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Hard times` lessons: friends and hamsters
At times I wonder why I am so emotional and vulnerable when it comes to my friends. From my childhood, I thought it’s highly important to answer all my friends` messages and calls. I have never ever ignored them, because I was afraid of hurting their feelings. As it turned out, obviously, a lot of people behave differently. If I get a friend, who is becoming close to me, I will care. In addition, I will text him regularly, check if he is doing alright and be up to conversations.
My friends mean a world to me, they are not some strangers whom I tell my personal stories, with whom I share worries and joys. When I feel the coldness that comes from them, I immediately begin guessing what I have done to upset them. Undoubtedly, they might be concerned about something else and act differently due to their mood. I reckon, I will never understand this type of people. Perhaps, because I never want to be rude to my friends.
I have new acquaintances every year, I get to know them, occasionally, we get close or grow apart. It’s a usual process of life, but for an anxious person like me, moving on after a serious disappointment in new friends is quiet triublesome. By ‘serious disappointment’, I mean the situations when people`s true selves come out and It turns out they are completely different from the ones presented on get-to-know-stage.
I try to make moving on after hard periods of life easier and less painful by meditating, dancing, reading, hanging out. To let the past go, I would recommend doing something active and avoiding scrolling social medias. Scrolling drugs people in procrastination and overload human`s mind. In hard periods of life, while the person is scrolling short videos, he keeps consuming more and more, slowly starts losing interest in other less-dopamine-gaining activities. Sometimes, it might happen with mentally stable people. It`s much more effective and useful to get some fresh air or spend time with people.
Since I don’t want to write about my past friendships or any experience connected to my old acquaintances, I am going to talk about my beloved hamster Teddy (Tedros), who passed away on 4th January of 2023.
Three weeks before his death, I started noticing some weird things in Teddy`s behavior. He couldn’t fully open his eyes, barely went out of his house and moved slower. When I told my mother, she assumed that he might be dying. It was a harsh evening, I burst into tears and couldn’t stop.
After 3 days, I understood what happened: my Teddy had a hamster conjunctivitis!
Tedros had never had it, as well as other hamsters I had. The most disappointing fact is that I completely forgot about existence of such illness. Then, obviously, I bought special eye drops and began treating him. A week later, Tedros had grown a long tooth and his tongue couldn’t reach the sipper. Due to lack of vision, he wasn’t able to grind his teeth of wood, because he simply couldn’t see it!
I and my dad rushed to our vet and she cut his tooth. Unfortunately, it was too late. As I suppose, Teddy admitted that he was going to die. He didn’t even try to drink water anymore and it seemed that conjunctivitis didn’t let my Teddy be, too.
Through a lot of pain and battles with illnesses, Courageous Hamster Tedros died right after we celebrated New Year. I was preparing myself to his death all those weeks. Teddy lived 2 years and 4 months of a busy memorable life. I am so happy he managed travelling with me to my hometown, staying at my friend`s house while I was away, meeting my first niece. We have gone through pandemic together. Teddy was my closest friend, indeed.
I am infinitely grateful for all games we played, photoshoots we arranged and series we watched together. I don’t beleive that I will ever stop blaming myself in his suffers. I wish I understood that he got ill much earlier and took actions.
However, quote by Ron Hubard: “Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today and you make your tomorrow” must be added here in order to remember what`s done is done.
Although it was a sad story, let me include a fun fact. Tedros was not a boy. Biologically, he was a girl! The assistant told us it was a boy at the zoo shop. Later
on, when I started researching hamsters` species, I made a reveal. As a joke, I used to call him a transgender. That proves that Tedros was a special hamster.
People need to accept that they can`t influence everything they want, therefore, they sometimes become spectators, who have nothing left to do except to wait until the end of the ‘play’. What I intended to say is that hard life periods temper people and give them an individual experience, which will be a future reminder of how strong they are.
