RAFIKI

rafiki mpendwa,

‘ Friend

Who is a friend really cause i feel like a lot of people really don’t get the meaning of the word ‘ friend ‘ and usually confuse it with ‘ acquaintance’

A friend : A person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, trust, and support, distinct from family or romantic partners. They are allies who offer companionship, encouragement, and loyalty, often sharing similar values or experiences.

An Acquaintance: A person you know slightly, typically from work, school, or social gatherings, but who is not a close friend. These relationships involve superficial contact, such as polite conversation, rather than intimate, ongoing trust.

People have this bad habit of calling just anyone their friend, I have to admit, I am also a victim to this but I’m doing my best to change. To no longer refer to all my classmates as friends, others we only talked once exam room juu ya formation, or my neighbour whom we only talk once in a while tukipatana kwa stairs or something. Those aren’t my ‘friends’ they are my classmate and my neighbour respectively…. same thing goes for you, your workmate doesn’t necessarily have to be your friend because you talk about all thing related to work and whatnot, you’ll actually find it funny that if work was removed you guys wouldn’t have that much in common.

And maybe you think it’s of no significance to mind how you label this relationships with people but it does, labels are no jokes, they determine the boundaries that one has with the different people they interact with although we blur this lines a lot when interacting with different people. For example, your co-worker has no business knowing about the fight you had with your spouse the night before, and if they do, it’s certainly not while in the work place environment, maybe meet out for coffee later after work and talk about it. The moment you start calling them your friend or whatever, you think you can trust them or share anything with them, hapo ndio anaendanga kutangaza kwa kila mtu job akiwa ameongeza chumvi hadi HR wanakuita the following day kukuuliza kama you’d want to visit the work therapist they have on stand-by huko job. And then you’ll go telling everyone how you don’t do friendships cause your friend alikubetray …… nonsense …. it’s not your friend …. it was your workmate and you blurring the line between a work relationship and friendship is what led to that.

Now, friendships are a form of platonic relationships, which by definition is a close, affectionate bonds between people that do not include sexual or romantic involvement although pia hio mliblur na sijui oooh ‘ bestie bestie chubwi’ …. aki pipoooooooooooooo

…. lakini ni sawa pia …. ni hali ya maisha nikidhani. My point is friendships are relationships, and the most neglected forms of relationships ever if you ask me. A lot of people take their friendships soo lightly yet just like romantic relationships, friendships die and end when neglected. People don’t even talk about them a lot, kila siku naingia mtadaoni it’s someone giving romantic relationship advice, ata huku most articles are on love and dating and what not, which is also okay but what about this other relationships that stem from different human connections ? Mbona sionangi watu wakipeana advice on Parent-Child relationships yet it’s such a problem especially in our generation rn, i genuinely want to hear what you guys have to say on that by the way, i hate how my relationship with my mum has changed ever since i finished high school.

But that’s a story for another day, today we are on friends. Nobody really tells you what to do when you suddenly can’t share everything with that one friend like you used to, there are no 300 or so videos being posted explaining what out-growing friendships is or why and how it happens, yet this things happen between friends all the time. Or how to take care of your friends and maintain this friendships.

why?

When you think of it, love that you get from friend is the truest form of love ever, cause imagine this, you can’t have second thoughts cause you’re afraid they are only using you for your body ama they are just there for sex, this are people we meet in our lives who are not obligated to love us, like parent or family members, and they choose to do so either way. Most of us our friends know us better than our parents ama ata siblings, yet nikiweza kuuliza when was the last time you took your friend out on a planned date huwezi kumbuka.

Do you guys understand how much more we are supposed to be doing for the people in our lives who we call friends? Yooooh unaona hio the most yenye unaenda kufanya in your relationship ? you should also be extending the same to your friends, this doesn’t include the vertical and horizontal engineering of course, but kama pia hio mnataka kufanya who is me to say otherwise

Buy your friends gifts randomly, call them at least twice a week and talk for hours on end, write articles and love letters for them, telling them what they really mean to you. I read an article on here where this girl had written an article about her 2 friends as a secret santa gift. I cried when i read that aki, it was so beautiful, so true , so raw so full of love. I want to see more and more articles on that.

Enough on articles about how to chalant your nonchalant boyfriend or girlfriend.

Enough on the videos about how to keep your man or a woman happy.

Enough of the boyfriend/girlfriend content.

I want to see more of

‘ GRWM as i go take my friend to the tattoo parlour to get their first tattoo’

or

‘ come with me as we go surprise my friend with lunch at her workplace ‘

or

‘ Come with me as i cook for my friendsgiving’

or even better …. instead of videos people crying because wamewachwa …. mind you those tears are the wettest they ever made you …. how about you crying because you lost a really close friend?

can we do that ?

…. can we put as much if not more effort in our friendships a we do with out romantic relationships ? Can we have more podcasts talking about how different friendship dynamics work ? Can we give more friendship advices and less relationship advice, we’ve been hearing a lot of those over the years and nothing is changing … it’s still the same old story ‘ ooh niligongewa ‘ … ‘ oooh nilimpikia chapo na bado aliniwacha ‘ …. ‘ ooh aliniwacha juu sikuwa na pesa ‘ …. si ni juzi tu ya Njugush imetokelezea and as usual everyone was onto that …. stichting countless videos giving the same old advice ‘ Men are useless’ ‘ Women are snakes ‘ ‘ Never trust a man ‘ ‘ Women are after money’ ‘ men are only after sex’ ooh this and that ….

ENOUGH!!!! PLEASE AKI !!! ..

a lot of friendship break ups happen online .. i don’t see people rushing to stitch those videos with the same vigor as they do when couples break up … can we shift our attention to something of similar if not much more importance as friendships?

I personally believe those hurt the most. Let me share my short story

When i was in class 7 i met this girl, lets call her Daisy. We hit off immediately, talking about everything and nothing all the time, our stories never ended, alafu cool enough she used to live around my area pia, eeeeeiii nilikuwa naona mungu ananiua na baraka atp. We used to spend everytime together, with time ata our parents got to know each other and we’d have sleep overs every now and then. High school came and we went to different schools but nothing changed, holidays tulikuwa tu tunazurrura estate pamoja. Everything was good, i knew her inside out, she knew me inside out we were bestfriends. I even went to her ushago one time. Until something changed for me, around form 3 form 4, my family was going through a very rough patch financially and it was really affecting me. She did not ati cast me out or anything …. nooo … she was still there, we still hanged out, she’d listen to me rant about how things have changed, how I’m failing behind with my school work because of the situation at home, she’d listen to it all.

But it never felt like enough for me, no matter how long i spent talking with her, I’d still go home feeling sad and alone and not understood at all. The comfort and peace i used to find after speaking to her in the past wasn’t really there anymore and it was killing me every waking hour of my days. A monster was feasting on me from the inside, eating me up day and night, sucking me dry. Guilt was the name and it grew in my stomach, a dark fruit of the sins I'd sown every time i picked up the phone and called my other friend that I’d met in high school to tell them of my issues instead of calling Daisy or showing up at their house unannounced as i would in the past.

This other friend, lets call her Jane, Jane and i met on the first week of HS, and we were like soulmates , there are friendship soulmates by the way. Jane just understood me, she got it without even me having to talk for hours to explain myself, taking to her about things felt like that breath of relief you’d release if you had been lost in the desert for days and you finally see an oasis. She made everything right. What we had had with Daisy i now had with Jane and i didn’t know what to make of myself for that. So i kept quiet, Daisy started complaining that I’m changing and i didn’t know how to tell her that the spark we had was no longer there for me anymore, that i could no longer bring myself to share my issues with her for a reason even i couldn’t understand.

oooooohhhhh how i HATED myself at this time.

What the fuck was i on about??? This is a girl I’d been friends with for 8 years and suddenly i don’t ‘feel’ them . what kind of fucked up insane heartless monster had i become?? I couldn’t bear to see the reflection of myself on the mirror for monthsss. Every time i did it’s like horns started growing from my head, and my eyes darkened, teeth elongating and all. And rightfully so as that’s how i felt inside.

Last year is when i decided to come clean with her, i did not hate her, no i still loved her a lot, but i was not worth the title ‘Best friend ‘ anymore. By now i couldn’t even agree with her on most of the things that we’d usually agree on, there were no fights or quarells, i just kept my disagreements to myself. Until i couldn’t anymore . How do you tell your best friend of 8 years that you no longer feel like their best friend and they don’t too?? how do you end a friendship?? I didn’t know , i didn’t know where to start or what to do …. all i knew was , in that friendship i was only but a ghost of the friend i’d been at the beginning , nothing but a shell, as guilt had sunk it’s teeth everywhere and left me hollow.

So i sent a text

ikikikikikikikik, you want to shoot me dead i’ll paste my address at the end of this article, you’d be doing me a favor honestly .

In my defense i didn’t any other way to do it , nobody had prepped me for this and i couldn’t imagine meeting up with her to tell her this. Sasa how would that even go? My mental health was also in the dungeon of the pits and not even therapy was working . So i took my phone and in a very long paragraph i tried to explain all this, tried to let her understand that i was still her friend but i couldn’t bear the title ‘ best friend’ anymore . I remember i cried a lot after sending that text, i even fell asleep on the floor of my room, you know that kind of cry. My hurt was aching, a tangible deep pain, like someone had taken a dagger to my heart and that someone was me . I didn’t know that what was happening to me ….. was me out growing out friendship, i didn't have anyone to tell me that i could let go of the guilt cause it wasn’t my fault. On the floor of that room i was drowning and not in water that would have been more merciful, i was drowning in voices in my head that kept on repeating how much of a monster I’d become, how heartless i was, how i deserved nothing good in my life ever, how I’d eventually do the same to Jane. They couldn’t stop, I didn’t want them to stop. It was my own way of punishing myself cause i knew i deserved it.

Later on i woke up, head hurting like hell, eyes so puffy i couldn’t see heart still bleeding and i took a look at my phone

she’d replied.

‘okay , sure ‘

The tears begun again

It’s like my eyes were auditioning to be waterfalls as the job of seeing was far beneath their league.

'You’re probably asking ‘unalia why? …. isn’t that what you wanted when you sent that text?’

Ata mm i was asking the same same questions and although i never had an answer then, now i do .

What happened was me outgrowing my friendship with Daisy.

Outgrowing friendships is a normal, albeit painful, part of personal evolution, often driven by diverging values, life stages, or interests. Signs include feeling drained, dreading meetups, unbalanced effort, or forced conversations. It is a self-protective act of growth, allowing for healthier boundaries and alignment with who you are becoming

~Google~

I didn’t know this then, maybe you didn’t to, now you do. Back then i only had the explanation of what i felt not the name, looking it up was like googling that one song you heard in the mat just before ushuke and you can only remember one single word and the tune. I didn’t even know it had a name, i just knew i was a horrible person. But you know what would have helped?? …. if more and more people talked about friendships as much as they talked about relationships, maybe I’d have encountered a video explaining this and i wouldn’t have done most of the things i did to myself in the name of self punishment. Maybe, i would have handled it differently with Daisy instead of sending a text.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe.

But no amount of ‘maybe ‘ can take time back. So me and Daisy don’t talk anymore, we never have since that text and i don’t blame her. Maybe we’ll meet again soon and even though we can’t have what we had before we will have something at least. Jane and i are still very close friends, atp she’s more of a sister to me and although she flew out sometime last year, we still talk all the time. Before she flew out i proposed to her.

najua sahii your eyebrows are cuddling with your hairline rn …. hahahaha

It wasn’t a will you marry me proposal, nooooo …. Instead i asked her to always have me in her life, i let her know how much she meant to me , how i want to see her through every stage of life, her dating phase, her single phase(tuko hapa sahii and the application portal is still open ) …. her 20’s … her 30’s …. her motherhood stage ( she wants to have kids of her own one day… jokes on her they will be my kids too she’s just taking one for the team ) i want to be there though it all …. SPOILER ALERT …. she said yessssssssss

She isn’t my best friend …. I’ve never called her my best friend and i asked her not to ever call me that, the title still hurts to this day. Even though i now i understand what was happening to me at that time, it still hurts. I chose what was right for me at the time, not what easy …. and it came with pain …. a lot of it ….. but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing. Growing up sucks and this is an example of why …. but we must grow-up anyway.

So from today i want to see people put more effort in friendships, ata kama ni of opposite genders, and it doesn’t have to be big gestures….. si ata kwa kudate naskianga mkisema ‘ it’s the small things that matter’ may the same apply to your friendships. Take your friend outside on a random Tuesday evening umnunulie atakama ni mutura, buy those flowers for your friend who you know loooooveeess roses …. curate a playlist for them … book a vacation with your friends, plan friendsgivings, go on friendship dates ……. lets take care of our friendships aki. Haiwezi kuwa ati the only time you and your friends hang out is during clubbing pekee…. si ata muende mmbook bikes for an hour basi

Just like any other relationship, laziness is not allowed in friendships

I think if we all did that we’d reduce ata the amount of people who are traumatized with dating, cause a lot of people are getting into mediocre relationships due to desperation. The craving to mean something to someone, to have someone look at you like you are the world to them cause you are. But it’s not only in romantic relationships where you can find this, even in your friendships you’ll find this , you just have to invest more in them , you’ll see. I’m not saying ati sasa you’ll stop wanting to have a relationship but you’d be less desperate , cause either way , ata kama hupendwi kwenu, unapendwa na marafiki zako

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~Ciao darlings~