The phrase "friends don’t lie" has never been authentic as far as I’m concerned. We are humans, and in one way or another, humans lie. Maybe it might not always be that deep, but once in a while, we tell some lies to cover things up, to maneuver situations, to avoid many explanations, and for many other reasons. Sometimes, the lie we tag as little or simple could mean something very deep to the other person.
I understood this early, and in all my friendships, I do not take such things too personally. Whenever a lie that leads to disappointment happens, I just wave it off, although it disturbs the heart a little.
In my first year in school, I lived with two roommates in a big, spacious house. We cooked together because we were from the same community, which means we had known each other from home before coming to school. Things were going fine but got sour towards the end of the first two years (OND). Different unpleasant attitudes started showing up, lies became the order of happenings among us, and it didn’t take me long to adjust and become like them.
Before everything got sour, we had the lifestyle of contributing money to buy food items from the market and prepare meals that would last us for some days. But then, these guys started pulling up the lie of "I don’t have money" whenever it was time to cook. One of them started it until the other one joined. Because I’m the type that believes cooking and eating from home is far more economical than buying cooked food from restaurants, I would squeeze out the little money I had to prepare food. Sometimes they got to eat, and sometimes they didn’t eat at all whenever they stayed out for a day or two.
"Since they’ve developed the habit of not coming home for a day or two, does that mean they haven’t been eating?" This was the question, but the answer wasn’t far from the question itself. Of course, they had been buying food and eating.
I knew this, and on different occasions, I caught them in school food joints having lunch. And you know, if the money they were spending on breakfast, lunch, and dinner was put together, it could give us a big pot of soup that would last us for two to three days. But they had simply decided to change. I also decided to join the lifestyle of not cooking because it wouldn’t be me spending my money and time only for them to eat from it.
Guess what? After a while, one of them came back to his senses and began trying to take us back to the cooking era. Whenever he asked me if I had money to contribute so I could join him, I would simply tell him that I didn’t have money. Do me, I do you...🎶
Thanks for reading.
The image used is mine