For a while, people made me feel like something was wrong with me because I was no more as dramatic as I was. Honestly, they were not just “people”. They were my friends. Not that I care about it now but as someone who used to please friends, it bothered me. Why are you now like that?, Where from the sudden change? These questions flowed into my dm daily.
I won’t even lie about how confused I was. If it was just one friend making me feel awful, I could have quickly invalidated whatever it was. But almost all my friends thought the same thing. It was as if they had a meeting behind my back to make me feel “off” about the kind of person I had become. Unlike some years ago, I no longer was interested in drama. Anything, that would strip me off even 2 seconds of peace didn’t interest me.
Whatever was happening to was swallowing me up to the extent that my dad had to come to my rescue. I explained to him what my friends thought and that was when everything made sense to me. The problem was neither me nor my friends. In fact there was no problem. Weird right? Yeah I thought same.
My dad made me realize that I began minimalism with conscious effort. And then it became a lifestyle but what I didn’t know was that the peace of mind simplicity gave me had extended into my personality. So now, I wasn’t just living by it, it was part of me. And that explained why my friends weren’t understanding me anymore. We were now opposite sides of a coin.
I had to either become a different person for them or they change for me. I had been walking with people who weren’t ready to embrace the new me. They made me feel nothing I did made any sense. Typical me, I was ready to compromise my peace to make them happy until something happened.
Not long ago, my friend of 18 years who was out of the country for a while visited and by the time she was leaving she said “I like who you’ve become and I’m glad you are now like this”. I laughed because I thought she was joking but she didn’t laugh back. Being around you feels like I’m away from the chaos of the world, really. For someone who had drama all around, it felt good hearing these words from my friend and that was the sign I needed for friendship reevaluation.
It’s just hard to carry everyone with you on your journey especially when you all have different destinations. I now understand I need to let go of certain people. It’s been really difficult because these are people I had a lot of my firsts with; first cinema, first beach experience, first instrumental lesson. But just like how I reorganized my space, I’ve pushed myself to draw the scale of preference.
When it gets emotional, I remind myself that, they might not be my friends again, but thankfully there’s something called acquaintances. And after all, 20 kids can’t play together for 20 years.
Images are mine
