I’m going to be honest, as I usually am, friends are not always great to have. Sure having friends is better than having none, but all the drama that comes with it is annoying and unnecessary. Don’t take me wrong, I love all my friends and it would kill me if I ever lost one of them. But when drama happens between two of them, and you’re torn in the middle, it sucks.

I have two friends who were bff’s freshmen year. However they are complete opposites. One is super emotional and one has been “trained” to show no emotion. Well, as you can imagine, there was a falling out, and the reason was that they were rude towards one another and didn’t care about the others feelings. So what does my no emotion friend do you ask? She goes up to, let’s call her Sherlock, and says “I don’t want to be friends with you anymore”  and walks away. Like what kind of bullshit is that?! It was extremely rude and unkind so if any of you have ever done it, I hope this is a realization for you. Basically, there was a lot of crying and hatred for the rest of the year and sophomore year. So you get the gist now.

Okay so jump forward to TWO YEARS later, and we’re juniors. My friends still hate each other and as you can put together I’m still in the middle. So I think everything’s doing well considering they have classes together that I’m not in so I can not control and monitor how they interact. So one time I was having a really bad anxiety problem and the only person there for me was my no emotion friend, let’s call her Moriarty. So I was letting all honesty out about what was making me anxious and depressed and I said oh by the way, thanks for being civil to Sherlock this year. Meaning, thanks for not being total bitches to each other in regards to my feelings towards you two.

So if you’re still with me, jump forward to tonight, where Moriarty has spammed me with texts saying how she was really mad at me for saying that and that Sherlock is ruining her life because everything she wants to do she can’t because of her. So we text each other more long winded paragraphs about feelings and Sherlock and finally I tell my mother. And she gave some great advice that I wanted to share: “Tessa, what she’s doing to herself I hope you never do, and that’s hold grudges. Holding grudges is the most pointless thing in the world. Because holding a grudge does nothing to effect the other person, it only effects you.” And that’s so true! I mean think about it, has holding a grudge ever made you feel good? No! It’s unhealthy and unnecessary.

I know it’s hard to let go of some things and some people who have really damaged you, but you have to. If you don’t, fatal things could happen. And that may seem like I took it too far but my mother almost died of a heart attack because she was too stressed and held a grudge to this one nasty woman. Now if someone hurt you and you don’t want to be buddies again, that’s completely understandable and usually in the best interest for yourself. But be civil. Civil means that don’t let what they did hold you back. Because in the end, imagine if you didn’t hold that grudge, who could you have become?

There is this famous saying by Ghandi, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. And boy was he right. It is fair to take what someone has taken from you, but it doesn’t make you better than the person who wronged you. So don’t hold onto your grudges. Let them go. Be free of negativity.