With time, I have learned to love and appreciate people for being the way they are. It was not always the case. Here goes my not so romantic heartbreak story.
I can’t exactly say how many people I have come across so far and be friends with but there are plenty, I can say that much despite me being me who doesn’t really initiate conversation until recently. My early memory of friendship began with a friend who called me her best friend and invited me to spend one Saturday with her. I didn’t go of course because back then I lived far away, was of age around 5 and that friendship didn’t mean much to me.
Later I changed schools, lost connection with her and now sometimes I wonder how things would have turned out differently if I had taken that friendship more seriously. Could she be my only best friend or closest friend for that matter? I don’t know. I didn’t know I had experienced something beautiful until much later as I moved forward anyway.
In the very same way and also in very different ways, I met people, befriended them and lost connections. Sometimes I knew when and how those relations ended and other times I had no idea. Sounds philosophical but in the duration of your life the series of people keeps coming and going. And this is a fact.
Growing up, I couldn’t fully fathom this fact obviously, but I got the tentative idea that it hurts when people attached to you are no longer part of your life.
Such people are like band-aids to you; they get attached to you in order to heal you and if removed before you are completely healed they become the reason for your pain.
To let people come and go, you either need to be fully healed or brave enough. Looking back all I can say is I wasn’t healed or even brave for that matter back then. It looks so silly that I am penning down things that are long lost already. But I feel it is necessary to address things that affected you even if it affected you remotely, IT MATTERS.
There is no way you can stop having those little cracks in your heart but you can learn to embrace this phenomena anyway. If you think of it, the band-aid cannot always be with you and there will eventually come a time when you will detach yourself from the band-aid. This is another not so interesting fact of life: You need to detach from a set of people and maybe get attached to a new set of people.
After feeling a little heavy regarding the people who leave or whom we leave behind, let's talk about the people who come into your life and stay with you for almost forever.
If the people who come to leave are like band-aids then the people who come to stay are like vaccination.
They do not provide external aid, rather they help you build your strength. You may not always like the experience but you need to understand this. Withstanding a person through everything they go is not an easy job. Be grateful if you got people to do that job for you.
I am glad that I got few vaccinations in my life. They sometimes infect you with their personalities (both good and bad) and eventually make you immune to anything harsh that has yet to come. They teach you how to love and appreciate people despite their flaws. This is because they have loved you and appreciated you always. And now you are a little infected by their persona. So, you too start to love and appreciate people for who they are despite their flaws.
You need both band-aid and vaccination to heal completely from the various diseases like FOMO, loneliness, insecurities, and other different types of inner conflicts. One cannot control the people, their flow and their role in one’s life.
All we can do is try to build our own strength and immune system, ask help when needed and above all be the help when we can either as a band-aid or a vaccination.
