The Truth

Friends can be a boon or a curse. If you have trusted and become close to a person emotionally, you often let her or him to rule your life. If they are of the bad sort and cunning enough, they try to manipulate your feelings for their own advantage. If we are gullible enough, we become their victims and they transform into emotional vampires who feed on our emotions and time.

Until a year ago, I trusted a friend of mine with my life. Not a day passed without me calling her. She told me that she led a miserable life, her in laws were the worst sort of people, her husband was rude towards her, treated her as a doormat and her kids never gave her a moment of peace. Every day I would spend hours trying to cheer her up. My telephone bills increased and every time she would convince me, I was the lone sunshine in her life.

Then one fine day, out of the blue, she unfriended and blocked me on Facebook and stopped all contacts with me. It was based on a quarrel she had with a friend of mine that I had introduced to her- a counselor for her many problems, someone who bluntly told her to grow up. I was hurt in the worst sort of way emotionally as though someone had thrown a bucket of ice-cold water on me. I had not hurt her with even a single word.

After almost six months, she again sent me a friend request. I accepted. But by that time, a few of my other friends had warned me against her and had made my eyes open to the fact that she was a typical emotional vampire. She loved playing victim to emotionally blackmail people to get favors done and told lies without even an ounce of regret or shame. I understood that many of the things about her life that she had told me were lies. They asked me how I could believe such a lot of lies. I felt like a fool.

So this time, I played safe and did not try to re-establish our friendship but instead observed her and saw through her lies. She had not changed and lies one after another began to be revealed to me. I was disgusted by her talks, chats, and messages. She told me she had broken our friendship not because she hated me but because she was angered by the interactions between her enemy (the mutual friend) and me on my Facebook timeline.

Lies continued to be poured down my ear and I tried hard to keep the façade of friendship by treating her like any other friend. But that wasn’t enough for her, she wanted our old friendship back, so that she could vent all her troubles on me.

She wanted me to be the same friend who would trust her every word, applaud her every step and dance to her tunes. I had but moved on and realized what our friendship had been in reality. It had been just a façade using which she utilized my faculties for her benefit. She had found an editor for her overly stylish Facebook updates, a psychologist to discuss her problems, an entertainer who gave her books, applauded her beauty and one whom she could pull down with lies about her own superior achievements.

If I didn’t answer to her whatsapp messages or facebook messages she would question me. If I didn’t like or comment on her facebook status or updates she would get furious. I ignored her. The truth was that I didn’t consider her a friend anymore because I hated liars. But to tell that to her was difficult for me. I tolerated her silly requests and began to do what she requested me to do.

Every day, her demands began to increase. She questioned me about why I couldn’t spare time for her anymore. I had to give explanations to my actions and my being genuinely busy.

One day I watched the following new Kinley Advertisement on YouTube. 

It was cathartic for me. I decided that enough was enough. I didn’t want to fall victim to an emotional vampire anymore. I decided to tell her that I had learnt about the truth about her many lies. And that she cannot emotionally blackmail me anymore playing the harassed victim.

I told her just that. I told her exactly what kind of lies she had told me and why that hurt. I told her I could not dance to her tunes, as I preferred to spend my own time fruitfully rather than listening to her lies. And I asked her to leave me alone and not harass me demanding to act like the friend I once was. I was not that naïve fool anymore. By pretending to be her friend, I was deceiving her and myself. I could not tolerate lies anymore.

I didn’t care whether she would get furious at me or slander me or shower me with expletives. I told her I forgave her for treating me like a dustbin to dump all her lies and manipulating me. But for my own sake and well being, I had to become selfish.

She was speechless when she realized that I had learnt the truth. She didn’t have anything to question me about. She blocked me immediately on Facebook and whatsapp. At that very moment, I laughed heartily. I felt like I had become light as a feather.

True, Kitna chain hota hai sachai main!

This post is written as a part of Indi-happy Hours