“Treat others the way you want to be treated!” Personally I feel that if I treat you with respect that I should get that in return. Recently I went through a troublesome situation with one of my closest friends.  I kept so much in which made me feel unimportant.  I started thinking that I have a lot of people that love and care for me. After years of hiding my emotions, I thought it would be more desirable for me to tell my friend, Ashley, how disrespected and damaged I was with some of the things she was doing.  I finally stood up for myself and told  Ashley my concerns with our friendship and how humiliated I felt because of some of the things she had done to me. 

Sitting outside waiting for Ashley felt like years. I sat there thinking about what I wanted to say to her and telling myself not to let my emotions get the best of me. Watching Ashley walk up my driveway, I was feeling different emotions. I was thrilled to see her because I hadn’t seen her in a long time. I also felt broken because I couldn’t understand how someone could go from treating you so well to suddenly treating you so badly. I felt devastated.  I had a hard time looking her in the eye knowing that she hadn’t cared about my feelings when she hurt me.
When I finally looked at her I could see that she knew she was in the wrong. She said, “Will you just hear me out and let me tell you my side” I said, “okay”. While talking to Ashley I felt worthless and broken because I remembered all of the marvelous times we had shared together. We used to go everywhere together.  Always side by side and now we were barely speaking. I listened to what she had to say and then she listened to what I had to say. Once I told Ashley how I felt and how I deserved to be treated she knew that she had hurt me and that she messed up. We decided to go our separate ways. I knew it would be hard to not have her close friendship, but it wasn’t ever going to be like it used to be because I was too devastated. I knew I was done feeling worthless or hurt or crying all the time because I had told her how I felt and I knew it was time for me to move on. What’s important in a friendship is that both people treat each other with respect and dignity that they would want in return.