The definition of friendship according to wikipedia is as follows: Friendship is a relationship between two people who hold mutual affection for each other.
The value of friendship is often the result of friends consistently demonstrating the following:
- The tendency to desire what is best for the other
- Sympathy and empathy
- Honesty, even in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth
- Mutual understanding and compassion; ability to go to each other for emotional support
- Enjoyment of each other's company
- Trust in one another
- Positive reciprocity — equal give-and-take between the two parties
- The ability to be oneself, express one's feelings and make mistakes without fear of judgement.
I wholeheartedly believe that the value of friendship as stated by wikipedia is an accurate definition of what constitutes a friend. Someone who can show sympathy and empathy towards your situation, is 100% honest with you at all times, someone you can trust, and most importantly RECIPROCITY in the relationship. For someone to be a “true” friend there has to be genuine reciprocity when it comes to all aspects of friendship whether it be emotional, physical, or mental.
It all started off when I was forced to move from Harlem to Queens right after fourth grade. I started fifth grade in a new town with new surroundings in a whole different culture. I went from the hard streets of Harlem where all I knew was defending myself to the multicultural hub of Queens where difference was embraced. Jackson Heights is a melting pot of cultures, flavors, smells and sights. I embraced this new change but for any young adult there is always that uncertainty when entering a new school with no one you know.
The school year commenced and I found myself quite popular (probably due to the fact that I was the class clown) surrounded by people who I considered to be friends. This one girl in particular who is the main person I’m discussing in this post shall remain nameless for the moment but, for the most part her and I journeyed through the grades together up until eighth grade where we parted ways because of high school.
Fast forward through the four years of high school where I found myself entering college. At this point in my life my friend and I had still managed to keep in touch and see each other through the course of our high school careers. When we did hangout it was always unplanned but we always had fun. With college on my horizon I found it necessary to get a job so I could support myself and become more independent. I was a growing man. Searching for a job however wasn’t a cakewalk. It was hard! We were in a recession and my resume was lacking. So at that point I would take almost anything. I utilized every outlet to try and acquire an interview. Facebook/Twitter/Text messages were my new best friends; anything I could do to to inquire through friends about jobs I would do so I could hear those words “You’ve got the job”. So unbeknownst to me my friend one day while we were having one of our sporadic hangout moments informed me that her job was hiring. I was delighted, excited, and nervous all at once. She said she would “put in a good word for me” and that she would let me know. I forwarded my resume to her and less than a week later I was called in for an interview. I aced both interviews and started training the following week.
It was so funny to me how my friend and I had come full circle even after all the years we had spent apart. I hadn’t seen her consistently since grade school and now we would be working five days a week together. During this time we became extremely close, sharing even our most intimate secrets with each other. Lunching with each other everyday, helping each other out with our boy problems, and making fun of people at work like the “mean girls” we were. It was delightful, we were a super duo in a sense. We would party together, drink together, and just rock out. You could even say that we were almost even best friends at that point. I mean we’d known each other almost 10 years and we’d spent almost everyday together for the last 2 years.
So one drunken night, my friend and I decided on a whim that we wanted to go to Paris. We both had talked about traveling and we always knew that if we did do it Paris would be the place to go. After a few more sips our “four loco” we had gone ahead and taken the leap and booked two one-way tickets to Paris for the month of June. At that time it was the beginning of January so we’d figure that we’d have enough time to plan. We were overjoyed after we'd hit the "confirm" button on Vayama.com which is the company we used to book our flights. We couldn't stop yelling “WE’RE GOING TO PARIS” while we embraced each other. We were like two little girls jumping up and down when one of the two had gotten their first boyfriend.
A little whiles away we decided to break the news to our job. We had informed them that we were going on vacation for not 2 weeks but for 2 months. Haha, I’m sure that was unexpected. Anyway our job let is know that extent of our vacation in their eyes signified that we’d given our resignations. We were sad in the moment when we realized that the two years spent at this place would be coming to an end. We had come to make some great friends and even people who felt like family while working there. In the two weeks that followed we had break up goggles the whole time (breakup goggles are a naturally occurring phenomenon where a bad situation doesn’t seem so bad when you finally decide to step away from it. Happens more often than you know. Beware of breakup goggles!!!). Time flew by during those last two weeks and before we knew it we were at the airport terminal waving goodbye to our friends and family while we boarded our flight. 7 long hour later…
We arrived in Paris, France and we were a cocktail of jet lag, happiness, and nervousness. We met up with a friend who was going to stay with us for two weeks during our two month stay and we made it to our apartment in the 18 district where we would be staying for our first month. For the first two weeks we played the tourist card and went to most of the sights, took a hell of a lot of pictures, dined out and clubbed most days. Finally after the first two weeks we actually began to feel like actual Parisians. We would roam the streets alone, shop independently and live like normal. The only odd fact being that people speak french in Paris. For us however we’d both taken french classes in high school or college and managed to get by with what we knew. I mean we’re not experts but we know more than just what you’d learn from a phrasebook.
We moved into our second place in the 15th district in July. The area turned out to be a much more residential area but, It was still significantly close to all of the major stops in Paris. We were actually walking distance to the Eiffel Tower (how cool is that). Now I must say that working with someone everyday for two years is completely different than living with them for two months. You learn things about the other person you would have otherwise never known.
In the weeks that followed I’d discover that my friend was actually quite a
We got into a few arguments or heated debates I should say about respecting our house and keeping it clean and comfortable to live in. She seemed not to be too keen on adhering to basic standards of living an acted out by giving me the cold shoulder. Now let me tell you, I am the KING of the “cold shoulder”. Ive actually perfected over the years to use in a different number of situations but that’s another story. We went for about a week of pretending that the other person didn’t exist. I continued to go about my business exploring and wandering around the glorious streets of Paris all the while thinking about her upcoming birthday. She’d buried herself into her phone and hadn’t left the house in weeks. I finally, being the bigger person kindly reminded her that we needed to get back on speaking terms because her birthday was coming and I didn’t want to spoil it for her. (Little did I know what the future would hold) So we began speaking to each other again and she’d decided she wanted to go to a water park near our house. This water park would be comparable to splish-splash. I wasn’t exactly excited by the idea but agreed I would go under the condition that I would wear my swimming trunks and not be forced to wear a speedo. France is weird about pools and hygiene in general and this particular water-park was no exception. The park attendant would not let me in with my 2” swimming trunks and wanted me to either go to their sport shop to get another shorter pair of swimming trunks or a speedo. Now let me say this to you, the trunks that I purchased back home are SHORT, like poom poom SHORTS short. So short in fact that one accidental move might expose a butt cheek or worse a ball or two. So by that time I was already over the idea and I wasn’t about to pay another 20 euro to purchase a speedo I wouldn’t be comfortable in. I told my friend that I was going to go home. Her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed and then she exploded. Tickets were shoved in my face, I was ordered to get our money back while she stormed off.
I tried chasing after her but failed to no avail because she was literally flying down the street in rage. She had our apartment key and was at least two blocks ahead of me. It felt like a lost battle. I couldn’t keep up. She got to the apartment before I did. I managed to get there 2 mins after her because I got stuck at the street light. When I did arrive to the apartment, guess what was waiting for me? A LOCKED DOOR! Can you believe that, she locked me out of our apartment because she was mad at me. I rang our bell for what felt like 20 mins and no answer. I banged on our door until my hands were numb with pain. I was furious. It takes a lot for me to get mad and she had me up to my boiling point. I was angered to the point where I considered taking a rock and breaking our apartment window so she knew I was serious. Sounds crazy right?! Well, it was and I thank god I didn’t proceed with the fantasy because that would’ve been $700 dollars out of our pockets from our deposit. So after incessant ringing/banging the door opened and I snapped. The gist of what I can remember saying sounded something like “How could you even think of locking me out?", “Are you crazy?”, “Your selfish”, “I would never do anything like that to you”, of course with a slur of curse words thrown in. My tirade didn’t seem to affect her in the slightest, it was almost as if she was immune to it, like she’d built up a tolerance to that sort of thrashing. At the moment we are not on speaking terms again but, the crazy thing is we planned a trip to go the south of France to spend our last day. The trip to Nice is looming over our heads and It’s only 3 days away and we haven’t spoken to each other in about 5 days. Who knows what’ll happen.
What have I learned? Ive realized that friendship can be a tumultuous thing. I can’t say for now if we will or will not be friends after this trip. Ive come to understand that I tend to give people too many chances. I always give people the benefit of the doubt and try to see the good in them. But, after years of reflecting back on things that have happened in the past it seems as though people don’t really change unless they want to change for themselves. It’s a struggle right now being in this situation I’m in.
I always feel like I give 100% in my friendships, granted I might be called out that sometimes I can lose contact or go M.I.A but recently in the last 2/3 years or so I’ve realized this and made a conscious effort to be better at it. Now that I’m the one texting and calling to see how my friends are doing I realized the importance of reciprocity in relationships. One should never feel like they are doing all the work in a relationship. Its exhausting and unfair. If it’s happening to you I would suggest taking a step back and look at your friendship outside of yourself and see it for what its worth. I feel like if that person doesn’t add to your growth as a person maybe they aren’t really a friend and maybe they are just someone you have trouble cutting out of your life and or are used to. Change is a good thing people. Jumping into change and fear is how we extend ourselves and grow as individuals. That includes our friends. Make new ones you’ll be surprised at what you’ll find. And of course save the ones who make the cut.
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