DevaStatingSL

Friendships are like flowers, they bring colour and perfume to life, but just like plants, each needs tending and nurturing to flourish. I sometimes wonder if I am a better gardener than I am a friend.

I will be honest… I can be a very difficult friend to hang onto over time. These blogrambles show how much I contemplate and question things in life, and often those closest to me have my emotions rained down on them at times, to the point where some are in danger of drowning and need to flee to save themselves.

As old as I am, I am still learning about friendships. I watch… I see patterns repeating themselves, and sadly I am always very hard on myself. I *think* I am a giving and patient friend. I would like to think I am someone who can share the good and fun times, as well as weathering storms at your side. There are times when I am told by honest friends, that I come across differently. At times I am told what others say about me and how negative an influence I can be on the lives of others.

My natural reaction when I see a friend in trouble, is to step in and defend them, or take the flack in their place. This is not always wanted, or needed though. It’s just that I have been through so much hardship and pain in life, that I would prefer to save anyone I care for from feeling the same way.

For too many years I have neglected what should be the most important friend in my life… myself. Too often I have put the needs of others before my own. This has been something I have been working to rectify over the past year or more.

I no longer have patience for those who would seem to be a friend, but at the first chance they get, who would throw me under the proverbial bus, if it would give them a chance to survive in my place. Treat me badly, speak ill of me, then turn to me with a smiling face of false friendship, and rest-assured you will find yourself cut free for good. I don’t think this is harsh, I just don’t have the time or energy to try and solve the issues of those who think that is how friendship works.

I am blessed. I have a small core of people I am proud to call friend. Each friendship is at a different place of growth and closeness, but each brings me so much joy and I try to pay that back too! I try to give each friendship what it needs to not only survive, but to bloom!

Recently I discovered something wonderful. In amongst the collection of plants, there may be one which has lain seemingly forgotten… the neglected remains which at first glance seem shriveled and dead. Unless there was a real reason to discard a friendship, I keep it there, the person held in my thoughts and heart, even if they give me no further thought or time. If both sides of that friendship wish to rekindle it, it’s wonderful to see the magic which can happen when two people truly put all their nurturing efforts into something.

True friendship is worth much and all efforts, in my opinion. There’s no time in life to waste effort and care in trying to grow much on ‘barren ground’. Don’t lose your smile over this, turn your face to the bright joy of the wonderfully flowering friendships who delight in you as much as you do in them. Life truly is too short to lose time over pain and sadness.