Right now, I’m in a fight with my best friend. The type you don’t expect that could possibly end the friendship. The type that makes your stomach turn and ache causing you to skip dinner. The type where you’re texting each other back and forth to argue until your fingers bleed.
It’s not something we do often. I try my best to not fight with people. Mainly because I don’t have the time for it. And it doesn’t feel great. Honestly, it feels suffocating.
Since this isn’t a regular occurrence, it has weighed on my mind too heavily and I’ve started confiding in the people I surround myself with every day. My mother hasn’t really offered much advice. I think her only solution in any situation is just to ignore it. Don’t deal or bother with it. On the other hand, my boyfriend thinks I’m in the right. But he’s always very supportive.
Then, I turned to one of my school friends, Natalia. She’s pretty down to earth and I think she’s someone I can genuinely rely on for raw truth. She said, “I strongly disagree with the phrase “opposites attract.’ It doesn’t make any sense! People should be around people very similar to them.”
I’ve automatically believed that phrase since the first time I heard it. I guess it made sense to me since science seemed to back it up. Protons, neutrons, negative charges, positive charges. All colliding.
You would think me and my best friend wouldn’t be opposites since we have the same name, Alyssa. But Natalia made sense. When you’re opposites, you have opposite ideas and viewpoints. Which is great for being more open-minded and expanding your perspectives. Until it gets to the point where a compromise can’t be agreed upon. You both have opposite compromise skills.
That’s an issue.
It is ironic how I have always believed opposite attracts and I still do. But where did they say opposites fit? I think that’s where the confusion lies.
Maybe, more importantly, the idea of a best friend is confusing. I mean, why do we place such importance on having that number one best friend who is our ride or die forever?
I’ve had multiple best-friend relationships like this by now in my 20 years of living and they’ve all turned out rotten to their core. Deceit, lies, backstabbing, stalking, obsession. Crazy ideations. Yet maybe, these infections that blossomed out of, at one point, beautiful friendships, stem from this pressuring idea of having a number one best friend. Ride or die. Forever.
Later on this week, I found myself in acting class. Each of my classmates repeated their lines of the same scenes we’d been working on for weeks. Yet, I heard this one in particular differently.
My two classmates, Peyton and JP, performed a hilarious scene that always made the room smile when they rehearsed it. It’s about two best friends. JP’s character drags Peyton’s character out of a party at 2 a.m. to the waters at Central Park. JP’s character confesses his love to a mermaid while Peyton’s character can not contain his disgusted feelings of concern and worry for his best friend.
JP’s character yelled out in frustration, “You’re supposed to understand me! You’re supposed to be my best friend!”
That line I’ve heard JP yell for works slapped me in the face this time around and resurrected a side to me I’ve had buried. I felt guilty.
My suffocated feelings all week toward my Alyssa were now transformed into guilt and past shame. After multiple failed best-friend relationships, I thought I should give up on the idea as a whole. However, instead of reflecting my past failures onto my new best friend, I should have taken the time to understand her. And so I did.
We went to dinner during the weekend. At first, a little awkward. A feeling we don’t usually experience with each other unless we’re meeting some new crazy characters when we go out on the weekends. But the conversation smoothly transitioned. I listened to her. I took the time to understand her.
In some aspects, we may be opposites. A pair of opposites that attract and a rare pair that, may disconnect charges at times, but yet, still fit.
