It's better this way

Over the years, I have made a lot of friends and also lost a lot. It's crazy when I think about the number of people I have stopped being friends with and at one point I even stopped trying to make new friends because what's the point if by tomorrow we stop being friends? The funny thing is that I have lost certain relationships for no reason at all other than I just got bored or lost interest in the mutual thing I shared with that person. I'm usually not one of those people that's afraid of losing friends, because I tend to do that a lot.

I have come to realize that everyone is not meant to be in our lives forever and as you grow older, you tend to keep fewer friends because when most of us were younger, we didn't have many responsibilities, so it was easier to maintain lots of relationships. I remember a period when I spent most of my time on WhatsApp and I had lots of friends, but all that changed when I started to put my life together by learning a skill, so I spent less and less time online, which inevitably affected my relationship with friends, but I didn't mind.

As I said earlier, I cut off people for very simple reasons but sometimes, some people really had it coming because the relationship was turning into something else entirely. There are a lot of experiences to pick from, even a failed romantic relationship that would be too embarrassing to talk about 😅 but for now, I will just focus on the story of 3 old friends I had to let go. The four of us had been friends since high school and even after we graduated from high school, we still hung out together.

We even went to the same computer school, attended the same JAMB lectures and 3 out of the 4 of us went to the same church (the last person lived a bit far from us). Everything was going fine until these guys picked up bad habits and started smoking. Now, I'm not someone who easily bows to peer pressure, so I still spent time with them even though they are smokers. It wasn't long before they added gambling to it and although I followed them to betting shops, I didn't gamble with them. It got to the point where they went into internet fraud, and I wasn't surprised because it just started to get popular back then and their guys easily picked up social vices.

I was the only one that went the legitimate way and I started working in a computer centre, but I still maintained my friendship with those guys. At last, 2 of them travelled out to Ghana (those of you in Nigeria should already know why) and I didn't speak to them for over a year, then suddenly they returned with a lot of money. Mere looking at them, I knew they were no longer the people I used to know, and I didn't see why I should still be friends with them, we no longer had similar interests. The one year I lost contact with them made it a lot easier to cut them off, and I never looked back.

So, out of the 4 of us, 2 went to Ghana and fully embraced the life of internet fraudsters, while me and my other friend stayed back in Nigeria. That other one used to join them to do all those social vices but he stopped when they travelled out. The problem with that guy is that he is easily influenced, always wanting to "belong" and blend in. But since the masterminds of the whole thing left, he changed back to normal. Both of us got into the university the same year and we became roommates. Things went well for the first year but from the second year, he linked up with some miscreants in the neighborhood and resurrected his old habits.

He started smoking, taking hard drugs and also went into internet fraud (or rather, he resumed). I talked to him about his habits and it got to a point where I even reported to his mom, but it didn't change anything. In fact, reporting to his mom now gave him the courage to no longer hide those habits from his family, because previously he had to hide them from his family but after they found out, there was no point in hiding it anymore. now, this one was much harder to cut off because I am very close to his family.

I'm also friends with his sisters and the elder one even lived close to us back then in the university, so most of the time she was the one I reported his bad habits to. The solution came in my fourth year when the landlady of my hostel gave everyone quit notice and we had to look for somewhere else. Two of my coursemates lived in the same hostel, so I went with them to look for a new place. After we found one, I just told my roommate that I had found someone to pair up with, and he should do the same because houses are too expensive.

That was how it ended. I rented a new apartment with my coursemate and I gradually stopped talking with my previous roommate, and the friendship died naturally. The only person from his family I still occasionally talk with is his younger sister, and even though it was sad the way the whole thing ended, it is better this way. I didn't like the way he changed, and that sudden change also changed the meaning of our friendship because we no longer had similar interests, he dumped his good habits and picked up nasty ones, not something I could deal with

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