Disclaimer: Yet again, sarcastic post ahead! You don’t have to read. Turn back now. There may be several resemblances to people alive or dead, which is purely coincidental, or is it? But I am not telling. If you are offended, chances are you have behaved this way, and you know it. Write a rebuttal (on your own space, please) or shout out insults or hatch nefarious plans or bitch to your cronies (all of which you probably do anyway); but kindly don’t bother me. Remember, I will never reveal if this is about you; in fact, will deny it.

Relationships are not for everyone. And yes, I am definitely speaking from experience. I don’t know how to make friends, and worse, if even some friendships happen in twisted turn of fate, I don’t know how to keep it. Blah, and finally I throw up my hands in the air and shout from the top of my lungs, “Hell! Yes, you win! I give up.” I am freaking idealistic in a very real and very selfish world, and I would have been dead by now, if it were a few hundred years back (murdered in bed, by the looks of it!).

Don’t get me wrong, I have friends- the long-standing kind, the ones who have known your heart and locked it away with their own, away from the evil, prying glances. But there are still the ones, who you love, who you defend against the whole world, the ones you wouldn’t blink an eye for before laying down everything, to rush to their side and ironically the ones who look down on you, and smirk, of course they care, while turning away their faces to hide their sniggers.

Honesty apparently is much high a price for a relationship. A relationship is nothing but a means for your own ends, the price of which is negotiated over the usefulness of it. It is measured in favors, gotten and returned. As an example one of the easiest way to measure a relationship is how much food you have fed the others (in weight or dollars, your pick) and how much others have fed you, in return (My parents didn’t bring me up right when they forgot to teach me this!). It is measured not in loyalty or love, but in following and serving. It has a price tag that costs your integrity, tests your loyalty and needs your servility, with nothing in return, especially not the truth.

The sad truth is when you treat people nice and proper, they don’t care, they simply take you for granted, and someone not worth giving any time, effort or thought to. Because you don’t harm back, harming you becomes fun, and you are a joke, because your trait is considered to be one of cowardice, not virtue. Funny, that when I go against my innate nature, and treat people with practiced indifference and even, mild derision, they do a double-take and rush forward to coax and please me. One day, I will venture into the world of affected reckless rudeness and am eagerly anticipating the reactions. How is that we, humans, are so imbecile that we respect those who mistreat us, but hurt and insult who’d never disrespect us?

Every day I have honored every little thing that one has done for me (and they have done, from a little to a lot, that I always respect and never conveniently forget), but I never treated it as a one way street. I have tried to honor my friendships and help out when I could (for some, even when it meant making me and what was mine secondary) and all I asked for in return was courtesy. I never wanted accolades, and I wasn’t keeping tabs, and cross-checking. But apparently that’s exactly what I was doing wrong! Forget courtesy or gratitude, I got shot down brutally, lied about, insulted even, for what I did for them.

The very friends sometimes you love, protect and care for, are the ones bad-mouthing you to the world when you are not around. It seems like an recurring lesson that I seem not to learn. Do a thing, never out of your way, and only if it hands out some benefits for you in return, or you know you’ll extract something back eventually as a price for your effort. And you’ll be friends for ever!

But there are compensations. There are them, who don’t go around preaching and proclaiming to be your ultimate well-wisher, and actually care and look out for you, without needing the fanfare and big, fancy words. It is that goodness in the world that still gives me hope, and makes me feel that I am not a complete idiot after all. I do learn my lessons the hard way, but the journey brings me those wonderful beings (they know who they are) as well that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. For the others, I tell myself, the Universe knows that I did my best, at least I tried.

Yup, I have severe case of misplaced and abused love (and I am a work-in-progress replacing it and using it right), but what the hell, they’ll realize it themselves one day what they lost.  Meanwhile, I’ll concentrate on the people who don’t take out their “book of accounts” every time we interact.