Someone whose opinion I value highly said something to me earlier, which really struck a chord:

“You’ve got to stop feeling indebted to carry friends when said friends don’t treat you like a friend would at all”

He’s got a point, you know.

I tend to carry people, because I am a fixer. If I see a way I can help, I try to. I don’t like seeing people suffer on a point of principle, and I find it hard to walk away, because I end up feeling that if I don’t help, and the person ends up suffering, or getting worse, then I might have to shoulder the burden of responsibility.

I’m a worrier. A fixer. I try to help and solve things. Sometimes I get shat on, repeatedly, and it’s exhausting.

He’s right, you know. There are times when our friends don’t act like friends - when they just take and need and take and need, and it’s exhausting. There are times when our friends are more impossible, more unwashable than vegetable oil, infuriating tenacity and self-absorption. Repellant.

Sometimes our friends take and take, and we need something back. We need them to stop taking and stop leaning and needing, and fend for themselves. Sort themselves out. Give something back.

There are times when we are falling apart and exhausted and all we find ourselves doing is propping people up, carrying them, fixing them, smoothing things for them. For nothing, except friendship and assuaged guilt.

No wonder I’m so tired.

Last year, I had a wonderful experience when breaking up with someone I’d been vaguely seeing. The actual breaking up wasn’t so great, but afterwards, when he ventured tentatively:

“I hope we can still be friends…”

I took emormous pleasure in tilting my head to one side, pausing for a moment and then saying:

“No, I don’t think so - I already have enough friends, thank you.”

Such a liberating feeling.

Friends are important - but we need them to be friends, real friends.

Friends don’t let friends drink and drive, as the advert says, and friends also don’t exploit friends. Friends don’t hurt friends. Friends don’t take advantage of friends. Friends don’t drag friends down with them. Friends don’t make it always about them. Friends know when to be friends, real friends, too. Friends make an effort. Friends try.