Life is hard when it rains. Life can be wonderful when the sun shines. Good or bad, a life journey is a path we all walk. In this journey, we meet people. These people start to become important to us. We form families, relationships, and friendship. With these people, we share the rainy days and we share the sunny days. That is why these people are important.

These relationships aren't built superficially. They aren't built by being talented, witty, the same, different, or by being acceptable by society. If they are, smiles are fake, life is hard, and you lose yourself. Relationships are built by love.

So is friendship. There is no such things as "The Ten Must-dos of a Friend", "Friendship Rules", or so on. Friendship isn't a system. It is a matter of heart. Friendship is driven by not only love, but sincerity as well. Sincerity is kind of under-rated, in my opinion. You need sincere care for your friends.

But i'm not here to define friendship. I am no friendship-guru. I'm not here to act like a know-it-all and teach you how to manage a friendship, because i can't do it well myself. This post i'm writing is a reflection of how important i think of my friends.

I am the kind of person who doesn't really like making new friends, but in our lives it is a must. I am shy. I'm surprised people know that because i tried my best not to be. But when i make friends, they are truly my friends. We have fun together, we quarrel, we talk for hours, we go for outings together, and we find out things about one another. Eventually, for me, my friends become my second family. I fully trust them and i let them know things about me. I open up, be myself, be lame, and behave like a child without restrictions.

At times, we'll feel like we're unwanted among our friends. They go out without us, they form inside jokes without ask, they have endless of conversation topics which we don't understand, they distance away, etc. We feel angry. We complain about it. We quarrel. "Nobody cares," we say, "they just think of me as part of the crowd". But that is not true. Important words are difficult to say. We all care, that's why we went so far together. The fact that we're unhappy proves that we care too.

People change, they have new friends, they prioritise friendship differently from us, they don't reply to our words, they ignore what we say. These are natural processes. I do feel sad and distanced from some of my close friends, and at times i feel irritated at those who didn't distance away for small reasons, to be honest, but this is just being human and true. At least it doesn't feel like "Oh, he's here, we must force ourselves to be kind and caring" or "I like my new friends but i cannot get too close to them because i'll distance away from my other group of friends". It just cannot be forced.

I just hope it still matters, because this whole thing is important to me.

In other words, things we can do to maintain friendship is limited. We can try to salvage it by finding opportunities to bond, but sometimes, nothing works anymore.

It takes two hands to clap.