“Coffee Break: On Friendship”

Hello everyone! I am so excited to announce that I will be starting a new post series on my blog starting today! I had this idea for a while now but I had to work on the title, topics and of course I had to wait for my schedule to stabilized first since I came back here in Montreal.

In this series I will share with you all my own opinion, view or my own life experiences about a certain topic or event. I decided to call this series as “Coffee Break” and will be sharing it every Sunday since I believe that this is the perfect day in which we can find enough time to actually sit down, relax and read while enjoying a cup of coffee to prepare ourselves for another busy week of work and school. And for our first topic, I would be talking about “Friendship”.Friendship for me is a beautiful thing but is unfortunately pricey and rare at the same time. It is one of the things in life that can make our journey more colorful and lively but it can also destroy a part of us. It can help us build or re-build ourselves but it can also cause us to eventually damage what and who we are. And I say these because friendship has taught me so many lessons, lessons that ultimately changed me as a person and my views about people. Fate has given me the chance to meet people from different walks of life and I was able to grow and learn from and with them. It’s through their helping hands and guidance that I was able to discover myself and eventually grow. But if there’s one painful lesson that I learned about friendship I’d say that sometimes, it doesn’t last. Maybe it’s one of the infinite things in life- endings. Because no matter how bad we want something to last, life would sometimes interfere and would lead us to a different path which would eventually cause us to leave some people behind in order for us to grow and achieve our goals and this doesn’t necessarily means that we need to burn some bridges, sometimes, we are left with no choice but to say goodbye for now and maybe, just maybe circumstances would let you rekindle this relationship sometime in the future.

And although endings are inevitable, I’d like to say that in friendship, the most painful kind of goodbye is a result of abandonment. This I believe, is the worst kind of betrayal. I’ve had a few friendships that ended up like this in the past few months and I must admit that it’s one of the most painful experiences I’ve encountered so far. Over a year ago, I was going through some emotional meltdown because of my miscarriage. It is the worst kind of pain and I would never ever wish it to anyone. To make it worse, a lot of things in my life at that time are slowly crashing down right in front of my face, I felt weak and depressed and so I asked support from the people I called “friends”. Unfortunately, most of them turned their back on me and some pretended not to hear or see my pleas. I was heartbroken and sad and at some point furious. But I tried to understand them, thinking that maybe, maybe they’re going through some difficulties as well. So I forced myself to stand up on my own and eventually found solace from my family and surprisingly, to a few people that I never expected to offer comfort and strength during those difficult times. This experience made me a stronger person and it taught me to never lose hope in life. It also made me realize that at the end of the day, the people who will always be there to help you tend your wounds would be your family and so I decided to unfortunately severe my ties to a few people. This may sound selfish but I realized how short life is and it would be a waste to invest your time and emotions to people who don’t really care. Fortunately after a few months, I was able to let the anger go and I was able to freely move on.

Friendship has also taught me that distance and time will never hinder a true friendship. This is the case with me and to my childhood friends. Our dreams separated us, most of us are now living in different parts of the world but are still maintaining a close relationship. Communication is the key I guess when it comes to our long distance friends.

Over all, I learned that a genuine friendship is important in our lives, as the saying goes, “No man is an Island”. However, it is important to find true friendships, we may hurt ourselves in the process but hey! that’s life, the most important thing is we are able to learn something which can help us to be a better individual. I also want to remind everyone to never neglect the kind of unique friendship that we can build with our family. After all, they are the most important people in our lives. Also, when people disappoint us, we have to learn how to forgive because this will eventually free and allow us to meet greater friendships. We have to understand that some people are not meant to stay in our lives forever, they have their own journey and you have your own. Learn to let go of those people and embrace the ones who are willing to stay. Never hate the ones who decided to go and the ones you decided to let go instead, think of the good memories that you’ve shared with them because for once in your life, they became the ones who offered comfort and strength when you most needed it. True friends are very difficult to find so if you found one, treasure it and work really hard to make the relationship last!

How about you? What are your unforgettable experiences about friendship?

Much love,

Arlene Kischaen Aboli