Listen to what they say

     In January, I had to move because the old house was closing.  So i began my search, luckily i had a friend that was looking for a new place so we decided that we might as well just try looking and see if we could find something and split a room.  We did and i was excited even though i wasn't really showing it.  He and i got along great at first, same with my other two roommates.  But then after a few weeks of living with him i just started to find that he became annoying and just lazy and not really motivated.  He would always be sleeping and always complained that he was tired.  I never understood what he was tired of always sleeping, never working only going to school, he was always on the internet doing nothing.  By the end of the semester i started to become extremely annoyed to the point where i just didn't want to share the room with him and looked forward to the weekends when he choose to go home.  It basically got to the point where i didn't consider him a friend, just someone i  had to live with until i could live with someone else.  Because of this, i started making joke about him, as he did of me the first few weeks after the move-in.  I never intended to hurt him but sometimes i knew i pushed the limit between having just fun and being rude and mean.  So i apologized when i did.  Even then when it seemed all good, calm and peaceful, it wasn't really. i was still fed up with his laziness, egotistical and him constantly thinking highly of himself.  

     Then one day i just couldn't take it, i choose to confront him about and rip him a new and tell him to take more responsibility.  While i waited, for him to return from wherever he was, I dwelled on my decision to confront him and i changed my mind right as he walk through the door.  It wasn't for a lack of confrontation, I mean i usually don't like to start fights or arguments so i try to avoid them if it is possible.  But just looking at it from his point of view, I thought to myself "what is he going through and what has he gone through?"  Then I remember that the semester before he had to leave school for a bit right as he began to settle-in to his new life.  Now he didn't withdraw because he couldn't handle it, he withdrew because his father had suffered a heart-attack and died a few days later.  He and his family had suffered a great lose and it dawned on me that his constant tiredness, lack of energy and constant sleeping was due to him being depressed and that he had been in mourning.  Then i thought to myself "what if this happened to me?"  Just thinking like that really opened my eyes and I no longer felt anger, annoyance or really joked that much about him as much anymore.  I felt compassion and understood a little more about him.

   Just learning to step back from that situation taught me to really step back in all of my relationships.  Most of the time before i thought it was straight forward and i would assume something about my friend, family, co-worker or who ever.  There will always be a time when i will face someone who annoys me because of what they do but i just can't let deter me from being able to work with them and becoming a better person.  Most relationship, aside from just girlfriend & boyfriends, require that you take a chance in order to make them work.  I have faced met many people where i thought they were only, i assumed they were something but after a while i learned they weren't.  So that experience with my friend/roommate allowed me to see that first impression aren't always the last impression.  Things about people do change and we have to accept that and work with them and in order to do that you have to build trust first and have faith in the person to open up  and break down the wall that protects them.  then we have to love and cheerish what they expose and treat as our own otherwise all we en up casuing them is hurt and pain and force them to close up again.                                   

     If someone chooses to trust me with a secret, something so very personal i choose not to tell anyone because i have seen people hurt over that.  It also takes a great deal for someone to earn that much trust, but it takes a great deal more to maintain it.  I never really had any friends who could trust me, tell me secrets, choose to come to me when they need to open up.  To feel that trust connection is something i cherish down to my very heart and soul.  But i try not to leave it to just friends because stranger, people from all walks of life need just a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen.  Then maybe i can understand them better and have meaningful relationships.