Old Wounds , New Faces. Loh #299

One thing about myself and having female friends is rare and it's not that I don't like to make female friends, but my experience has left me traumatised, I remember then I had a friend who I told everything to, but at the one point where we had a disagreement in class, that's how she revealed everything I had ever told her this was when I was in secondary school, and there is another female friend I had, though I made up my mind I wasn't going to be friends with her anymore because she was a bad influence, though I did not judge her for it, but I later learnt she went around spoiling my name because I stopped talking to her.

See, I have just one bestie, her name is Mercy, and we have been friends since we were 12 years old, she knows all about me. It's really difficult for me to call someone my friend, though I have acquaintances, but none have come close to being the kind of relationship I and Mercy have.

Not that I don't wish to have more female friends, it's just that my experience has me choked to the point of not letting someone else in.

And the truth is that I believe that is what people don't talk about enough, No one tells you that it is possible for a friend to betray you, and that it can hurt the same way as a breakup, see no one ever says, "The girl who read your diary out loud to the class will be living in your head, moulding your handshake with new people, I did not wake up one day and decide to be guarded, I was pushed into it, disappointment after disappointment.

What I have come to appreciate, though, the thing that keeps me from writing off female friendships entirely, is what I have with Mercy, there is something about being known actually known, not just liked that nothing else replaces, Mercy has seen me at my worst, my most petty, my most afraid, and she is still here, But it is not that women are untrustworthy as the stereotype implies but that friendship of any kind is rare, it is a choice made between two that goes through and through, even when it's not convenient.

I think the challenge I have navigated, and am still navigating honestly, is separating my past from the women standing in front of me now, not every woman who wants to get close is going to be the girl from secondary school, not every laugh shared behind my back is coming some of that fear is just old wounds wearing a new face, i am learning, slowly, to tell the difference between intuition and trauma talking, that is harder than it sounds.

I have also discovered that I don't need 20 friends to be safe, One Mercy be better than a multitude of companions which have seen the version of me they allow them to see, I want to focus on creating a few good female friends rather than making more of them So instead of forcing myself to "make more female friends" just to prove the stereotype wrong, I have chosen depth over numbers, if another friendship like that comes, I will not run from it, but I am not going to chase it out of guilt or pressure either.

So no, I do not think genuine female friendships are a myth. I think they are just costly, they demand trust and that's the one thing life has taught me to protect closely. But when it is real, when you find your Mercy, it is worth each one of the cautions it took to get there.

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