Friendship, Flowers & The Past.

Often you hear people say that friends are the most important thing to them and that boyfriends will come and go, but friends will always stick by you.

Once upon a time, I had a friend who I thought would stick by me, no matter what. And during our friendship I had the most horrible break up and I thought I'll be alright, I have my friends. Unfortunately, I was proven wrong as not much time thereafter, my so-called friend, went off with my ex. Admittedly, that wasn't a fun time in my life.

And maybe I was wrong to befriend her in the first place, our ideals weren't really the same and we didn't see all that much of each other. But nonetheless, when you open your heart to someone and let them into your life, you expect some kind of respect to go along with that. And dating your friend's ex is right out there on the no-go scale.

There's a certain level of trust that goes along with being somebody's friend. And that's where many people find that they have problems. I know, I do. We've all been hurt before by friends, by lovers and sometimes even by family. And that's why when someone new comes along, we put up our guard. We don't immediately let them come walking right through the gates to our hearts. We have to let them find the key to open them first before we let them in. And even then, it takes time and effort. We aren't just going to drop everything for this someone new, no matter how much we want to, or how much we think that they won't hurt us. Because somewhere deep down inside us says, that we don't know that and that there is still always a possibility for being hurt.

And I know, we shouldn't dwell on our past, on our hurt, we should look positively and brightly to the future, but it is really never that easy, is it? Not everything is black and white. There are always grey areas. Areas that tell us that we know better than to let our guard down, or when we do, that we should have known better in the first place. It's a grey world, it's complex and complicated and although at times, it doesn't have to be, our human nature seems to complicate it anyway.

As each season rolls around, new people seem to come into our lives and some tend to leave for whatever reasons. Friendship can be seen to be exactly the same as the seasons, we meet in Spring and friendship blossoms and forms, and throughout summer we shine and become great friends. Then towards autumn, we begin to decay and perhaps have arguments and by winter, the friendship has died. But soon enough, spring rolls around again and new friendships come and go like they did before.

I was thinking about this metaphor when I cast my mind back to a friendship I used to have, we used to say we were roses, each of us represented one colour, white for peace, red for love and black for death. Although it seems somewhat childish, it occurred to me that our metaphor of roses was right. Friendships are exactly like roses, they bloom and there is love and peace and unfortunately, they die but new roses grow from where the old ones used to be and the cycle goes on forever, blooming and shining and dying, then starting all over again.

It kind of goes to show, that even though your current friendships might not last, there will always be new ones that will grow and that you will learn to cherish them, no matter how much hurt it causes you. At the end of the day, you know that there will always be someone there for you when you need them to be and even when they do move on, you will cherish that friendship for what it was, not what it became.