When I enter the home of my married friends, R and V, I lose whatever control I had over what comes out of my mouth, and I say all manner of things that I know has them looking at each other and wondering why they have been my friend for this long. If nothing else I figure they can use their interactions with me as a cautionary tale to their other friends of what happens when you think you’re secure enough in a friendship to be yourself. One day I expect one of them to say “Ok, Jummy, that is enough! Don’t ever darken our door again!” while the other will nod and say “Yeah, what they said!” but until then, I will continue to enjoy my Friday evening hangouts, including unplanned but frequent confession-type sessions, where my thoughts on anything and everything come tumbling out (along with a bucketful of tears, from time to time).

Something that never fails to get me riled up is seeing what I perceive as less than ideal relationships. If I see a couple where one seems to be taking advantage of the other, or where there seems to be little affection, talk less love, I become disturbed and feel obligated to discuss the situation with R and V ad nauseum, and my mother and sister will eventually hear of it too. Particularly dear to my heart are women who, due in some cases to past relationships or experiences, forget that by simply being a human, they are worthy of respect. I’m not talking about grand gestures of adoration or anything but just being treated nicely. Women who sacrifice their true feelings and desires on the altar of “I don’t want to rock the boat”, “I want him to think I’m easy-going”, “It’s not a big deal in the long-run” every time upset me, and I can spend long hours discussing this with anyone who is awakearound, even people I’m meeting for the first time, as evidenced by the dinner conversation I launched into last night.

While R and V will let me rant, and offer some advice on not letting it get to me, my mother’s reaction has always been to tell me to focus on myself and let others deal with their own situations (as they will do anyway, with or without my commentary or intervention). Instead of worrying about whether a friend’s guy loves her the way she loves him, rather than wondering when another friend’s boyfriend of three years will propose, or how my big-spending friend will pay next month’s bills, I should be fixing my attention on me and the realization of my own dreams. In Nigeria they have an expression that says something equivalent to “Don’t take tylenol for someone else’s headache” and I’ve been wanting to work that into an entry for a while now and isn’t this just perfect? I am constantly medicating myself for other people’s ailments!

I don’t really have a point other than I have to stop getting so worked up over other people’s lives. Yes, people I care about will do things that I don’t advise, but that doesn’t always mean it’s my job to leap in, guns blazing, ready to show them the error of their ways (a temptation I face regularly). I still prefer my personality in this respect to that of people who can so easily divorce themselves from difficult, touchy or tense situations the people they are closest to are going through. Although I think I know so much about everything, including things I’ve never personally experienced, observing a situation and being in one are two completely different things.

Filed under: Friends, Mundane by jummy