The word friend was defined by the Oxford dictionary as
a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations.
Image sources
This is what everyone calls a friend, and it is sad today that friendship is now transactional; that is, what can I get from him or her to keep her as a friend? If there is nothing, then I would cut them off.
While growing up, I was luckily able to make a strong bond with some of my high school classmates. We became friends, and this set of people has set the standard of friendship so high that when making another friend or calling another person friend, I have to see these standards before I can think of the person as a friend. I actually don’t need anything from that person except the attitudes and feelings they have towards being friends with me.
I was one of the most popular kids in school and in the community while growing up. Everyone wanted to talk to me, so I saw them as friends, but my naïve self never knew that not everyone you talk to can be considered a friend. It was easy for me to make friends; everyone wanted to talk to me, meaning they wanted to be friends with me. I was jovial, and people loved that about me, but all this changed the day the boy I consider a friend lied against me.
My real set of friends would never do such things to me; instead, they would cover up for me. This guy came to my home and took a movie disc that my dad was watching without my knowledge. Dad came back and started looking for it, which all of us claim not to have seen. Weeks later, he came to my home with the disc. My dad saw it and questioned him for talking about it without anyone's consent, then he said, “It was Fash who gave it to me.”
After he left, my dad beat the living hell out of me, and my orientation towards friendship changed. Currently, I don’t say, "That's my friend; he is my friend; she is my friend." Instead, I would say, "Oh, I know him; I know her; they are people I know." I use that word carefully now.
I’m not an introvert; I was never one. It’s so easy for me to step out of my house and talk to people I have never met before, and we would have a great conversation, but I would never start calling them friends.
There is something about the life style of guys; they would select some certain set of people while growing up, and those people would be considered friends for life. I guess that’s just how I’m. I already have my real-time friends, while the remaining people I’m meeting now are people I consider to be part of the story of the place I’m heading.
I do have real-time friends online, and it started somewhere too. They do meet the standard of friendship, and I would like to meet them in real life too. The circle of your friends determines a lot about you. These are some of my real time friends that we pull up for one another. One of the ladies in the picture did her wedding in January.
Thanks for having me.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha