if i’m always the one who makes the first move to arrange meetups or communicate, i’ll decisively cut them off. when i was younger, i had no problem going out of my way to compensate for the other party, overlooking extended periods of silence, or not holding people accountable when they overstepped. in short, i had no boundaries and i allowed people to trample all over me as a result. the moment i decided that the only friendships that work for me should be approximately reciprocal, i had so much more time to use on other things in life. it was then when i started cutting the people who did not add value to my life out, and hell was it liberating.
but then the question came — was i being too hasty in my decision? it felt like i was left with bones after ridding myself of all the people who didn’t deserve a place in my life anymore. this thought popped up especially often for my close friend in upper secondary, who was there with me through thick and thin. i considered reaching out to her to see how she’s doing (as you can see i have no self-respect), but held myself back because she burned through the three chances i gave her. and knowing human nature, people don’t easily change, so how can i say for sure she wouldn’t do the same things again this time around?
recently, i met up with one of the few secondary school friends that survived the cut for lunch. i usually enjoyed meeting up with her because she always had a lot of things to share about her university life, considering we took different educational pathways and have different social experiences. our usual chatter looks like this: her excitedly sharing about what happened between now and our last meetup, while i occasionally interject with reactions and questions. however, i couldn’t bring myself to react the way i usually did, nor could i force out a reaction she was looking for. our table soon fell into a strained silence as we ate. i’m not sure if it had to do with me struggling internally with bigger problems (hi university decisions!), or if i was just not feeling myself that day, but any time the conversation drifted back to gossip, i did not know what to say.
when i was younger, the highlight of my conversations was gossip. if someone had a crush on someone, i needed to know. if someone was beefing with someone, i wanted those juicy deets. anything that doesn’t involve me, tell me. at that time, practically anything was more exciting than school work, and boy did gossip serve as a good stress reliever! however, after being on the receiving end of misunderstandings, and meeting the best people ever in polytechnic, gossip just doesn’t sound enticing anymore. a common saying i see being thrown around is: “people who gossip with you also gossip about you” — i have no evidence to back that up, but it’s accurate to a certain extent that gossip never ends. i have also made it a point to cut out the gossipers from my life, because i don’t want them spewing about my life to anyone i don’t already know.
in secondary school, i encountered and entertained friendships that survived on dishing (slang for gossiping). these friendships were lukewarm at best, and served no real purpose with the absence of emotional depth. i got lucky being at the receiving end of being cut off for some of them (phew, i hate confrontation!), and i’m glad to say that my social circle is much more supportive now. i may have less friends now than i ever had in my life, but this is where quality always wins over quantity.
the question should’ve never been: “how many friends do you have?”
but “how many of your friends do you wholly trust?”
I've come to believe that there are so many different levels and types of friendship and that, unless toxic, they can all bring something to the table. Sometimes a friendship is for a season and fizzles away once the season ends and that's okay. I think of them fondly, sometimes swipe up on their IG story, and might reach out if I'm in their city. for context, I've moved a lot over the last few years. I'm very grateful to have maintained two of my friendships from college where we still talk a bit (the third girl in our group, we've never had a big texting/calling relationship but I know when we see each other it'll be fine). it's crazy that those friendships are seven years strong now! in different seasons of life and different places, i've been in different groups and not every friendship is maintained when I leave (or when they leave). some have stuck through each move though. But I think specifically about the two dynamics I had in one place I lived. I had strong individual friendships where we could talk about the real stuff and had each other's back, but I also was part of a big friend group that was more socially active and I didn't (I don't) have that many close one on one friendships with people in it. the big group is gossipy, there's always drama, and I wouldn't really open up to a lot of people in it. but it's fun and they do things and activities that i like and it is an overall warm environment. i just know they're not my close friends and if i wasn't moving back there in the near future, most of those relationships would fizzle. anyways, this is a bit all over the place, if you are lucky enough to have even one or two strong friendships, i still wouldn't discount the more casual friendships necessarily. i do understand you though. i feel weird that I haven't maintained friendships from high school, but ... moving away for college and then overseas kind of does a number on those friendships.