Broken Friendships

So, I’ve had friendships broken in the past from what I would normally deem trivial. This is considering that I’d been my normal annoying self in some of the cases.

First One

The year was 2007, my mum had just decided to enroll my brother and me for holiday lessons (damn, I’ve forgotten the Nigerian form of summer school). Anyways, we’ll just stick with summer school. Enter crush, Miss M (good thing that we don’t stay in touch any longer. Wouldn’t want her looking for blood, no, nope, nada). Her lovely face still lingers in my head. Back to business now, I liked her, obviously, but being me then, didn’t let her know how I felt about her, till summer school was over. Didn’t have a phone, so i didn’t get her number (Doubt I’d have tried. Pretty sure I’d have laid out well detailed plans on how I’d go about it, and never executed them). Wasn’t active on social media, and that meant no friend request on FB or MySpace. Didn’t know where she lived, so popping in to visit (*insert laughter*), wouldn’t even had been an option (again, many plans mehn, many plans). Actually had a vague idea in my head about where she lived. I kept walking on that street whenever I could, even though I didn’t need to, hoping I’d get to see her one day, but, nah, never did. *Just realized that I might have made a huge error when I deduced where she lived based on something she did.* Bummer, all the time I spent on that street😧.

Fast — forward to about a year of me failing to track her, when she suddenly pops up in my school during an inter — house competition, as part of a relay team. My mind went into overdrive with plans immediately. Did I execute them? You know the answer (Damn, I was really shy back in the days). And while I let it slide, knowing I’d just gotten a new parameter thrown into the mix, that would help refine my searches for her. The search finally ended about another year, and, damn, I was happy. Years of searching with a name I couldn’t spell, and a secondary school I didn’t really know people in (zero, directly, then), had finally produced a result.

We got off to a good start, in my opinion. Catching up, regular repetitive talks, the likes. That is until I went ahead and blew it. You see, back then, I usually greeted people with “Morning”, “Afternoon”, “Evening”. Didn’t bother about adding “Good”, or anything to it. Felt pretty boring, and heck, people could infer it in any convo. Problem was, she didn’t like it one bit, and asked me to stop. I, in all my wisdom, decided not to. None of my other friends had complained about it. Suddenly, she cut me off totally, like, totally. What went on through my head then was, who cut off people from their lives just because of greetings? Bloody greetings? All efforts to reconnect with her failed, and eventually, I did the right thing, I gave up, and let her be. All those days walking past that street, just to get cut off for greetings, damn.

Second One

You know those kind of friendships that you really can’t explain how they started, and really blossomed. Well, that’s how things were with Miss I. I think it started in the first year of my university days, and stayed strong right up till my third year, right up to the point I found out the English translation of her middle name. I started getting attached to it, and used it when addressing her. Problem was, she just didn’t like it. I was like, “Babe, this name is just too cool”, and she was like, “No! Stop calling me that.” Being me, I continued, sometimes to irk her, other times, because I couldn’t let go of the lovely name. That went on for a while, then, boom! I actually can’t remember what exactly went down, so no juicy details (*insert sad face*). Anyways, what was there between me and the lovely Miss I went sideways fast, fast enough to make The Flash jealous. Yeah, maybe not that fast, but, you get, right?

Third One

With Miss A, it was different than with the the other 2. We’d clashed a lot, before we became friends later on, and the friendship grew well. That was until my forthright nature blasted it to smithereens. You see, I’m really blunt when I say stuff, and I don’t try to mask stuff when I say them. It comes naturally. Most times, I barely even notice I’m being forthright. It’s just me.

Next bit of info, I hate chain messages on social media. They really piss me off, like, totally dude, totally. Someone had just decided to share one on a group I was in, and I, in my ‘Aim-to-Disprove’ state, stepped in and, well, you know, disproved it. Yup, thrashed the message down, like The Warriors do to any team, when they hit top gear. Miss A was on that group, and some stuff led to others, clashed in private over her misinterpretation then of my forthright nature, and, bam, pow, we stopped talking. Our separation had a heavy impact on me, really heavy one. Felt angry for a good part.

Mending

So, we clashed, we separated for a while, but except in one case, it didn’t really stay that way. Haven’t been able to connect with Miss M again. She totally went off the grid, became hard to find.

With Miss I, I believe it took more than a year, but we started coming back gradually. But, I never really felt the same way with her as before our split. Maybe, it was because of the time gap, or maybe, as I just realized while typing this, I doubt if I ever got around to really apologizing for the name ish.

The split with Miss A didn’t really last long. Someone advised me to apologize, which I did. We settled our scores, and got back together. It took a while to get back on good talking terms, and again, not as constantly as before our clash, though on a much better scale than with Miss I.

Honestly, these might not be the only times friendships have scattered, but these three, well these three, they really did hit me quite hard. By the way, if you’ve enjoyed it, feel free to share your experiences below. We can’t really seat around a campfire, drinking and sharing these kinda stories, can we now? This just happens to be the next best thing.