Friendship You Can Never Get Back

Assalamu'alaikum,

Today I got an e-mail from one of my childhood friends.  There were times we grew apart, times we were convinced we'd kill each other, times we lost touch, and times we were inseparable.  Yet in some weird way, we were always best of friends.  We always knew we could call each other even if we hadn't called for months.  I have four or five friendships that fall under this category and we kind of have our own little group.  I like to call them my sisters...and not to be corny...but really because we have the love and bond of sisters and at the same time we can also tear each others hair out like sisters.  The group expanded as we moved away from one another and branched out into our own lives.  Parts of it broke off from silly teenage drama.  Nonetheless, the core group of friends always remained intact. 

Anyways, there was one thing she said that seemed out of place and stood out from the rest of the e-mail.  It was something that we all knew but never really talked about.  She wrote, "We always clicked...I have never made a friend like you anywhere else."  I also know that includes the rest of the girls...not just me...but being thousands of miles away from them...it really hit home.

We met around the time when I was in Pre-K.  We started off in the same town and gradually our parents took us our separate ways.  We went to completely different high schools and colleges far apart.  We grew up to become unique people with few similarities.  Somehow through Allah (swt) and technology (AIM)...we managed to make it through all that.  We made tons of freinds...lost most of them...and we always ended back together.  It almost sounds like the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants...except it was different in a way.

After marriage, I felt a distance form between all of us that I really thought this time it was it.  We wouldn't be able to go back to normal.  Heck...one of the girls turned Shia(not that I have anything against them...she just separated herself a little more b/c of it), the second one hated that I married an Arab, the third one married someone who took her away to lala land, and the fourth one just hated that we were all married and she wasn't.  Adding to all that...I moved across the world.

Surprisingly...Allah (swt) showed us a different plan.  I talk to them more now...than I did when I first got married.  All the other people that I thought I had grown so close to...people that I thought understood me in ways that my original group couldn't...they were the ones that let that distance separate us.  My sisters were the ones that bought webcams so we could skype, that e-mail me, that take the time out to look at all my pictures and comment on each one.  They are the ones that calculate the time difference...and wait for me to talk.  I love them and I never want to lose what I have with them...and I am so glad that we didn't let all the things working against us separate us.  I have tried so hard to make friends like that wherever I go...and I have never been able to form bonds like the one me and my sisters have.

So if you have a friend like that and there may be some distance creeping up between the two of you...crush it now...and don't let it grow.  There are some friendships that you can never replace.

I've been avoiding blogging...

for no good reason!  I just got lazy and didn't feel like I had something new and interesting to add to the blog.  Today, I was just thinking about an old friend of mine.  I received an e-mail from this friend that shocked me a few months ago. 

There was a time me and this friend were incredibly close.  We both kind of found our love for Islam together after some difficult times in our lives.  It was our passionate debates and discussions on Islam that really opened up my eyes about the dichotomy of what my heart believed and the way I lived my life.  I thought she was on the same page as me...but I realized soon after I was moving a lot faster than she was.   She would share her difficulties in trying to become a better Muslim and the challenges she was facing.  I wanted her to know that I was there every step of the way, I wasn't trying to pressure her, and to take it one day at a time.  She valued my opinions and would strongly consider them when making important decisions.  I was able to convince her to apply to school and finish her bachelor's degree and try to bring Islam back into her life.  After I got married, we lost touch.  I tried my best to reach out to her, but she didn't really respond.  She lived on the other side of the U.S., so it really made it difficult to get into touch with her.

About six months ago, I received an e-mail from her that shocked me.  She had sent out a mass e-mail to all of her contacts about a new website she started.  When I saw it, my heart dropped and I felt a sense of failure in a weird way.  I went to the website to find that she had finished her college degree and rather than setting out to find a job, she went back to the career before we had met...music.  It was a horrible and disgusting lifestyle...and it killed me to now she would go back to that.  I went to the site, listened to the music, and just felt even more disappointment.  I don't know...maybe if I heard songs that may have been more meaningful...I would feel better.  However, the songs were the pop garbage that is out today about meeting someone at the club and dancing.  Another song was about being famous and rich.  It really surprised me and I felt like I lost someone.  I really don't know how to explain it.  I had heard her songs from before we met.  At least they were filled with emotions and life lessons.  They were meaningful and deep.  These new songs were just duplicates of what is already out there.  Of course, I would never want her to go back to music in the first place...but I just found her lyrics to these new songs showed me a completely different person.  A person I never imagined she wanted to be.  A person she used to mock.  And then I started to think...the lengths people may go to to become famous and rich.  Maybe...I was blind to it...and this was what she really wanted from her life.  Most of all, the pictures she has posted at clubs and the way she looks...it only filled my heart with sadness and fear.  I feel saddened at what can happen to people...and I feel fear and I pray that I never get sucked into these traps.

Every now and then I go back to her website to see what she is up to.  Part of me is hoping one day I will go to that site to find that she has shut it down and fixed her life up.  I could never bring myself to e-mail her.  I didn't know what to say.  I just made du'a.