They Were Best Friends for Over a Decade—Then One Shocking Moment Changed Everything
Since that infamous “I don’t care” day, I have been hospitalized three times for attempted s*****e. I had gone off the deep end, almost hurting N during a horrible panic attack. I had cried openly in front of people I barely knew in school. N and one of our mutual friends started bullying me, and I eventually had to move towns and change schools because it wasn’t going to stop. I have one friend that I still talk to from that school; the others I tried to talk to afterward but it didn’t really work out.
I have since gone through an underage drinking phase and a h*e phase, both of which I have gotten over entirely. I will probably be on anti-anxiety medication for the rest of my life, but I have since found religion and made peace with myself over what happened. I have forgiven N, and I think the final part of that was writing out the main details and posting. So thank you.
And that’s what happens when a nice girl likes a nice guy. They’re both immature and pretty terrible. But things aren’t all bad. That friend I mentioned that I keep up with: We’ve been dating for over a year now, and we told each other that we love one another for the first time just last week.
My “best friend” all through high school always had some weird f*****t-y tendencies through the time I knew him. Literally couldn’t admit he was wrong about anything, blindly and loyalty supported the US government and police, and thought that weed was the most evil thing in the world. At one point, he told me, knowing that me and my parents had all tried weed, that anyone who had ever smoked pot should be locked up for their whole lives to “protect them”.
The final straw was after I went to him after my first s*****e attempt. He didn’t have any emotional response to his close friend of many years telling him that they’d tried to k**l themselves. All he did was ask if I had smoked within a month of the attempt. When I said yes, he told me that that was why and refused to discuss the topic further. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it that day, but we didn’t really speak again (our families used to be so close that they were practically intertwined, so this was a pretty big deal). I messaged him a month or two ago during a bad depressive episode, after not having spoken in years, and he actually apologized, for the first time since I met him. We still aren’t friends, but I’m glad that I don’t feel the same animosity anymore.
Had a friend over to my apartment who asked for a soda and I figured he was trustworthy enough to say, “Help yourself from the fridge.” He returned to the living room and announced that he had fixed my thermostat setting.
Just like that. He hadn’t asked permission. He didn’t remember what setting it was before he messed with it. He couldn’t even articulate what he thought was wrong with my setting.
This was quite a few years ago before the Internet had enough information to look up refrigerator settings in a minute. So I looked inside my fridge and tried to figure out what to do, then shrugged and went back to other responsibilities. I was a full time student working two part time jobs.
In the next week all the contents of my fridge rotted.
This guy doesn’t take any responsibility for the expense or the effort of replacing a full fridge of food.
At this point I realize he’s really an affable jerka**. Thinking back on a couple of other things he’d done that I’d written off as honest mistakes when they first happened, I decide he’s more trouble than he’s worth.
I had a long time friend who was in an unhappy situation. He lived at home and had just been laid off of a job he loved. He was pretty unhappy.
The problem was that he was a b***h about it. He had no education and was incredibly unhealthy, but would not accept a position for under 60k a year starting. I’d find something close to his home that was near that pay and he would turn it down. He was just a d**k, all the time. And I tried to be patient.
I have this rule with all my friends. If you’re rude to me then whatever, but if you’re in my home and you’re rude to my other guests to an unreasonable degree then we are done.
He made the mistake of taking his b****y attitude and sniping constantly at my other friend and my wife. At the end of the evening I just never contacted him again. I never said anything, I just dropped the friendship and moved on.
It’s been three years and if I’ve heard truthfully from others he is still unemployed and still lives with his mom.
I’ve posted this elsewhere but it’s relevant. I met Lisa at university, doing our Master degree. When we met, she lived in the inner city, as did I. We hung out a lot, as we had a mutual love of good food and too much wine. Then she got pregnant and moved out to the ‘burbs. It took me nearly 2hrs to get to her new place on public transport (longer on weekends), as I don’t have a car because…inner city living! But still, I consistently go to visit her – birthdays, dinners, baby shower, baby parties, just to hang out, babysat a couple of times. Sometimes I stayed the night, but mostly I came home. She never came my way anymore as she was a single mother so her flexibility during pregnancy and especially with a newborn was limited. Then one night I missed the last tram home by about 3 seconds, and got stuck in the middle of a sketchy area for a while very late at night (around 1.45am), until my Uber arrived. The Uber trip home cost me over $100, which is why I kept using public transport. I made a joke about it the next morning, we had a laugh, I thought nothing of it. Went to a few more events at her place after that.
Then she messages me one night specifically to tell me that I’m not invited to her birthday dinner that weekend and was no longer welcome at any of her events until I had ‘an alternative method of transport’. Apparently me getting home was causing her massive stress (first I’d heard of it) and she was sick of me shutting down her ideas (again – first I’d heard of it, we’d literally never talked about it before). She told me I was welcome to discuss it more if I wanted but she hoped she understood why I wasn’t welcome at her house any longer.
