The Secret Life of Friend-s***

I'm feeling the vibe of Gossip Girls today so bear with me for one short article and then I will get back to my boring old travel stories.

Have you watched the Hollywood movie, Mean Girls starring Lindsay Lohan? Well.. It is about a girl who wanted to fit into her high school and ended up be with a group of hot girls named The Plastics in her school. I like that movie even when it is predictable for the entire storyline and it is funny to watch Amanda Seyfried acted in that movie. But of cause, I am not going to talk about movies today.

I am going to talk about my life. Well, technically my friendship life.

To be honest, I am like Lindsay Lohan in that movie, minus the scene where I got a book of everyone's dirty secret and all the lovey-dovey part.

Since young, I am an introvert who is shy in communicating with a living object and yes, that included animals as well. Whoever start to call me or wanted to shake hands with me, I will be freaking out and hid behind anything that is solid enough in protecting me from the horror of communication. I need to take years of practice to get rid of this nightmare that I have in which made me who I am today.

Let's all fast forward to the present.

My kindergarten life was boring.

My primary school life was well...A little bit of nightmare due to all the tuitions and loads of homework.

My high school life was great because this is where I start to step outside my comfort zone and took up some leader positions.

So after SPM which is the most important nationwide exam for my high school, it was time to think of college and future. In my mind, I always had this perfect thoughts on university life that is epic and awesome. Or at least, legendary.

Since I am approaching to my last semester of my university life, I think that it is time for a grandmother story about friendships in my university.

I have friends that exist my university life. Tons of friends of cause, like who am I? I am Alyssa Auh who is Auh-some (it rhymes with AWESOME).. Pretty cool huh?

But, no matter how many friends I have, an exact number of the ones that been through all kinds of shit and endured all of them with me? Less than 5.

You guys might have noticed by now that I am a hospitality student back in my university. I am currently in my last semester and it has been a roller-coaster journey throughout these 4 years. From what I had experienced before, I always know that hospitality world is very competitive. But, I didn't know hospitality classes in university will be the same as well.

There are tons of assignments and presentations in my course. My English language is considered good among all of my friends (I am not bragging because it is the truth) and they usually will put me up as a leader of the group. You might be thinking that being a leader is nothing because all you need to do is just lead. But let me tell you something here, it is not easy to lead a group, especially when it is with your close friends. I need to be considerate of everyone's feeling and keep telling myself that everything will be okay if we all just focus on the project and not mix our personal feelings in it. I tried to be positive all the time and It is always a failure to do that because my group will always ended up stabbing each other in the back.

I still remember that my friends and I were doing our internship together happily as we had each other back during work. One day, one of our mentor lecturer pulled me aside and tell me one sentence secretly:

"I hate to break it to you but I think your gang of friends right here will break because I can see the bad future in your group of friends."

I was angry and taken aback of his comments. I ensured him that this will never happen as our bond was strong and nothing can break us apart. But guess what? I was wrong because jealousy and hatred did brought us apart. There were times where my supervisor came to me and told me that I was better than any of them and I should just leave them. He told the same thing to all of my friends so that we can compete with each other and "improve" ourselves. I still remember that I was a leader in one of the projects during our internship and no one will listen to me as hatred and jealousy won it all.

You must be thinking by now that why am I writing all of these and I am similar like them as I am talking bad about them without them knowing. Like I said before, no one is perfect and I am not perfect. I have sins that are dark and unreturnable. The reason behind this sorrowful article is because the thinking of hatred blinded their eyes once again recently. As everyone should know by now, I came back to Malaysia recently from a superb global student exchange program. I was away from my friends for more than 5 months as there were 3 months of semester break as well. It was like a retreat for me to get away from all these dramas I had back in Malaysia. I was supposed to be me and just me while I am in overseas. But, the thought of having "spies" beside me when I am in overseas really creep me out. The "spies" would literally tell them (close friends back in Malaysia) anything and everything I did during my exchange program. My so-called close friends back in Malaysia will then comment about my exchange life and even started to create rumours about everything. But let me get this straight for you all, the "spies" are not close to me but started to be close with my friends back in Malaysia and I did not know how it all started. What was worst is that I was their joke and topic throughout my 3 months in Manchester and I didn't know any of that until recently. (How did I know? Let's just say that I have eyes and ears everywhere.)

I felt betrayed, hurt and sad. They were the ones that I trusted the most and one of them even told me :
"Take care of yourself there. We will always support you no matter what."

So now the question is, is this even real?

There are a saying that family is more important than friends because they stick to you no matter what happen to you. It is true that family is very important but friends play a valuable role in our life. To me, friends are something that is essential in our life, not to fill the empty hole in our souls but to give us valuable lessons about ourselves. They gave us lessons that really made us who we are today.

Betrayals and sadness are lessons for us to be stronger.
Jealousy and hatred are lessons that made us stand up again.

There are some moments that I really hate about them in terms of the way they act and talk but I never left them or tossed them aside because I always had the thinking of "they will change" or " everything will be alright". All of these negativity will go away and all I need to do is just give and take. But what I did not know was I was covering up all the problems we had with "fake" positive thoughts. I should have solved all these problems when it occurred but I did not because part of me was just denying to see the reality of friendship.

Friends during kindergarten are pure.
Friends during primary school are joy.
Friends during high school are peace.

Friends during university?

I don't even know how to describe it but I know it tasted bitter, sweet and sour.

I do not want to put on a mask and not be the person who I want to be.

I do not want to put on a fake smile and act like everything is okay while everything is a disaster.

I am done hearing worthless childish dramas that is surrounding my life.

I just want to be me, the real me.

So Steemians, a little advice from me.

Cherish the friends that put you up front and take care of you even small little details.
Cherish the friends that wanted to be with you ASAP because you are in trouble.
Cherish the friends that called you family.

I have found mine. Have you found yours?