Klara Li

I want to talk about friendship. I am a really relation-oriented person and value my friendships highly. I definitely think we all have different needs when it comes to friends. Some people feel comfortable having just a few close friends while others wants to be surrounded by a lot of them. I personally prefer to have a few closer ones but I found myself having quite a lot of closes friends. I think this is mainly because I moved from Sweden to Berlin. Since I moved a lot of old friends also came back  into my life which is quite unexpected since I moved away. We stay in contact over the phone and try to see each other when I´m visiting. It´s a bit hard that a lot of my friends lives in different cities and even in different countries but we try to stay connected anyway. 

I know that if you´re close enough and have a deeper connection there´s no need to meet all the time and talk super often. I know that works with some of my friends. But the truth is that I really prefer to have these everyday friends you share your life with and hang out all the time with. Or at least more often than a few times a year. I´m happy I can have hat kind of relation with my friends here in Berlin but I miss my casual hangouts with my Swedish friends. I remember living in my apartment in Sundsvall and having Manfred over for tee all the time. I miss having sushi with Nora and think about our destinies in life. I also miss being in school with Ylva and Felicia and constantly talk about sex. I miss sleepovers with Lisen and yes I could continue this list forever.  

In this post I want to talk about things related to friendship and give some of my advices on how to make your relations work.

Me and Amanda at Kitkat

What makes me a good/bad friend?

I will start of with some introspection. I think it can be important to think about your own qualities sometimes to be able to be the best kind of friend you can be. A lot of times we see other people clearly while we´re blind for our own strengths and weaknesses. You can think that your friends are the most charismatic, smart and attractive people ever but miss out on the good things about yourself. Other times you can think that your friends are self obsessed, sentimental and doesn´t prioritise your friendship but you don´t give a thought to what you´re friends may think is annoying about you. Of course it´s good to communicate with your friends about things you see as problems but to prevent conflicts it´s important to look inwards and also think about what you need in a friendship.

The best things about me as a friend is that I´m caring, supportive and challenging. By challenging I mean that I encourage my friends to dare things and put themselves out there. I´m good as mental support when times are rough and I always try to come up with solutions to problems. I´m openminded to people that are unlike me and often appreciates differences. I´m really honest and tell the truth even when it hurts. 

My bad qualities as a friend is that I can be selfish, insensitive and unpredictable. Sometimes I get so much up in my own shit that I can´t see what other people want or need, I may even ignore it. I really try not to but I´ve heard from closes friends that I can be like that sometimes. I worst cases I even take people for granted, I´ve done that before and I´m really trying to not repeat my mistakes. I´m unpredictable in the way that I don´t hesitate to take risks and have a lot of mood swings. I usually don´t get mean when I feel bad but I think I´m a lot to handle for people who cares about me. 

I try not to put to much of my emotions and problems on just one friend because it can be to much for them to carry. I´ve done that in the past during some of my worst periods. There´s especially two times that I clearly remember. The first one happened when I was 17 years old and faced unanswered love that lead to a lot of anxiety. I had one friend that I trusted most of all and I wanted her to be there for me all the time. And she was, because she loved me and really cared but it was to much for her. She had her own struggles in life and afterwards she told me that she felt like I wasn´t there for her because I was way to much up in my own problems. She came over when I´d cut myself and barely could walk. She sat with me in school and listened to my endless complaints and held me when I cried. It means so much to me but I wish I had depended less on her because she didn´t have an easy time in life either and I didn´t respect that enough. 

If you feel like your parents are there for you they might be the ones who´s there unconditionally no matter what. Their main purpose in life is to be there for you and you can´t rely on them to much emotionally in hard times. That´s what I realised during my first real ”getting dumped experience”. I was so sad and had so much anxiety all the time. I felt like I was about to die from sadness and I called my mom every night when I couldn´t sleep. I called her and another friend who also really was there for me during this time. But it didn´t get to much for him because I didn´t only rely on him. He slept over on the couch a lot of nights because I was to scared to sleep alone. But then my dad died and things drastically changed. My mother was still there but her life sucked just as bad as mine so I needed someone else. And that leads us in to the second time I relied on a friend way to much. 

She had some conflicts at home so she appreciated to move in to my place just as much as I needed her there. I was in a destructive phase in life. I barely went to school because I felt trapped but I couldn´t stand to be alone so I worked a lot. I couldn´t sleep at night and walked around in the winter cold thinking about dying. She was the only fun and cheerful thing in my life at the time. We watched reality shows, drank wine and ate french fries every evening. We partied a lot and she listened to my breakdowns every weekend. We stole clothes and makeup and constantly searched for the thrill. It sounds so decadent and romantic when I write it and I like to think about it that way but my life have never sucked as much as it did then, ever. I was really depressed and doubted my own existence and the purpose of my art. I didn´t feel anything except sadness and pain and small glimpses of destructive rushes. And she was there for me the whole winter. She made food, listened to my complaints and followed me on destructive adventures. I think she needed it as much as I did though and that makes it a bit more fair. In the end I ended up betraying her in the worst way possible because I was selfish and took her for granted. We didn´t talk for two years but she forgave me and for that I´m so happy. 

I think it´s important to let your close ones support you, I know a lot of people have a hard time doing that. But as in my case I need to be careful to not demand to much from my friends and especially not one single persons. It´s a great privilege to have good friends and a loving family and some people might just have one person that they trust, maybe it´s a partner or their one best friend. Both in that case and even if you have more people around you it can be good to seek professional help. It´s really nice to have someone from the outside give their perspective and advise and it´s also nice to not feel like a burden because a therapists job is to listen and support. It can be shitload expensive and that´s why it might not be possible for everyone (which truly sucks). But if you can, take help. It may also be good to explore the options you might have from insurances or maybe your school if you´re studying. For example at my university we have access to six free sessions with a therapist. 

This has become a really long text already so I need to split this post into two parts. I hope it woke your thoughts and maybe was a bit relatable. That´s the best part for me as a writer to put my thoughts and experiences down and then hear that someone related to it or that it maybe even made a change. If you have any thoughts on the subject i´d be super happy to hear them, I really appreciate messages about my blog content a lot! 

Some of my lovely friends