Some things transpired recently that is making me sit down and think, properly. On one hand I feel slighted, on the other hand I feel like it’s my own doing. In a nutshell, two friends whose friendship I cherished have decidedly deliberately kept certain truths from me, one for six months, the other for more than a year. In case A, it was through an interrogation of sort that I found out that she gained a boyfriend. If I hadn’t asked, the coverup would have gone on for another two months. In case B, a deliberate red herring was issued more than a year ago, which now in retrospect I was slapped in the face with a cold fish. Only in a gathering I decided to turn up did the truth come to light.
Now I wonder — when I have been nothing short of honest and candid with my friends, why do people do such things to me? If something good happens to me, I usually wait not a moment to share it and have my friends feel happy for me. Have I been a sourpuss to them in return when they share good news, such that no one ever wants to tell me any good news? Maybe that’s true, because I’ve been issued “I’m glad you’re happy for me”, as though my genuine delight came as a surprise.
Maybe it’s my fault for not caring about my friends’ lives enough. I don’t actively seek my friends out to be updated on their lives, I don’t stalk their Facebook pictures and subsequently ask awkward questions, I don’t consistently want them to tell me every breath they breathe… so I’m always the last to know by my own choice I suppose. Which annoys me more than I can accept.
I can’t be friends with everyone and know what’s going on in everyone’s lives. I don’t appreciate people hounding and stalking me asking for updates on my life, and I’m sure you don’t too. But those I deem precious to me I will volunteer information in my own ways; those who deem me precious can find out about my life in so many other ways that do not involve asking me personally. If I need to hear belated secondhand news (that is nonetheless important), I’m sorry that just relegates you to rank of “friend of a friend”. Which is really a pity, to me at least.
So, oh well. If I am not privy, I’m not. I can’t force people to want me to know stuff.
