Love and Friendship

Written by Habiba Suliman

Edited by Duha

Love…

That ecstatic feeling that surges through one’s whole body; it is essential for us human beings to live, to breathe normally. Come to think about it, this world would turn into a massacre without love in it; it would be a blood bath. Although love can be a motive for murder sometimes; but it is necessary nonetheless. If we forfeit love, then we will cease to exit. This world will cease to exist if we forgone the only thing that makes us humans.

But then we have friendship, right? Those bonds that we keep on making no matter where life takes us. No matter how little friends we have or how  many, they are still priceless. Friends are like diamonds, rare to find the true ones and easy to have a million fake. Friendships get you through the day, they push you to be the best you can ever be. Yes, not all of them turn out as we expect them to be. Not all of those friendships help us, some destroy us and some hurt us badly enough that we cannot trust again.

And so does love.

So here comes the question, can love and friendship co-exist? Or will they both break us apart?

Love and friendship are like oxygen to most of us, if not all. Some find solace in love and some find comfort in friendship. If you ask people who lasts longer? You’ll find that it is very controversial. Some will say that love will be the one to conquer cause love conquers all right? Yet, others will disagree. They’ll say that friendship will be the one to victor. I would have to argue that they both end. That no matter what you do or to what extent you go to save it, it ends. And that’s the ugly truth. That it ends. Eventually, it fades and it keeps doing so until you realize you have nothing left but you.

But then again, in order for you to fall in love with someone, you’d have to be friends first; to build a friendship so deep that it eventually turns to something so epic, which is love. For you to love someone with every inch of your body and soul, you’d have to know all their darkest secrets and deepest regrets. You’d have to know all of the mistakes they’ve done and still choose to love them. That’s when you know that your friendship worked. When you choose to stick around after all you’ve been through, all the ups and downs of the friendship, all the miserable days and the good ones. That’s when you realize that you want more. That you need more. That’s when it hits you that friendship escalated and became so much more than two people messing around. It became home.

Yet, I’ll tell you the heartbreaking part about all of this. The heartbreaking part is that once love dies, everything dies along with it. The friendship, the smiles, the ups and downs, the memories, and even a little bit of you. the moment love ends is the moment where everything goes silent for a very long time. it’s the moment where the world turns into an old tv of black and white. That’s the most gruesome thing of it all. That it ends.

So here I ask again and for the last time, can love end and not take away the friendship with it? The memories? Can love not end? Can love and friendship co-exist without breaking any hearts?