To A Broken Friendship

How different is friendship from love really? Sometimes when I look at the friendships I have, I feel like they are as close as love is. Certainly I feel like this with Hayley. It's a different kind of love, with only very little sexual attraction, if any at all, some would term it platonic, but I'm not sure that word holds all the meaning that friendships have.

It hurts when a friendship ends, not unlike the hurt of heartache. Some of you will think what I'm saying is bullshit, but if that's the case then you don't truly have a best friend. It's like if you find someone you click with, you form an attachment whether you want to or not, you can't help it. If it ends unexpectedly it's going to hurt. If it fades away, well not so much.

When you were younger I'm sure there was a friend who moved away, and you saw them maybe twice afterwards, and then you stopped, and the friendship ended. And then there were those friends who tossed you aside, and that hurt more, because you didn't even get the chance to try.

Forgiveness is a key part to friendships too, the meaningful ones that is, because everyone screws up once in a while. Hell! I know I have! I know Hayley has! But we're still best friends. Actually she means more to me than that, she's more like a sister than anything else, but she's closer to me than any of my siblings.

Recently, we ordered customised bracelets with both of our names on them. I think that both of us are mindful that the future from here on out is more rocky and unpredictable than when we met. It's likely she'll be moving to the US in the next few years, and I might move to Malta, depending on many factors. I might stay here, she might go, or it could be the other way around. We might both move, who knows? But I hope that nothing will ever kill our friendship.

In the bible it says that a friend is a friend always, whether you're in a fight or not. This is certainly true for me and Hayley, we've had week long fights, but neither of us has ever denounced the fact that we're friends in that time. We've never "broken up" as it were. Because both of us know that if something bad happened we would cross the world for each other just to try and help.

This is what friendship should be. It's a type of love, whether you agree with me or not, friendship is something that endures. If it ends, maybe it never was a friendship in the first place.

Revenge and Grudges

When does someone you once called a friend stop being a friend to you? Is it when they mysteriously vanish? When they become suddenly distant? When you fight over something important? Or when one of you makes a fatal mistake?

Someone in my life has raised these questions into the forefront of my mind again, and I can't help but wonder if he still sees me as a friend. I wonder if he talks about me like he's talked about other people to me. For a while he was bitching about a girl he once loved in every conversation we had. He'd bitch and bitch and bitch, telling me she was this and she was that. He'd say he didn't care, but he'd keep talking about her.

Now I wonder if the same things are being said about me behind my back. Obviously in slightly different context because he was never anything but platonic, but I wonder if this same girl (who he's started, once again, spending time with) is getting a load of bitching about me.

I wonder if that book he bought about how to get girls to like him has made him a horrible person, or if he was always one deep down. Acting soft and lovely out of thirst for revenge is something that abhors me. I don't even care if he's reading this right now, because revenge is a horrible, evil drive that will only ever lead to misery and self-disgust. Been there, done that, it's never fun.

Searching for revenge is a destructive path that erodes almost any good road in your life. Friends will see right through it, spectators will not see you as a nice person any longer. Thirst for revenge is not an attractive quality.

Yet, despite me saying this, I do miss him. Even though I know he is holding a grudge against me for some petty quarrel that I've already apologised for a thousand times. If you can't accept an apology what kind of life do you lead? One filled with grudges.

I mean, I appreciate that he's had a rough past, but so have I, so has almost everyone I know, but most of those people do not have trust issues. If your relationships fall down after one set back then how can you have a serious relationship?

Relationships cause your problems to increase tenfold. Things that wouldn't bother you in a friend bother you a million times more. Everything gets blown up and out of proportion. You can try not to let it bother you, but if you are sensitive enough to close up at the first sign of trouble, that relationship isn't going to last.

Relationships rely on solid comunication, and if that isn't happening then what the hell can the other person do to save the relationship? I've been there too, and it's not a nice place to be.

So yeah, think about that, and consider what you're going to lose from the revenge that you're striving for.

Is it really worth it?

Fish Tanks and Family

In view of Mark's family coming over next week, today I cleaned Alfus' tank. Alfus, if you didn't know, is my third and final fighting fish (his picture can be found on the "a few photos" page). I guess the main reason I was cleaning the tank was because Mark's sister also keeps fish, she's a novice in it when compared to my experience, but that doesn't mean I want her to see how much algae builds up on my fish tanks before I clean them.

I also found myself glancing at the fighting fish tag on Tumblr, which made me feel like going out and impulse buying another fish, not that I can do that in my current position. I already have two that I have to keep at my parent's. 

In other news Mark and I woke up this morning to our water not working. We still don't have a clue what happened, he went out and when he came back it was working again. Oh well, at least we didn't have to call a plumber. 

I'm actually really looking forward to Mark's family visiting, I guess maybe because we'll be doing things with them, eating and such. I haven't seen them for a while, so I guess that's probably why.

I also found a short cut to doing my sweet title in Guild Wars: I set up a macro to loop which basically presses skill one (Blood is Power) and then double clicks five seconds later. It's pretty nifty, I just put it on and leave it running with my mouse hovering over the sweets I want it to use. 

Nice huh?

Well, that's it for now, later guys.

Redundancy

So yeah, I got made redundant. They said it was because of the lack of work in the office, mainly because they overcompensated and decided that the incoming calls would be a flood. By the middle of that day they had decided I wasn't needed.

Unfortunately I was the obvious choice because I wasn't close to the bosses and the other guy that they hired was on an apprenticeship so didn't need paying as much. It completely sucked to be taken into the office and told I wasn't needed, but at least they said they'd give me a good reference.

What is worse is that I was actually really enjoying the office environment. I liked the people, loved chatting with them. On the flip side, it's not something I wanted to do for long, so I probably would've been gone anyway at some point soon.

The most annoying thing will be the lack of paycheck, it would've made a huge difference even for just one month. Oh well.

In other news I do at least have enough money to go and get some new clothes, which I've needed for a while, so that's good.

On my list of good things happening soon, I guess the first would be that this weekend is the Canthan new year festival in Guild Wars. I'm looking forward to the mini.