Easy(?)

These few days have been tough on my friends.  On one hand, I've a good friend struggling with the loss of his home, with his family now living in a rental place and coping with the death of a loved one, while he and his siblings are struggling with financial needs to complete and pursue their respective degrees.  It's tough to watch this one as a bystander.  But he doesn't want my sympathy, just my understanding.

On the other hand, another friend of mine decided to run away from home after an argument with a relative.  I found out about this as my Whatsapp message feed blew up overnight.  I'm trying to be objective here, but after my altercation with said friend, this will indefinitely sound lop-sided.

Here's what happened: she drove off at the dead of night, in an already unsafe Malaysia setting (see previous post), ignored phone calls and messages from her friends who were way more concerned for her own well-being than herself, and her parents even filed a police report to look for her.  

In my opinion, this was downright childish: she had everyone worried sick and didn't understand the repercussions of her actions.  So I gave her some tough love, along the lines of "sit down and talk about your problems versus running away to avoid the issue".  And what does she reply in kind?  

"Easy for you to say, Fang.  You don't understand.  You just don't."

Clearly, I was offended at this point.  Easy?!  No one has it easy in life.  If you think I have it easy, then you're no more right than I am wrong.  Plus, to say I just don't understand is plain absurdity.  If I don't understand, make me bloody understand it.  The assumption that she is herself, having it worse than others screams naivety and immaturity.  We're freaking 22 year-olds for crying out loud!  Still, she rather acts like she's still in high school.

News flash here: Everyone has struggles!  You think I wear laurels of them and expect to be cooed and whispered sweet nothings to?  Life goes on, and if you refuse to adapt, you are going to die.  Plain simple.

Easy for me to say?  That's gotta be the worse joke I've heard in a long time.  Utter bullshit.  Shame that this disagreement will affect our friendship.

Expectations - Brika