Friendship, friends, good friends, best friends, girlfriends, boyfriends. Companionship is the one thing everyone has in common; no matter how recluse of a person one is all of us needs this relationship. It comes in many forms, it could be an emotional relationship with an inanimate object, a guitar for example, or with animals or pets but we are more susceptible towards having a relationship with another person.

Being a friend… it sort of gives you a responsibility to fulfill. Being a friend, it’s just natural to lend the ears needed to listen to all the woes, the problems, the worries, the disappointments, the laughter or even just a sigh. Being a friend holds you responsible for being there when everything seems to fall apart for your partner. I just feel that, being a friend, it is a duty to look for the right words during depressing times, to give the advice your friend need with his or her relationship, to keep your friend’s head high when he or she feel lost, to do everything in your power to alleviate that crushing pain in your friend. I have always believed that, when you befriend someone, you should always drop everything you have when your friend needs you.

But what happens when you see your friend in pain but you couldn’t figure out what to say to him or her? What should you do when nothing seems to work? You’re even having doubts on your next sentence, should you ask more? Should you comfort them? Should you relate your experience to them? Should you just be quiet? Should you just tell them that everything is going to be better? What should you do when even listening doesn’t work? When all that happens and you have no answer to it, are you still good enough to be a friend? It sort of gives this feeling of helplessness, it creates doubts about yourself, it makes you wonder; do you really know your friend as you thought you were?

Sometimes I feel that, the lack of experience in dealing with relationship problems or certain personal crises makes me unable to empathize. It’s depressing and painful when you see your friend going through troubled times and you wished that the least you could do is understand how they feel. But when they look around for a person who could understand how they feel, then it dawns on you that you have not the slightest feeling at all on how your friend emotions are. It makes you feel useless, incompetent, and stupid.

At some point also, your friend will look at you, hoping for an answer to their problems and manifestations. They would see you as that beacon of hope they need, that rope they needed to hold on to when everything seems wrong. But what happens when you’re not there when your friend needs support? What happens when you don’t even know what was or is happening? Just by grasping the fact that you were never there whenever your friend needed you,

it sort of tells you how much of a friend you really are don’t it?

I have to admit that life has been easy for me. The conflicts and problems I came across with, most of it had never involved me going against the world. Never had they been so devastating, so excruciating. None of them can be compared to what my friends went through. How am I to understand all that when I have never experienced them? It comes as a disadvantage for me that I have never experienced what my friends had.

I have always wished that I was there whenever my friends were in trouble because it seems to me that they had always face their problems on their own. I have always wished that I would always come out with the right words, the right facial expression, the right gestures at the right time, especially when my friends are going through times of sadness and woes. Adding on to the fact that I am a typical guy, I have failed countless times, to do what I was supposed to do; being a friend. Every time when I reflect back on the time spent with my friends, those days when I became the ears they needed, I keep wishing that I could do more back then, rather than listening.

To my friends, I’m sorry that I couldn’t be more of the friend I was supposed to be. I wished I could have done more; all I was ever good at was listening.