This is a Story

This is a story about a girl and a friendship.

About six years ago, give or take, I met a friend who I will call H. We met online, on the same forum that I met a good chunk of my other friends on (some of whom I've known for over ten years now, and who I consider my closest and dearest friends). We started talking, and soon realized we had a lot in common; we hit it off almost immediately.

The first eight months or so, things were fine. H was cheerful, friendly, supportive, funny and sweet. We got along famously, texting and talking constantly. We wrote stories together, drew together, met up a few times when had the chance and the money to (she lived quite a ways a way). She made friends with my friends, and all was well. We became best friends very rapidly and without any sort of hesitation in any way.

But it didn't last. Slowly, without me really realizing it, she and I became dependent on each other, so much so that it was almost impossible to do anything without the other. It became, in a broad sense of the term, obsessive on both sides. I wouldn't do anything without H, and she would't do anything without me. It had gone from a lighthearted, easy and fun friendship to an all consuming one.

It didn't stop there. I became, as time went on, more aware of how uncomfortable I was starting to get. How I felt stretched too thin. The enjoyment was beginning to fade; all the excitement and happiness that had been at the beginning of the friendship was slipping into something, something I didn't know what to call at the time. I couldn't quite put my finger on the reason for this - or maybe I just didn't want to. But everything that had once been a highlight of my life was now steadily becoming harder and harder to do.

H did not like this. She would pressure me to write with her and got mad when I said I was too tired, or that I didn't have the mindset to do so. If I talked about another friend, she would grow distant and cold, but wouldn't explain why. If I said I was excited about something that didn't involve her, she got waspish and snappy.

It got worse from there. I've always had memory issues, but H remembered every little word of every conversation we'd ever had. If I didn't remember something we'd spoken about, she'd lecture me. If  I forgot about something - even the tiniest, most inconsequential thing - she would accuse me of either not caring as much as she did, or tearing up and calling herself unworthy of my attention. I would apologize constantly, over and over and over again.

I was always apologizing.

"I'm sorry I forgot to text you."
"I'm sorry I didn't realize that you were upset."
"I'm sorry that I didn't answer you within ten minutes."
"Sorry I didn't say good night, I fell asleep before I could."
"Sorry I didn't say I love you too, I fell asleep."
"Sorry I spoke to another person who wasn't you."
"Sorry for not making you my number one priority in all things of my life."

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

From great, it got good. From good, it got bad. From bad, it got worse. From worse, it got horrible.

All the time we had been friends, H had been steadily isolating me from the rest of my world. She made friends with my friends to get closer to me, but she never really cared about any of them. She texted me constantly, every minute of every hour of every day. Wake up, text her. Eat breakfast, text her. Take ten minutes to myself? She'd text me, angry and hurt, either accusing me of ignoring her or being so standoffish and cold to me that by the end, I would be begging her to talk to me again - which was exactly what she wanted. Every little issue - or non-issue - was turned into a monumental one.

And everything was my fault. If it wasn't my fault, it became my fault. H's apologies were always loaded with phrases like "I'm sorry you didn't care enough about me to notice. I'm sorry I'm so worthless you forgot about me. I'm sorry, maybe I should just disappear." Not angrily. Not in frustration. Sad and upset and pained. And in the end, I would be the one reassuring her. I would be the one apologizing, and crying, and telling her I loved her and that I would always be there for her. In the end, I was the one who was wrong.

I've always had severe anxiety and depression. H took my memory issues and my mental health issues and used them against me.

The friends I had already had before H were starting to become hurt and angry, because I was talking to them less and less. Doing things with them less and less, because it was easier, in some ways, to try and appease H's constant moodswings and sobs of devastation over things I did than anything else. I was constantly telling myself that I was doing the right thing; that she had had a hard life, and that her behavior was the result of that. She needed me, I told myself; she needed someone to be able to be with her through all the bad things. I was good for her, I reasoned, because I could help her and I could keep her mind level.

Except that wasn't my job. I just didn't want to admit htat.

My best friend - my real best friend, the one who had stuck faithfully by me and who was one of the people most hurt during all of this because she was being shunted aside in favor of H - came to visit me. It was the first time she'd ever come to visit me, and we had been planning it for years. I tried not to let H know, because I knew she would be upset, which should have alerted to me that there was a real problem here, but I pretended otherwise because it was easier to think that than face the realities of my situation.

H did find out eventually, because it was hard to hide and because I was excited. She nearly lost her mind, crying and sobbing about how "we had been best friends for less but our friendship was more." How "I've been trying to visit you for ages and you keep making excuses about why I can't visit." How "all I've ever wanted was to come hang out with you but you'd rather do things with other people than me." She reminded me of conversations from so long in the past, I had no memory of them, but as usual, she did, picking apart every word I'd said to create a scenario in which I had denied her the chance to come visit me, even though it wasn't true at all.

I was exhausted and frustrated. I couldn't think of what to say, how to placate her. I tried every apology, every single thing that I could to explain things, to say that I still loved her and that I was still her best friend, that I wanted her desperately to come visit, even though by that time it wasn't true anymore. She refused to accept any reasoning. My mother told me to ignore her, and to not let H ruin the visit that had been planned for so long.

I gave up. I tried to be liberated. On my way to the airport to pick up my real best friend, I sang along - very loudly - to the tune of "You Don't Own Me" from the movie The First Wives' Club. I felt exhilarated for the first time in months. I picked up my best friend, and we had an amazing week. She and my mom hit it off immediately (they had already talked many times before this, but this was the first time they'd met in person), and she was integrated into my family very fast. Her kind heart and kinder soul were met with love and adoration.

But then the week ended and I had to face the music of H's explosive moods again. It was like I'd had a breath of fresh air and now I was back underwater.

She was still angry and hurt. We fought, for quite some time, and then finally came to a weary resolution that, while not explicitly stated, gave the impression that if I didn't talk about my best friend, then we wouldn't have any issues. H was my best friend, not this other person, this intruder. If I only pretended there was only H and me in the world, it would be fine. She still loved me, she still cared about me.

It went on like this for some time. I didn't talk to her about my other friends. I didn't talk about anything that wasn't something the two of us were doing, or that she wasn't related to. I became obsessive about making sure she was okay, because I didn't know what else to do, and because any time her moods took a turn for the worse, I would blame myself for them. I shouldn't have done this, I shouldn't have done that, I should have known better. I didn't talk as much to my mom about is I should have, because I was ashamed and because I was scared.

H had taken everything that I had loved and was pushing it away from me. My best friend, and another close friend at the same time were hit the most by this impact and saw me isolating myself. I was sacrificing myself and my friendships for the sake of someone who couldn't go ten minutes without accusing me of something. I knew, in my heart, that something was very, very wrong but trying to accept that and face it was too hard, too much, too overwhelming.

My mother died in 2015. It was the worst period of my entire life, the only thing that could ever truly leave me in a state of pure devastation and grief, so much so that I felt consumed by it. My mother, as most know, had been my best friend my entire life, my strength and my support. Losing her was a gaping wound and a physical agony I have never yet experienced since that time. 

H, and several other friends, came down for the funeral. It was a long drive and they got here in the middle of the night. Out of the four that came down, one was H, one was my best friend, and two were lovely, incredible people just wanting to support me. My best friend was the only one who had met my mother in person; the others were just there because they knew how important my mom had been to me and their willingness to drive 10+ hours last minute for the funeral of a person they had never met just because they wanted to make sure I was okay is something I will never forget.

My best friend was distraught and grief struck, as I was. She had become close with my mother, and she had loved her too. We sat on the stairs together for a while, just crying and being together, and then we went back up to my room, where everyone else was.

H was curled on her side, away from everyone. I tried talking to her. She refused. I tried hugging her. She wouldn't respond. I eventually managed to get her up and out as we ran to get snacks, but she was distant and quiet the whole time. I had no idea why, but it was hard to focus on her reactions when the rest of my mind was dreading the viewing and the funeral that were in the next two days.

I managed to get through both, with the support of those same friends, my family, and some other dear friends who drove or came up to support me. It was incredibly hard to say goodbye to all of them, and I cried a lot when they left. Their presence made me feel like I was back on solid ground again.

But H was different. In the weeks after the funeral, she was distant and cold. I tried to get her to talk to me, but she would just brush it off and say it was fine. When I finally managed to get her to tell me what was wrong, she said, in accusing tones I have never forgotten, "All you cared about at your house was [your best friend.] You didn't even care about me. You didn't even see that I was hurting too."

It was possibly one of the worst things she had ever said to me. It was the funeral of my dead mother, my favorite person. Of course I hadn't been thinking about anyone else. Of course I wasn't focusing on her. 

Of course it was all my fault.

I apologized. To this day, I can only hazily remember the rest of this conversation. At the time I didn't even realize what kind of person would have wanted all the attention for herself at the funeral of her best friend's mother. I could only, wearily and exhaustedly, apologize again and again for disregarding her.

There were two mes now - one before my mom had died, and one after. After-me was constantly tired, constantly grieving, needing time to myself to know how to put one foot in front of the other. I was talking less to people in general, because talking was hard, and it was an effort to know how to handle things. My brain was on auto-function most of the time, because that was the only way I could survive.

I moved. She came to help me move, and to visit my new place. Six months after I moved, I started working at the museum, which turned out to be one of the best choices I'd made, because in spite of the fact that the hours were long and the work was hard, the people were incredible. I finally felt, for the first time in a very long time, that I was beginning to feel okay again. My museum friends became a pseudo family for me while living in Pittsburgh; they cared about me and they invited me out and they made me feel good about myself. 

H texted me once, at 4am while I was working an overnight shift, to accuse me of hiding a secret blog with another friend. It was true, but in order for her to have found out, she would have had to do some serious digging and some obsessive hunting and puzzle piecing to get that. I had hidden it from her because I didn't want her to know I was doing something without her - a massive red flag, but I was still not admitting things to myself. 

I lied. I told her I didn't have one, I told her everything was fine, and she argued with me, until almost 5am, until I told her I had to work and needed to stop texting.

We eventually "made up," meaning I apologized and she forgave me. Mostly. Things like this happened again over the next few weeks, except that I had never done anything to be ashamed of or anything wrong and yet she always found ways to make it into a problem. My best friend and a few others I hold dear were growing impatient and hurt (and rightfully so) with my inability to see that I was essentially abandoning them for H. I very nearly ruined precious friendships for the sake of one person whose sole object in life was to make sure she controlled every aspect of mine. I came so close to losing people that it still scares me to this day how badly things almost ended.

By this time, things had turned into a nightmare. I was finally, finally starting to admit to myself that things were wrong - very wrong, so wrong that it had become unbearable. I set her texts to a specific tone so I could distinguish when she was trying to talk to me, and every time I heard that tone, I felt nauseated and afraid of what I would have to deal with. I was being suffocated, except I didn't want to cut things off because I was too afraid she'd do something drastic.

I didn't want to wake up. I didn't want to hear that text tone. There was a terrible, gut wrenching feeling in my chest and my stomach every time I saw that I had a message from her. I felt like I couldn't breathe, like I was losing my mind, like I was going crazy. My head was in such a terrible place that I couldn't possibly see a way out of it, drowning under waves of guilt and fear and shame and embarrassment and frustration and exhaustion. 

I don't remember the breaking point. It was another fight, another explosive overreaction from H, another onslaught of baseless accusations about how I never thought of her at all, and how I was the one who was making her feel the way she was feeling, about how it was all my fault, always. All I remember is the breaking, calling my aunt at midnight to sob because I couldn't talk to my mom anymore, and I couldn't handle this friendship, or whatever it was, anymore. It was killing me inside with every breath and I couldn't do it.

My aunt listened, with the patience of a saint, and the heart of one too, to my frantic and desperate cries for help. She calmly talked me through things, carefully reminded me of my worth, and let her know she loved me.

After that, I felt slightly stronger. I texted H and told her it was done. I wasn't going to talk to her anymore. This was it.

It was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. I spent countless nights panicking if I'd wake up to a text that something terrible had happened, that she'd done something drastic after all. I would stay awake, anxiety ridden and terrified, wondering what was going to happen next.

She had a meltdown. She begged me, desperately, via a third party friend who had the unfortunate circumstance of being caught in the middle, to talk to me again. She said she wouldn't push things, that she would let me have my space. Out of respect for the third party friend, and an attempt at getting her out of this mess, I told H yes. I said she could only text me in the afternoons, because I needed my space in the mornings because after losing my mother, I sometimes woke up forgetting she was gone and needed time to myself to grieve again.

She agreed.

It lasted a week, if that. Within a few days, she was demanding to know why I had set these arbitrary lines. Why I wasn't talking to her 24/7. How the fact that we always were constantly texting and talking was "something she didn't have with anyone else," even though I told her the amount of talking didn't matter, it was what we talked about. She couldn't handle not being in my life every second of every day.

I said no. This time the cutting off was complete. I would not talk to her again, I told her that was it, I was done.

It was excruciatingly painful.

She sent me one last message after that. One message that said I had clearly never cared about her as much as she had cared about me. How I had clearly ruined everything, how everything was, of course, my fault. How hurt she was that I was doing this to her for no reason.

All I said was "if you thought this was easy, you really never knew me at all."

And that was it.

Over the course of the next few months, she still tried to invade spaces I was in while simultaneously and crushingly, agonizingly and ruthlessly dropping any friend of mine that she had pretended to be friends with for the sake of getting closer to me. I got panic attacks just seeing her name pop up in group chats or in the games I was playing online. I very quickly learned to keep my distance, but just seeing her name was enough to send me spiraling, nauseated and panicky and upset. It was one of the worst times I've had to deal with; everything was magnified because of the loss of my mother already and this just made it worse. I wasn't sleeping well and I was trying to do everything in my power to not fall apart.

It's been almost five years now since I cut her off and only about three since I fully allowed myself to accept that what H had done to me was mental abuse. I didn't want to use that term; it felt like I was making too much out of what had happened. That I was overreacting and oversensitive - a byproduct of what H had taught me to feel, twisting situations to suit her narrative and making sure I was the one who thought myself wrong so that I was constantly apologizing for things I didn't need to apologize for in the first place. Over a year of severe manipulation, gaslighting, accusations, and insults to drag me down so that I would only be focused on her.

All this time later, and I am at peace, or mostly at peace. I don't get sick or nauseated or panicky seeing her name anymore, but I do feel a small twinge of uncertainty or soft alarm, a warning to keep my distance. I've heard she's doing okay now, that she found a significant other, that she is moving forward with her life. I don't harbor any anger or hatred to her; all I ever wanted was for her to be able to survive without me. I don't feel resentful, but I do know that what she did to me lingers, in spite of my lack of hatred. I have a lot of issues that stemmed from her abuse, so much so that it became an issue in future friendships - and the friendships I almost lost while under her control - but it's something I'm working on and something that I've tried to overcome. The people I nearly lost during that time have truly been saints because they forgave me for my behavior even though I nearly dragged them down during it. They are worthy of love and happiness and I can't actually say how thankful I am that they gave me a second chance; that they let me back into their lives. 

This isn't a story for pity or praise, or to drag up old memories or to make anyone, especially those who had to deal with me through this, relive how awful it was. I never thought I would be where I am now, because I thought there was no way out, no light at the end of the tunnel. I thought I would suffocate under all the pressure and the pain and the loss. I never got to think of what a life would be like that was any different.

But there was a light, and I did make it, and now I am in a good city, with amazing friends and family and people I love. I still have things I need to work on, because I'm in no way perfect, but I have been finally able to move forward, and that is an accomplishment in and of itself.