A note on friendship

Friendship is the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified. Friendship was witnessing another's slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person's most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.

-??????? A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

But what happens to occasional triumphs? Do friendships that withstood the slow drip of miseries and most dismal moments, not able to find joy in their occasional triumphs?

Friendship has come to count as the greatest earth relationship I have built.? It had stood the test of time than most familial love. It also makes more sense to me since I have a very small family that I know. Often, friends have crossed from the line of friendship to the bond of family. Most times on my bed at night when there is nothing to think about again. I smile and say to myself "I have such good people around me" My closest friend dates back 2005 - 19 years. And for someone who moves a lot, forgets faces often, I think that is the definition of luck.

But I have had my share of friendship breakups that hurt.

Since moving abroad, I have lost two very good friends. three. One still hurts. My friendship with let's-call-him Chelmia was great. I met Chelmia at the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) Camp in Benue in 2018. we attended the same fellowship and seemed to share the same love for bible studies. We just really clicked. He and a few others. He was also among those who left back to his base to do his service in Lagos because Benue was not safe at that time. But we stayed close. We spoke on the phone, checked up on each other and shared words of encouragement. We knew each other's routine. What we were up to in our lives and even sometimes what our families were up to.

When I started struggling to get a job after my service year. It was he first who told me to leave Benue and maybe come to Lagos. He gave an example of himself and how he could get any job he wanted. It was true. Chelmia was hardworking and determined. He'd get any job he wanted. He was a tech bro. A really good one.

So, one day when I spoke to him about my new project with the IDPs, long before my service year ended and I stayed back in Benue, he advised me to consider having a website and that he would volunteer to build one for me.? I would pay for everything except his service charges. I didn’t think I could afford maintaining a website, but I was happy because I had such a friend who both had the technical skills and willingness to support my project. I began picking up web development skills from there and by the end, I did half the job of setting it up. However, Chelmia had hosted me on his account so he could have the oversight. For the time it lasted, he did the administrative part of renewing the plan and checking for me when I ran into problems.

Our friendship was great. Until it was not. In the space of 6 months as the year 2021 started, I had gotten two jobs and three scholarships. By September that year, I had moved out of the country. My friends knew. They always do. From one rejection letter to another preparation for interview. Chelmia often sympathised with me during these hard times. One month into my life abroad, I got angry and cold messages. About not picking up my phone at the first ring. About delayed chat responses. They were picky. Naggy. Something I had not known them with. There was no love lost or found between us except the one the bond of friendship gave us. The friendship that had withstood some hard times.

Like we would overexplain to the people we love, pruning understanding out of them, I told Chelmia that my life routine had changed and I was trying to get used to it. We stayed on. Stronger. At some point and for the first time, he even shared a desire to move abroad too, and I started sharing his CV with my tech friends. I said, “No Chelmia, you don’t need a master. Your skills are top-notch to get you a job directly”.

Then, one day, He asked me to borrow him some money to rent a new house in Lagos. He had been scammed out of his rent. It was 5 times the amount I paid for my mum's annual rent. It was a lot. I was a scholarship student surviving on a stipend. I had that amount but not one I could give out. I also had no guarantee as to when he would return it. From history, I knew he was not good at repayment. So, despite every goodwill, I told him I could sincerely not afford that at the moment. I told him he could tell me if there was another way I could help. The rope snapped, but I didn’t notice it. I would send some WhatsApp messages to follow up with them. I’d call. They respond minimally but I did not notice the rope had long snapped.

Two weeks later, my website went down with everything on it. Five years of work. Every means of reaching out to Chelmia failed. For 3 months. Until I reached out to a friend of his on Facebook. He sent a response. Denied ever being responsible. When we finally retrieved the website, he gave me a 2 weeks ultimatum to take it off his account. It was a hard deadline, and life was happening very fast. I missed the hard deadline by a few days. By that time, he had deleted the website without another warning. All 5 years of blood, sweat and time.

Made of Chaos (www.whatwemadeofchaos.org) was the testament to the three years of my dedication to Benue State in the heat of the farmer-herder crisis. It was my symbol of sacrifice. I'd run it since 2018. It hosted stories of Internally Displaced People told by them in their own languages, and translated by me. It had my blog too with my reflections on my extraordinary journey in that state. Permanent delete. I didn’t give up. I heard it could be retrieved. I placated Chelmia. Begged for forgiveness and did everything I could, including buying a new hosting he could transfer it to, and contracting a tech person that could speak with him for the transfer. I followed up with this process for one full year until 2023. Nothing happened. It was gone. Everything.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not understand Chelmia’s motive. I even tried to get him to talk about it at some point, but I did not get much. He did tell me I treated him badly. He said even if I could not afford everything, I could have shown how much I cared by sending something. He was right about that, and I had taken that lesson up from then. But his struggle was more than that. I think he had a hard time reconciling me to who I was. I think he was comfortable with the slow drip of miseries and most dismal moments, but could not withstand the occasional triumphs that lingered a while. I’d seen it happen a few times with the best people too. It is in human nature. The tendency to forget our own race, and spiral into, again, this dirt dead end.

In friendship, just like in love, there must be the willingness to feel hurt. To feel vulnerability. To feel jealous even. To feel like we are losing the race in comparison. However, the tenet of friendship does not allow this feeling to stay for too long. It is acknowledging it, recovering quickly from this dirt-dead end. Knowing that it would never be the same race, the same fight, the same wins, the same struggles, and the same luck.

The friendships I want are ones that make me feel grateful, slightly more ambitious. A bit envious at times, but altogether happy. That, when I am there, my friends have gone past there, and they can help me through. Or that when my friends are there I have gone past it and I can support them. The strength of friendship is not in being in the same place at the same time or the so-called equality of growth. It is the beautiful support we bring to each other in this inequality of growth.

I am learning to slip away from communities that have become mobs because they can no longer reconcile me to the person I was. Or because somehow, they thought I had grown past what I used to be and spent the best of our time together making me feel sorry for being something different. I am slipping past friendships that make me feel small for not wanting the things they want. I am slipping past friendships that make me doubt who I am. I am slipping past friendships that see me as a competition.

I am slipping past it because even though I have committed good time to nurture such friendships and it is hard to let them go, all together, friendship is the place I can go to when nothing works anymore and I would not be judged, or faulted. Friendship is the place of happiness. And I have become more willing, in recent years, to leave the dining if this menu is no longer served.