[19] Bitter No Longer, Friend.

An Op-Ed exploring the bitterness that I’ve harbored in the various circumstances that I’ve found permeating throughout my friendships, as well as an explanation for my recent solitude.

I struggled writing this article because I’m unsure (1) how to deliver these thoughts while emphasizing that there existed no malicious intent towards anyone who may have been involved, (2) to which degree I want to open up (let alone overcome, for the first time in years, the reluctance to open up), (3) whether I even truly believe the claims that I’ll make about friendship, (4) and because I don’t want this to be just another article that you read, nod, skim, but ultimately forget about. 

At the end of the day, I am privileged to have shared friendships with you all. And so, the last thing I’d want is to hurt feelings through my written word. That being said, I find myself unsure how to navigate through friendships at this stage of my life. These past three articles on friendship ARE NOT MEANT AS SNEAK DISSES, but rather a list of some observations I’ve made. I share my thoughts in hopes that my written work will be of both my insight and yours. 

1 THIRD WHEEL

Romance seems to be a happiness that I’ve struggled to attain and maintain. And yet, I’ve found comfort in being “unprepared” for romance by seeking advice from my friends — “you can’t find a relationship when you’re looking for one” or “you should find someone that you actually like” or “be patient.” 

You know, I’m astonished by the depth harbored by my friends. And so, when they give me advice, I find myself heeding their wisdom, because I perceive their rationale to be better informed than my own decisionmaking.

It frustrated me when these friends failed to follow their own advice — they embodied no explanation for their actions beyond “I want something, so I’ll get it.” A part of me sulked in sinful envy that wished it was me who, and not them, would have been positioned for such romance. A part of me felt moral betrayal in seeing someone preach a philosophy to me that they’ve intentionally failed to practice. A part of me dawdled in confused solitude in knowing that a portion of my social circle was now involved in romances with one another (seemingly at the expense of their relationship with me). A part of me crawled back to a misguided determination that whispered that, for romance, I just needed to be slightly leaner, slightly handsomer. 

2 HARBOR BITTERNESS

But was the romance between my friends something that I could justifiably blame them for? That’s rhetorical, so much so that I sought to understand why I felt so foreign to friendship. 

To start, as opposed to what I proposed in [12], I am NOT DISILLUSIONED by the (supposedly) decreased quality of my friendships. Instead, I’m embarrassed to report that it was BITTERNESS that I harbored. 

I was bitter about the kindness people show when they are content with their lives because it was just another reminder of an aspect of happiness that I didn’t currently possess. I was bitter that I didn’t feel comfortable being vulnerable anymore. I was bitter that I had, with so many people, become the friend who walks on the grass next to the sidewalk. 

3 PANDERING

Too many of my friends choose to turn a blind eye to their conflicts with one another for the sake of convenience. At times for the integrity of the collective group, at others for a distaste of facing the harsh truth. 

I’m not going to tell these friends how to handle their conflicts because I simply don’t have (and don’t want) a stake in the conflicts they share with one another (that being said, granted that they want to talk about it, I’ll always grant them my most sincere thoughts). That being said their pandering has shocked and shuffled my faith in friendships. 

I’m of the opinion that, if you’re dishonest to them, then you’re fully capable of being dishonest with me. I cherish honesty, and I’ve found that my honesty has been cherished by my friends — they cherish that I’m brutally blunt AND compassionately caring (more on this later). But it’s these very friends who won’t offer me the same privilege because they’d rather pander. Their apologies lack results. Their promises lack sincerity. Their morals lack consistency. 

And when the pandering was all set and done, what angered me most was that these friends would justify their pandering with an “I didn’t want to hurt you” or “I forgot” or “I didn’t mean to” or “I’m more hurt than you.” 

4 DO OTHERS CHERISH HONESTY?

I hadn’t considered that my honesty may not have been something cherished by certain friends. Everyone shows their love in different ways, and so it may take some readjustment to realize it’s not that they haven’t reciprocated your love, but rather that they’ve shown love in a form unfamiliar to you. This is something I’ve known about friends for a while — in fact, it’s because I’m so aware of the differences in friendship dynamics that I’ve been allowed to diversify my social palette to fit my social needs and my social wants. 

And so, wouldn’t my bitterness over “friends who won’t offer me the same privilege [of honesty]” a contradictory statement? Well, not exactly. I’m NOT SUGGESTING that all my friends need to be uber-vulnerable savants of reflection whenever I find myself amidst struggle. However, I AM SUGGESTING that authenticity (which is what I mean by “honesty”) must be a staple in my friendships. 

It’s for that reason that pandering pains me — regardless of whether they believe it to be “in my best interest,” I don’t want to be coddled from the harsh truth. Don’t I deserve the truth because we are peers of equitable ethos and emotion? 

5 WHY I DON’T GO LIB DURING STUDY HOURS

There exists a nuance to everything. You COULD say that it was my fault that I wanted too much from my friendships. But then again, everything can be explained plainly — it doesn’t matter why or how or who made me feel bad. If I feel bad, is it not simply as such? 

Maybe I was lost? I was tired of this ambiguity — I feel like I’ve been stuck playing this frustrating game with friends where priorities are only spoken. Never kept, only pandered. And it sucked that, when making a new friend, I lacked the foresight to determine whether they’d force me into playing this game of pandering — because it’s only when the game was over and my feelings were hurt that the problems in our friendship would be realized. And, once the bitterness was birthed, it stunted any future interactions and retroactively ruined past memories with these friends. But their shortcomings do not justify this bitterness that I’ve cultured. Yeah, I was lost. 

So, I chose to spend the last few weeks abstaining from much intimate interaction with most of my friends. To find myself out of this lost. The time off was comfortable (not so much the “push people away” in [12], but an “I need some time to think” hiatus). But there’s a balance of doing “what is comfortable” and doing “what is required of myself” — I think I’d indulged too much in the former. 

Avoiding interaction meant that I’d (hopefully) give myself enough time to remedy my resentment and collect my thoughts well enough to be shared, but it had the unintended effect of making me somewhat terrified that, if I gave way for interaction, I’d be victim once more to their doubled-down de-prioritization of me or their persistent pandering. 

Look, the past two (pushing three) months have maintained at around a DECENT 4 (in terms of mood and circumstance) for so long. My self-titled principle dictates that “good times will turn bad so enjoy it while you can, bad times will turn good so have hope when you need to,” but things have been so stressful for too damn long that (for a while) I think I’d kind of lost out on hope. 

6 CAN WE BE FRIENDS?

But, bitterness? I hate this side of me that harbors bitterness towards my friends — it feels hypocritical for someone who helms “showing love NOT to be treated the same way, but because the people I love deserve my love” to harbor bitterness. 

This is not someone I want to be. I pray that God gives me the time and fortune and thick skin that I need to heal from this resentment. And I pray guidance comes soon enough that my solution is not to learn to be less vulnerable with people, but rather to be vulnerable (if need be) with fewer people. 

I used to have the luxury of relentlessly sharing my love with others. Four months ago I wanted to be a best friend to all of my friends because, again, my loved ones deserve my love. And so, I interrogate God why I cannot share my love, my pain, my time, my thoughts relentlessly. 

But, as all things do (as per my self-titled principle), I’ve slowly crawled back to a happy medium. God has sprinkled opportunities to empower me with love for my friends once more — to give and to receive and to give love once more. The ticking time of senior year is a good motivator, as a reminder that things aren’t ever that deep —  that lingering conflict leads not to respite but to spite. 

A happy medium must be met. To rinse the bitterness off and to realign myself with the goal of serving as someone’s friend. I hope to embrace the bitter blotches in friendship, to embrace that my love should be neither undermined nor unconditional and to embrace what little time I have left to share with my peers in this environment. 

I love my friends.