best friends, expectations and honesty

Twenty-three days before Christchurch. I've finally decided to take this holiday and go enjoy myself in the snow. So the intensive pre-skiing cardio training just started today, which I haven't done much, bwahahaha... except that I got myself a 90-minute massage. Honestly, I think I deserved it. Who works thirteen days consecutively? I do. Enough said. So for those who don't understand and make comments like "thought you said you're broke, and you've money to go for a massage?", you may just assumed I lied.

As I grow older, I find it harder to have people who understand me. Or shall I say, as I grow older, I realized people who seemed to know me actually don't know me as well as I would love them to? "Best friend", a label that I've stopped naming my friends since my late teens, came to mind. What is best friend? What are their tasks, and what do they need to do/not do to fit into the category?

When I was in kindergarten, my best friend was the one who shared with me her biscuits and played with me during breaks. In primary school, my best friend was the one who spoke with me over the phone for hours and kept my secrets. In high school, my best friend was the one who went to places with me before/after school, the person who shared all secrets with me and be my vault. In college, my best friend was the person who shared the same interest as me and enjoyed similar lifestyle with me. So how many best friends have I had in my life? A handful but at the end, I've decided this labeling game is just meaningless. If you ask me now, I say everyone can be my best friend, but with the condition of no expectations.

Watching all these evolutions of interpersonal relationships around me made me realized, EXPECTATION is a real killer in many relationships. I've seen friendships falling out because of expectation issues. Annie expects Bambi to behave like Camy but Bambi is acting like Dolly so Annie bitches about Bambi in front of Elsa and Bambi is jealous and accuses Elsa of snatching her BEST FRIEND, Annie. Happens all the time on your right, left, front and back. You know what I'm talking about. Wouldn't life be easier if we don't expect so much from others. Of course, I'm not the kinda great person you read about who gives unconditionally and expect nothing in return, but I'm learning and trying to influence people around me to expect less from family, friends and lover. Easy to say, hard to achieve I know. Look at me, I've failed 101 times in my past relationships and fought 1001 times with family members, expectation was the main poison. Friends wise, I'm doing pretty alright, or at least I would like to think that I am.

Back to the best friend story. I've friends who swear to each other that they are "best friends". They were very close, like spent a lot of time together, stayed under the same roof, traveled together, shared same interests, etc. Let's call them Fiona and Gina. What I see of these two is that they are the artificial best friends. They share good times together, travel, party, go to places, experience the good things in life, living up to each others' expectations but the missing ingredient in this so called best-friend-relationship is honesty. Fiona doesn't know much about Gina's personality, and I'm not sure how much Gina knows about Fiona. And when you ask Fiona, she says they don't discuss about things like that. Later, I found out that Gina lied to Fiona about things that me and ten other people are certain of.

Now my question is - Can you be best friends without honesty?

Gosh... my mind is so scattered and I am rambling. It's been a while since I wrote and I've been having all these thoughts about best friends, honesty and expectations. That's the problem when I don't write them down straight away and waited this long to come up with a structure-less entry instead. So, can we be best friends with me pretending to be someone else in front of you and lie occasionally so I look like I'm a better person to you?

Anyway, big thank you to Joey who is going to redesign my page. I was being very annoying and kinda forced him to say "yes" to my request. It'll be very exciting to see the new design. That should give me a lot of motivation to keep writing.