Real Talk: Maturity & Friendships

Hello Everyone,

Today I wanted to start a new series on my blog called “Real Talk”, this will be a weekly or bi-weekly post where I share some of my own personal thoughts and experiences in hopes that you too can relate to these and connect with me. Although they may often seem like a rant, these posts will just be my personal thoughts that I wanted to share with all of you. Feel free to comment and respond, civilly.

For the first ever “Real Talk”, I am addressing a situation that I wish occurred more, which is maturity. I’ll start with a little story:

As many of you know from my blog and social media, my best friend is Tessa from Simply Tess. We usually attend events together, share blog ideas and grab coffee; you would think that we have been best buds all along, but that is certainly not the case. In fact when we began hanging out we turned a lot of heads, for good reason. Tessa and I had previously cheered together at Grand Valley State, our university. We never thoroughly “hated” each other, but this past year on the team we were not exactly friends either. We often were going head-to-head, cliques against cliques; may I add cliques we didn’t even mean to be apart of. Tessa quit the team early in the season due to an injury, acceptable. I later quit in November due to the irrelevant drama and costs that I was taking on. I was always sad and I felt very negative about myself mentally and physically. In this act of deciding to quit Tessa actually helped me out a lot. she offered great advice and positive words. We began to bond on the situation, through this we confronted each other about all the unnecessary drama that had occurred between us that season and we let it all out.

Now knowing we had never really been close friends on the team, many of our former teammates gave us crooked looks and shed a few whispers, but here is where my Real Talk lesson comes in. Although society make it seem like we should hold grudges and forever hate our enemies, that is not the truth. If you are mature enough to confront one another about your past and move on from it, that speaks volumes. Sure, Tessa and I befriending one another may have seemed crazy in the beginning but let’s be real, we were probably the most similar on the team than we ever realized. She has a blog, and I do too. She loves the beach, as well as I do. She is positive and ambitious, like me.

Due to the collective environment we were in, we both decided we had become people we were not proud of and having the courage to admit that and move on shows strength. Girls are often petty about drama and let it consume them to the point of never actually growing up and moving on. People, in general, find themselves stuck in these negative environments and don’t realize the changes that should be made. We both were able to remove ourselves from it, confront ourselves and each other about who we had become and we pushed past it. “Maturity starts when the drama ends” and that quote perfectly explains us. We became friends when we gave up the drama and grew up. Cheer held a place in both of our hearts, but like they say sometimes you have to let the things you love go.

Real Talk Lesson: Be mature, especially when it comes to relationships. Being able to be honest and straight forward will only benefit the relationship because if it doesn’t you know you’re in a toxic relationship. Toxic people are easy to come across, they are masked as decent human beings that care, when in reality they are quite selfish and well toxic. Drop the drama. Find the strength and courage to step back from these people and accept that you are not what they made you; you have time to find who you really are and become who you would like to be.

Tessa and I are just my personal example, but this can extend to boyfriend/girlfriend scenarios and other friendships. It’s not always easy to confront people or face the facts, but it will benefit you in the end. Your relationships will be stronger and probably last longer too.

*If you are thinking about quitting something or removing yourself from a toxic environment I have a throwback post for you here.

Thank you for reading the first ever Real Talk, I hope it was inspirational or informational, either way I want you to be able to take something from this. If you have been in a similar situation or you have an ex-enemy BFF, feel free to share your story with me. People might now always change but you can only control yourself, so focus on that. Always remember you are enough. Thanks again for stopping by today, share and subscribe to stay connected. Super fun post coming on Friday about ways to get out this summer and stop having FOMO (fear of missing out).

Happy Wednesday.

xo,

Lyss

Quote about today’s post: