Bill Maher once said , ” To a coward , courage always looks like stupidity.”

I don’t agree with that . There is a fine line between courage and stupidity. For instance , when Spiderman saved his friends and killed off his enemies , he was courageous but when he disobeyed Stark he was being stupid although he was trying to prove himself and be brave.

The last time I was courageous was while searching for my lost friend. Let’s call her Ruby.

Ruby is pretty and lost . Ruby has the ability to escape reality whenever, wherever . She can directly look into your eyes , appearing to be looking straight into your soul while you are busy uttering your deepest thoughts and you would feel grateful to have such an attentive friend but your self centred self would never know that her feet currently lie in some beautiful lake in Udaipur and her hair is blowing in some easy breeze above the hills. This is because you like to judge a book by its cover. She looks all innocent and divine so you would never come to a point of dubiousness when she’ll keep her hand on your shoulder and console you for something you care about and think she cares about too . But she mostly doesn’t. Not because she is evil or heartless but because she just didn’t hear you. That’s it .

So , while searching for her-without the permission of my teacher because they were absent – I went all the way across the corridor. Now this is the kind of freedom we are not allowed to enjoy at our school . Not because they are strict disciplinarians but because they just can’t manage to be one .

Anyway, while rambling across the hallway I accidently bumped into my ex English Teacher and boy she is a real monster. Just after she looked at me with distrust and perplexity , my mind lighted up with the perfect trickery. I asked her about if the late comers had dispersed back to their classes . She answered in the affirmative and then I politely asked her about her health and how she had been to dispel the little undercurrent tension present. She answered in a few words and then I left . This way I got to know that Ruby was either absent or got thrown off her conveyance , both of which are usual , and made the teacher happy . I had hit two targets with one arrow. The girl who had accompanied me praised me for my confidence. I am pretty good at lying . But I am better at detecting lies .

Like last night when my best friend and I caught our con artist friend , let’s call her Judas , red handed with her boyfriend . We told her about how her mother had seen them together. Her mother is real sneaky. She literally walked without any sound and looked over at them . Now this was probably because she knew about their “friendly” rendezvous and she wanted to keep a check if there was any funny business involved . And there was. We saw them kissing and doing all the lovey-dovey stuff imaginable . I don’t know if her mother saw it though . So when we saw it all happened , we went inside the park and told her about it .To our utter shock , she blatantly lied to us about how far apart they were sitting . She tried to fake her confidence and lie but I knew she was lying . Anybody like me would know it . Because I have enough experience of such stuff . I have lied unsuccessfully in the past. (Only my mother was able to detect it though ) The art of lying is so subtle people fail at it more often than not . And yesternight she failed too . Some credit goes to my instincts too .

After discovering her ungrateful and dishonest side we were filled with rage and frustration with ourselves . It had taken a lot of courage for us to even initiate that conversation because , you know , it wasn’t like she wanted us to know anything about her illicit affair . We were supposed to be proud but the way it ended just made us feel foolish and stupid and guilty for being invasive. At least for me it is . This was the second time we tried to help her .

The first time was when my mother’s sister saw them together in the same park. We cautioned Judas for that and she was still ungrateful. But after that happened we had kind of rekindled our friendship and it was US who helped her confess her feelings for the godforsaken boyfriend and she just doesn’t feel even a little glint of thankfulness. We were excited for her. She even came to us ( we were ignoring her ) to talk to us about their first fight about how she shared her meal with him but he allegedly hated that vegetable and told her off , which is kinda rude , I accept . Hence she was upset . She vented about how obsessive her boyfriend is and it’d just been four days of them dating . (He literally calls Judas’ mother ‘mom’ and calls her his mother’s ‘daughter in law ) So we talked to her about it . And then yesterday happened .

The leftover scrapes of trust we had for her dissipated into nothingness after yesterday. I can’t comprehend how heedless and self centered poeple can be.

In our culture things like relationships are seen as mere distractions from studies and hence are unacceptable . Also it is the girl who usually loses her freedom after such things happen because people start talking about her and question her character , which is just disgusting. Judas was probably being rebellious . Being a free spirit , I fully understand her and that was the reason for helping her. But her utter disrespect has shown the dark side of the world . I am not an optimist and this has done nothing better for me .

One thing that I’ve learnt from this is that more often than not we end up in situations that make us feel stupid which we had thought of to be a brave choice . Courage is knowing that it is gonna hurt and still doing it . And so is stupidity . This is why life is hard and unpredictable.

So we should just trust our guts and even then if we fail , we should rant on a blogpage , listen to a bit of Taylor Swift and just move on.

Here’s a playlist to listen to if you’ve ever been betrayed by a friend like me or anyone in general –

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/14yqnpz6fTZCnyqJDY2YcE?si=u73lS0PqSaePSDqS3uMf_A&utm_source=copy-link

P.S. : Comment your experiences of betrayal and how you overcame it .