I find friendships to be one of the most beautifully frightening things as I grow.
Friends;
you whom I will always wish I could protect from the loudness and brutal nature of the world.
I find friendships to be one of the most beautifully frightening things as I grow.
It becomes an effortful yet light connection of hearts and minds.
It becomes less of an obligation, more so a matter of choice.
It becomes a tango of increasingly stark differences.
It becomes an understanding of how we can become,
just merely from chemistry, from aligned values and mission.
Nothing to do with how long a time we have known each other,
But yet also everything to do with how much we embrace of each other.
How we navigate friendships, reveal to us a lot about our priorities.
How we navigate friendships, reveal to us very much about our relationship with ourselves too.
I love my friends.
You, you,
and maybe you too.
And I'm writing this piece to remind you that
friendships are truly precious. There's so much to be grateful for, to know that in the mountains of increasing responsibilities and commitments in our lives, you are still choosing to be with each other
the people you choose as friends are representative of you, and your relationship with yourself.
In friendships, you get to choose who you want and who you don't and nothing is ever obligatory.
because the way I view friendships has definitely been shifting very much this year. It's been so tough, as I learn to shed the way I keep protecting people from the reality of how unhealthy our relationship is for me.
In the past, I feared losing friends. So it took a lot of me when I transitioned into university, and found myself drifting from some of the very people who I thought were always going to be with me as we journey through life.
Yes, new friends were made. And some old ones faded, and I struggled.
'Friends' changed in definition almost every few months, in the past few years of my entry into my 20s.
I began grasping the increasingly shrinking reality of my social circles, to see that friends are truly the chosen ones.
To see that it's a true blessing to be each other's chosen ones.
I choose you and you choose me
and we be potatoes together in this whirlpool of a life~
(but I'll be the japanese sweet potato okay, you choose another type )
My standards for deciding who I choose to keep, to put effort into journeying with and caring for,
started to firm up.
They started to become real, and I started to shed that rooted belief of how having standards makes me entitled.
Allowing my sense of self-worth and self-respect to bloom,
comes with such a painful disruption to my unhealthy patterns of beliefs and cycles.
It's uncomfortable, and strange.
But if we keep running away from what's new and foreign, from what we aren't completely confident we would succeed in,
then there's no way of growth.
This year has been a year of growing up:")
I've become one with greater courage to draw boundaries of respect, to keep with me my gentleness instead of forcing myself to armour up.
Sometimes, I wish life could be less harsh.
But sometimes, I also realise that life isn’t that harsh after all.
I’ll choose to keep growing and blooming through the thorns of the bushes,
because I’ve got a life to live and a life of gift.
I’ll keep looking at you, my friends,
you whom I will always wish I could protect from the loudness and brutal nature of the world
and pour out to you guys a never-ending waterfall of love and fertiliser for your growth as human beans.
I find friendships to be one of the most beautifully frightening things as I grow.
Because beautiful things only can exist between beautiful souls.
And frightening things are worth all the fear that they stand for.
If you’re my friend, this is a loud whisper of an iloveyou !!
Let’s keep growing and building up a life we are proud to call our own, alright?
love,
val
