Aunt Agony @ Work

Maybe I shouldn’t have majored in Marketing.

Maybe I should have just followed my heart back then and pursued sociology, psychology, what have you.

Not sure why, it seems to me that I’m usually the person to whom most of my friends turn to whenever they need a listening ear.

Tried some test sent by my colleague a week ago, and the conclusion from the test was: More often than not, I’m my friends’ emotions garbage bin. Hmmm..

Not that I’m complaining.

Just that, somehow, I think subconsciously, I am getting bogged down with all the things I’m hearing. It makes my day dull and unhappy too. Unhappy because my friends are not in good shape, and it makes me feel worse that very often than not, I’m not able to give any good advice or assistance.

Which makes me wonder why my friends still come to me.

Upon looking back, two to three friendships were really forged years ago when my friends called me in the middle of the night – when I was actually already in slumber land.

I could still remember one girl friend called me at about 11 plus, crying, and asked me if I could get out of the house to meet her. I did. She wasn’t a very close friend back then, just another classmate.
She broke off with her boyfriend. Needed some emotional support but did not feel like calling her buddies. And the first one she thought of was me.

Case two was my phone rang one night too. Another girl friend, with whom I also wouldn’t say I was very close to, called crying at the other end of the phone too. Yes, another sad break up story.

Right now, my two close buddies (no, not the above two cases) are going through a rather rough patch too. In fact, I just put down the phone with one of them. She was crying real hard at the other end. I feel so helpless. Throughout the dunno-how-long conversation, she was crying, speaking, blowing her nose, yet on my end, I really do not know what to say to make her feel better.

I guess, what everyone needs is just a listening ear, some emotional support. I’m not sure how much empathy I can fork out still (if I can put it this way…), but for my friends, I guess, I’ll try…

可是，其实，很多时候，解铃还须系铃人。不是吗？