With These Kinds of Friends

My mother once told me that friends are as necessary as air. Friends help you survive in this lonely world. They are the basis for all relationships. With friends you learn how to care for, understand and treat other people. With friends you learn how other people care for, understand and treat you. With friends you find acceptance. With friends you find loyalty. With friends you find love. The rarest ones are true. These friends are the hardest to spot.There are many kinds of friends. Here are the worst of them.

The Liar

“Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.”-Stephen King

The liar is the most difficult of friends because they are the hardest to understand. Their lies usually have nothing to do with you. Instead, they lie because of how they feel about themselves. This friend makes you question everything they say and do and the level of trust is almost non existent. I saw this in action when my sister her friend Nikki and Nikki’s friend Roberta were all getting dressed up for a party. After seeing how good Roberta looked in her party dress Nikki decided that she’d rather wear Roberta’s dress. But instead of asking Roberta to switch dresses with her she lied and told Roberta that the dress didn’t flatter her and would look much better on a taller woman such as herself. Trusting that her friend was only trying to help, Roberta agreed and handed the dress over to Nikki. Trying to reassure her of her decision Nikki told Roberta that the dress she’d brought over for herself was more expensive and would look much better on Roberta. That night Nikki and my sister left in stunning, figure flattering dresses while Roberta looked like a frumpy sea cow.

The Troublemaker

“If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.”

― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

The trouble making friend is the most exhausting. This friend stirs up drama and always manages to get you involved. This is the friend that will have you spending the night in jail if you aren’t careful. For example, a friend of mine has a really short fuse. Not to mention, she doesn’t do well with being ignored. After spending a week stalking her ex-boyfriend and the mother of his child she decided to confront him. What I thought was going to be a quick trip to a shoe store ended with us egging his brand new white Jetta and running for our lives.\

The Complainer

“The victim mindset dilutes the human potential. By not accepting personal responsibility for our circumstances, we greatly reduce our power to change them.”

― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

The complaining friend is toxic. If you aren’t smart enough to ignore them you’ll find yourself wrapped up in the exaggerated drama of their life. The complaining friend is self centered and sees only their own pain. Complainers take no personal responsibility for their choices and what’s worse is that complainers are constantly in a victim state of mind. Feeling like the world is against you and bad things happen to only you is crippling. This friend can poison your mind with doubt, fear and paranoia. A weakened mind can kill the soul.

The Manipulator

I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.- Maya Angelou

The manipulator is the most dangerous of friends. The manipulator is the master betrayer . I watched manipulation at its finest at the hands of a high school friend named Jae. She was the Queen Bee of our clique and we followed behind her like lap dogs. Another girl in the clique we called Luci was the only one who’d never had a boyfriend. Jae promised Luci she’d find her a boyfriend and she did. For months we watched Luci blossom into a social butterfly. We were all so amazed with what Jae had done. What we didn’t realized was that Jae had been setting Luci up to fail all along. The boy she had set Luci up with was a boy she liked for herself. The whole time Luci was dating the boy Jae was dating him too. And when Luci found out Jae blamed it all on him. Luci forgave her friend and dumped the boy. But what Luci didn’t know was that, that weekend the other girls and I caught Jae making out with that same boy. We tried to tell Luci the truth but she refused to believe us. The other girls and I stopped speaking Jae and Luci. It wasn’t until three years after we had all graduated from high school that I saw Luci again and she told me that she and Jae were no longer friends. She said that she’d overheard Jae bad mouthing her at a party. I couldn’t believe it had taken her that long to figure out the kind of person Jae truly was. It’s funny how we turn a blind eye to things we do not want to see until even the darkness can’t hide them from our view.

It is true that good friends are hard to find. One’s true intentions are never revealed until they are comfortable enough to show them to you. However, there are good friends in the world. Good friends are the one’s who don’t judge you. They don’t set out to hurt you or try to get one over on you. Good friends cherish your presence and expect nothing from you in return. Good friends keep your spirits up and keep you humble. They are rare but they are real.