Yesterday, I saw one of my guy friends looking not as he usually does.... His eyes were red rimmed, and I could see tears clinging to his lashes. I felt my heart becoming tight, and I sat down beside him, not knowing what to do. Should I talk to him, comfort him? Or should I just sit quietly beside him, and just wait until he is ready to tell me what is wrong? I did nothing, just pondering, looking at him....
And then, he started to say, "I'm really suffering in this classroom...." So I asked him why. He asked me, "If you had a very good friend, who said yes, he knew what you were saying, before you even finished saying it, and then when you asked him what did he know, he asks you to say it, how would you feel?" I didn't answer, didn't need to....Another friend who was there seemed to know more about the situation than me, and just asked him what he planned to do. He dabs at his eyes every now and then as he tells more and more, unloading his burden....
What I could know from their conversation was, both of them shared almost similar problems, that is they both felt alone, locked away from the rest of their peers. Those who were once friends, started leaving, further and further, till they seemed alien. Willing not to admit their mistakes, stepping on their heads, seeming to have inner conflicts, that prevented them from being as close as they used to be.
As I listened, I felt an impulse to allow that friend to cry on my shoulder. Obviously, he was very hurt by the attitude and actions of his friends, especially two of whom who were his closest. But I could not comprehend, how did all this happen? And how is it that he kept all this inside him for so long? And I, as a friend, did not know that he was fighting a losing battle inside him all the while? That I had been really, without realizing, someone he could have talked to, someone real to him, was another discovery I made. He seemed to have found everyone only acting, giving false emotions, false feelings.
Confusion rose within me, more and more, as I still listened to the both of them talk. The friends whom they mentioned, I also knew. But I could not see, the character and different sides of these people that came out of their mouth. In their words, these people seemed much, much more bad, malevolent, pretentious, doing and saying everything with ulterior motives. Was it really like that? Or is it my nature to see only the good side of people? Or was it that I could not see beyond the appearances?
If the scene I imagine from their descriptions is correct, then all I could see, was all the friendships that had been, lay broken, split into pieces, all around me. Each day they talked only to serve the purpose of communicating, keeping up appearances, that they were, still, on the surface, friends. Or at least people who were civilised enough to admit yes, they knew each other. And because they were all in the same classroom, talk was needed. Yet they threw words and sentences that had hidden swords, piercing one another. If this is true, I can come only to see:
A really, really, ugly picture.
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