El amigo que no presta y el cuchillo que no corta que se pierda poco importa.
A knife that has lost its sharpness and doesn’t cut anymore is useless. And so too is a friend that doesn’t lend (money or any other valuable thing). That is what the proverb says. But we don’t agree, at least not completely.
A blunt knife can still be used to spread marmalade on toast, as if it were an ocean full of sharp-edged waves. The knife’s back and forth movement a tide in its own right. There is no need to substitute the knife for a spoon, and make do with a half-hearted sea that wouldn’t taste the same. The spoon would be better used to replace a friend that doesn’t lend. Not their encouragement. Not their time. Not their help. Half a heart on a spoon will always be better than a friend with no heart at all.
Do you know what friendship is? It’s knowing that when the time comes to move on to the next stage of your life your friend won’t leave you behind. It’s knowing that the ocean lives on in the rain, because evaporation doesn’t separate water from salt.
I was told that if I got lost in the forest I should just stay put and wait to be found. But for that to work, I should matter to someone else. Just enough to have them come looking for me.
When a knife doesn’t cut anymore, you sharpen it. You don’t just throw it away. You sharpen it.
You find me so pathetic that you think I need you to give me worth? I may not be a knife, but I don’t need you to struggle to find something to say. I don’t need you to tell me that a spoon can be used to spread marmalade too.
What you split up with your knife, I can put back together with my spoon. You cut the ground to pieces and throw those pieces to the sea, to have separate islands. But I can drain the sea, one spoonful at a time, until those islands reunite.
I thought that we were friends. I never questioned our friendship. But you got lost in the forest and I should already have gone to look for you. But no matter how hard I try, I cannot come up with a reason to do it. Because you are not here, and I am not missing anything.
I wish our friendship had ended just like it began. Sharing bread with marmalade. But that red thing that I see on your knife isn’t strawberry marmalade.
If something matters, you don’t give its name to something else. Wasting time with someone doesn’t make them a friend. Calling them that only belittles those that really are friends.
As long as we are together, we will never be truly lost.
In a perfect world both of us would contribute the same to this friendship, and we would reap the same benefits.
We will always be friends. It’s a promise.
Why couldn’t you have been a rival, instead of making me waste my time? I didn’t need a friend, I didn’t need an enabler. All I ever wanted was a rival.