Brotherhood

 

“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.” — Audrey Hepburn

 

We will never know who we will cross paths with. Sometimes the ending can end badly but it can also end happily.

Like the experience I've had. I'm not the type to easily share my burdens with others because I know everyone has their own problems. Sometimes we don't even know what their state is like. Based on my experience, sometimes if we want to share our problems to lighten our burdens then the person that we are talking to is not in a good situation, what will happen is a misunderstanding …

Maybe they will still listen to us because they think they have to because we always listen to them whenever they need us and it makes them want to do it just because they feel bad while actually they are not at their best condition for talked to.

In the end I decided to join in on a platform to vent everything that was on my mind. The reason I do that is so that I can lighten the burden on my mind, I'm not become a burden to other people and I don't bother other people by doing that.

I'm also happy there because there I can be anonymous. Common, who wouldn't do that? I'm sure many are doing the same as what I did.

I purposely disabled comments there because I know sometimes my posts can make people bully me and I don't want to be triggered by anything. I'm lucky that even though I did that, on that platform there are still a lot of good people I know who always support and encourage me.

One of them is the one I will share now. At that time I had an issue that I think is quite disturbing my mind.

At first we only talked about trivial things. I'm lucky because he respects my privacy by not asking anything about my personal life. We often talk about the pet he has. It was something we always discussed until one time someone destroyed my account on another platform and I unknowingly vented to him.

He encouraged me a lot not to give up and advised me to find a way to get my account back. After some time I did manage to get my account back and I have to thank him for always being by my side to strengthen me when all these things happened.

We laughed together when we finally found out that he and I were on the same platform where my account was destroyed by someone. We never thought that the two of us had actually met on that platform but we never realized that. We were in the same community group but we never knew that.

It brought us closer. I came to know that he was my age and he had the same problem as me. We both have deep trauma in the past. The difference is he visits a therapist while I don't.

We help each other, strengthen each other because we know having past trauma is not easy and to be able to heal ourselves from all of that is also not easy because not many people can understand our emotional state unless they go through the same as us.

He also encouraged me to sign up to volunteer when I confided in him about it. I also encouraged him when he tried to apply for his new job.

I didn't expect that we would be ended up to have a friendship like this. Whatever craziness I did such as blogging, writing books and pursuing my education, he always strengthened me and encouraged me. The crazy thing is all the things that people in my real life don't know what I'm doing, what I want and what I want to achieve, my goal, in the end I share it with him. Maybe I did it because I knew not many could understand my way of thinking. That happened with him too.

Because I talk to him every day, finally I come to know that he is good at playing guitar, he is good at taking good photos, and he is a good listener. He also someone who is suitable to be a therapist.

When I was pursuing my education, I told him the same thing why not give him a chance to pursue his education again. He could tell that it was never too late to learn and why he didn't try to do the same.

The friendship we had did not last overnight. We maintain it day by day. There was also one time when I disappeared because I had a personal problem. I didn't explain to him but just disappeared right away.

When I got back to the platform I just saw that he sent me a lot of messages encouraging me and was still waiting for me to come back only at the time I never knew that. I felt bad about it, I apologized to him and then ended up giving an explanation of the reason I disappeared for a while.

Have we ever had a fight? No. I think it's because we're both old and we both understand each other's character so we try to keep calm to maintain this friendship.

I'm always happy to meet new people. Because over time I learned that sometimes it's not the people closest to us who can help us. It could be that the one who did it was a stranger who we didn't know at all.

Until now I'm grateful that me and him cross paths and have a good friendship like this. We have been friends for over a year and I hope that this friendship will last a long time.

Friendship can happen anytime and anywhere. As long as the two of them have good intentions to be friends then all of that will come true.

 

P.S: A, thank you for giving me permission to share our story and Bridget's photo. I'll treat you to lots of Heinekens.