The Relationship Reverberation: Friends

Bringing back Esha matching pants from Cambodia!

I've been in many relationships during my copious 18 years of existence. This is mostly a result of

•  being at four different schools
•  involved in many social activities (scouts, SRC, prefects)
•  volunteer work (STORMCO, Cambodia, Youth Group, SANFAN, worlds greatest shave)
•  online gaming (League of Legends)

I've had the opportunity to meet countless people and had the opportunity to develop a relationship with each and every one of them.

Before I go any further, let's discuss what a relationship actually is. A relationship ( as defined by the Oxford dictionary) is "The way in which two or more people or things are connected or the state of being connected". Thus, I think its a fair assumption to make that everyone has relationships, though obviously, they vary! 

The thought that I would like to explore today is why do we have relationships, what's the point? 

To this, I give you a simple answer: each and every single relationship we have is designed to teach us a lesson.

For me, this makes more sense when I think about the close friends and romantic relationships that I've had in the past. It becomes quite clear to me the lessons that I've learned over the years as a result of these people. In fact, I myself find it difficult to think of lessons that I've learned from people who have not been close to me. 

I am so thankful that I was able to go through these experience with ex's and friends to learn lessons about life, how I treat others, and how I need to grow and change as a person. My first breakup was a real eye-opener to how I treated certain people, and while it took me quite a while to learn that lesson ( almost 8 months oops ), it has been one of the ones that have stuck with me ever since. While there was significant pain involved, I think that the lessons I learned, as a result, was truly worth it, and I thank God for that every single day. These people are placed in our lives to teach us, to guide us, to shape us on how to live a better life and maybe even teach us what *not* to do. 

I'm thankful that I've had to go through numerous friendships to finally find a group of people that I fall in love with every day, a group of people that always have my back and are always there for me. A group of people that are completely reliable (as much as a group of four teenagers can be), that always manage to make me laugh, and that always find a way to tease me about something stupid I've done. They've taught me many lessons too, and whilst we've definitely had our ups and our downs, we've all become stronger friends as a result of that. Its funny, this group, these friendships occurred as a result of a distance education course, where 90% of contact was online. I think if you were to count the number of times we've ever physically each other it comes to a tally of about 15- yet they're my best friends. 

I'll go into detail on one of the many lessons that I've learned as a result of the last 2 years knowing these beautiful people.

Grand gestures are not required to show you love someone

Woah Woah, before all you romantics get your pitchforks out, hear me out. I love my friends very much (sometimes too much 😜) and vice versa. However, due to the distance between us, meeting up or giving gifts or spending quality time is quite difficult. As a result, we've all had to learn new strategies and ways to show our love to one another without actually being in each others' presence. Whilst I am definitely one of the worlds' biggest romantics ( I love giving gifts and grand gestures of love and support ) I've had to change how I show love towards these people, here's how. 

It started with memes. Yes, you heard me, memes. Have you ever gotten home from a long day at work, or school, to find that someone has tagged you in a meme? To me, I actually think that's quite beautiful (wow this sounds SO STUPID in my head but hear me out). If you think about it, tagging someone in a meme is the modern day equivalence of saying "Hey I love you and I saw this and thought of you", and to me, that's the beautiful part. 

It then evolved to be simple small messages when I was too busy or overwhelmed to have time to get sucked into the neverending scrolling of facebook. These include things like "Hey I hope you have a good day today", or simply coming back home and asking someone how their day was, despite the fact that I'm exhausted and need sleep, but sometimes maintaining relationships is more important than the countless tasks we have ahead of us. 

However, as I'm beginning to spend more and more time in Sydney, meeting up is becoming easier and easier- so I'm starting to drift back to gifts and quality time alongside the messages of support.

So as a result, I've learned that grand gestures such as buying expensive gifts are not required to show someone that you love them - all you need is to show them that you love them. A simple "good morning" text or a "how was your day" to me is the equivalent of saying "Hey I love you and I'm willing to make time and put in effort to further grow our friendship" 

Friendships are tricky-each plagued with their own issues. However despite those, I'm always willing to put in that little extra effort to show my friends I love and care about them, whether it be commenting on their Instagram photos (or reacting to the stories - sorry Jade), spreading love and support through their stories, constantly wanting to celebrate their achievements, riding two hour trains to go see them or willing to endure the fact that your parents think we're dating or I'm in love with you. If this sounds familiar then congratulations you're likely one of my best friends.
It's also likely that if you're reading my blog and one of the above applies to you then I plan on being best friends with you for a while still (sucks to be you 😜)!!

Friendships are difficult, beautiful, and dynamic, and totally worth pursuing. They are permanent reminders of lessons learned and our friends are intentionally put in our life to teach us lessons.

This is part one of a series I'm going to be writing about my experiences in dating, relationships and the elusive concept of love.

Thanks for reading.

Shreyout