orange. friendship. silence.

i’m doing it again and sharing a very random picture with you. actually it is not so random as the travelettes are doing another instagram challenge and this time it is all about autumn. tricky one for me as we finally had the first visit of summer and getting cold and cosy is the last thing on my mind. but nevertheless i wanted to show that cape town can do fall colours as well, so here is my version of turning orange.

since last week i have come, again, to the conclusion that happiness and contentment really is something that doesn’t magically happen just because the sun is out. though it helps, it is an active process, something i knew before, but needed to remind myself of. so i am working on it and life is not as bad as my last post may have sounded. a lot of people seemed a bit worried about me. thanks for caring and the giraffe pictures!

however one comment on my last post really made me think. i mentioned how i felt i was losing a friend and how he hadn’t been in touch to resolve an issue i was having with him. a girl commented how she had also lost of a friend, not because of text massages, but because he died as she wrote. boom. that hit me in the stomach. it made me incredibly sad for her and it made me think. think about the whole situation from with my friend all angles again. i questioned myself if i had just written carelessly, giving the impression i didn’t speak to my friend because of some silly, unanswered text messages, or had i been carelessly with my friendship?

fortunately, i guess, i can say that no, i might be careless with my spelling at times, but i have not been careless with my friendship. in fact i don’t think i have ever been careless with a friendship. sometimes friendships have just come to an end without it being anyone’s fault and i have accepted that. and if there is an issue, i will say something. i will fight for my friend and if necessary i will fight with a friend to resolve things. i know that i am loyal and once something is resolved i don’t hold grudges. i am not someone to lose a friend over unanswered text massages, but i have also realized that eventually it all goes both ways and at some point a friend needs to call you back and acknowledge you and even argue with you.
i had previous relationship with boyfriends not talking, turning into an ice block of silence when there was an issue. i hated it and would do the opposite – yell and scream and cry. which admittedly wasn’t ideal either, but silence…ugh, silence drives me up the walls in any relationship when something needs to be sorted out and spoken about. why are we so afraid to argue with people that we love? surely silence will break any friendship, any relationship much faster than any honest words we could say to each other? to speak or not to speak should that really be a question?