Loss of Friendships

For the past several years since 2019, I’ve lost many friends. Friendships that lasted over six years were gone in an instant. The biggest grief to face besides the death of a loved one is the ending of a friendship, especially if that friendship ended badly. For this post, I feel like being honest and I just want to talk about something I’ve faced since I was young. That is my difficulty with making friends. I want to talk about the friendships I’ve lost and what I’ve learned from them.

I am awkward and quiet. I don’t go out of my way to meet new people. I’ll always be petrified of what they may think of me. Ever since my primary school days, I’ve had a low opinion of myself. Kids can be mean and can’t communicate properly so cruel things can be said at a young age. Ever since I was a child, I’ve thought that no one likes me and I don’t deserve to be liked. I’m the ugly awkward friend that no one wanted to be friends with. I used to be alone a lot. I would eat my lunch in the library because I didn’t have anyone to eat with. And it didn’t help that for most of my teenage years, the friends I had surrounded myself with, bullied me.

In my secondary school days, I was surrounded by toxic friends. My friend group consisted of five of us and we had a leader. She always did things her way and we followed suit. I knew her since we were in primary school and I thought I knew her pretty well. But I was wrong. She would pretend that we were on the same page, such as, we would go to the cinema and love the movie. But next day in school, she would tell the rest of the group that it was awful and made me look like the weirdo for liking it. The group loved Twilight for years, but once she decided she didnt like it anymore, everyone else followed suit. It was very much a cult of personality. The rest of the group would almost play into how she did things and I became the outlier. There were times where this girl would ignore me for months on end and I wouldnt have done anything to her. And when I did ask her why, she would just laugh in my face. After years of being made fun of, little backhanded comments and being ignored by the people who I thought were my friends, I decided to fight back. I became more argumentative with the leader. We fought a lot, mostly she started them. But I wouldnt have been innocent to all of the fights. But when she was in the wrong, the group would always side with her. I remember it was my final year in school, and six years worth of abuse and stress led to me bursting into tears in front of my mother. So I decided to end the friendship with the leader. It ended with her cursing me out, confirming we were never friends and storming out. My mother was called by her mother and they had a meeting. Basically, the blame was put solely on me and she tried to spread rumours about me in the school afterwards. I spent the rest of my final year, eating by my locker and avoiding the group like the plague. I did tell the rest of them that if they wanted to know the truth about what happened between me and the leader, all they had to do was ask. They never even tried. So I entered college with no friends and quite a lot of distrust of people.

When I entered my college years, I found my people. Good people that treated me pretty well and I felt comfortable with. No back-stabbing and no need to create toxicity. But as the years drew on, I experienced the selfish friends. Friends that only care for themselves and you only serve a certain purpose for them. The ones that would look at your messages and never respond to you when you ask to meet. I had one particular friend who I called Mé Féiner (the irish word for myself). All she cared about was drinking and needing us around to take care of her. I remember that back in the day, I sat down and tried to think of all the pros of having this person as my friend. All I had was that she was a drinking friend, and a terrible one at that. When we went out drinking, she used to abandon us all the time. Now, thats fine when you are in a group. I remember one time, where I was out drinking with her, I got really drunk. I was so drunk that I was puking on my leg. Instead of waiting with me until my parents came to get me, she left me there and asked a group of strangers to keep an eye on me.

Another time, she asked me to meet up with her but I had already made plans with some college friends. She asked if she could come along, but at that rate, she always made a habit of dragging herself into things where she wasnt invited and my friends didnt like her. So I said to her that I cant meet her that night, but I could meet the next day or the following day for coffee instead. She tried to guilt trip me into saying she needed someone to talk to and cant I just push my plans ahead. I said no, because my friends and I had tried planning this night out for weeks but we were all too busy to meet up. And I hadnt seen them in over a month, whereas I saw this girl nearly everyday. When she wasnt getting what she wanted, she turned it back on me and said, “I would cancel a wedding for you if I knew you were this bad.” The biggest red flag for me in that moment, was that I would normally have dropped everything to hang out with her. So the one time I didnt do that, she took to quilt tripping me and lecturing me about how I wouldnt make time for her.

I had a couple of interventions with her and explained that I would not torelate that behaviour. I told her that she would never cancel a wedding for me. In fact, she wouldve attended that wedding and drank herself silly before she would ever consider coming to help me. But the biggest thing that broke the camels back for me, was that she betrayed my trust and showed how selfish she really was. Maybe someday I may tell that story but thatll need a whole other post to detail how bad this was. All you need to know for now, was that she hurt someone I loved and betrayed my trust to the point that it couldnt be reversed. So I cut her out of my life and so did the rest of our group. For me, that person only cared about their needs being met and they would never do the same for you. I would always meet up with them when they needed me, but if the roles revered, it would a different story. She never really cared if I was there, especially when she did things that she knew would hurt me. So I was better off when I cut her out of my life. I didnt need someone that unreliable and selfish to be my friend.

Then the last amount of friends I had to deal with would be the one that inspired this post in the first place. These are the friends who have their preconceived notions of friendships and if you dont meet their expectations, you end up being the villain. I dont have a specific title for someone like that, but yeah. Recently, I chatted to a friend about someone who ghosted me over a year ago and gave me some clarity to the reasons why they did so. To make things easier, Ill call this friend, the ghost. It was actually the ghost that inspired this blog post.

After they blocked me on all social media and I never heard from them again, the ghost sent a 13 screenshots worth of a message to a mutual friend of ours. In it, they detailed all the reasons for why they stopped being my friend. Some I got, others I was baffled and two of them I was utterly appalled by. I couldnt believe it. Six years worth of friendship gone in an instant. Overall what I got from their message was that they never really knew me. I never would call myself a perfect friend. My main goal is to try and be there as best I can and I always try to be nice to everyone. Everything the ghost said, went against everything I am. If I said anything mean or said anything that upset you, I am sorry, but tell me about it. If I fuck up, let me know so I can try and fix it. Dont lock it away and bury it. Thatll only come back uglier. I could argue some but not all as this message was six years worth of shit. I cant remember them all. Also the claims they had about me were so outrageous and unbelieveable, it made me sit back and see them for what they were. They were never my friend. They never really knew me. Because if they knew me or if they were my friend, they would ask me about it. But no, the only responses they had was, “I shouldnt have to explain to someone how to be a good friend. Especially someone who is almost 26” and “I thought I knew her too.”

Every friendship has their own set of boundaries. We are all different people with different personalities. We wont all be able to get along and thats okay. I cant change to suit you and I would never ask you to change to suit me. We all have our own different opinions or views on the world. That doesnt make that person a monster (unless these ideas are criminal and against basic human rights). If you want me to text you everyday to see if you are okay, I am not that friend. But that doesnt mean I wont reach out. Just because I dont drop everything to be with you, it doesnt mean I am a villain. We will be there in our own ways and if you didnt like that, you should have told me. The ghost counted up a list of my offences in their head, all the things I did wrong in their head. There was never any discussions of these issues they had. I thought our friendship was pretty good. If I am unaware of their issues, how can I fix them? Ultimately, the ghost believed some heinous claims made about me from people who didnt really know who I was and from out of context shit. I believed that after six years, the ghost knew me well enough to know or at least even ask if it was true. Not to ghost me and never give me the chance to fight my corner. I could never make them stay my friend, but at least there would’ve been closure. After I got some clarity recently, I finally got that closure.

Ultimately these friendships taught me a lot about what I want in a friend. I just want a friend who is kind, no toxicity. No need to be afraid about what you say around them because theyll love you no matter what. If you do or say anything wrong or that upsets them, theyll tell you. I want honesty in my friendships. The ghost could never be honest with me and that was their issue. If they want to believe this monstrous version of me, then I cant dissuade them. I worked on my flaws. I gave myself that chance, but they never heard me out. They didnt want to, because maybe they wanted any reason to end our friendship. If you didnt want me to be your friend, thats okay. We are adults and you couldve said so. I dont believe ghosting is ever the answer. I dont believe being nasty to people is the answer. Treat people with respect and end things that way. But from my experiences, they dont always end the way you want them to.

For me, friendships are hard because, I’m not perfect. I pick the wrong people to surround myself with and I sometimes do the wrong thing. I trust too easily, but also not at the same time. When people seem kind, I jump at that chance. Nowadays, I keep to myself. I have my friends from college, my family and boyfriend. And my closest friend is with my writing. Writing gave me closure for a lot of these trials in my life and in a twisted way, writing led me to these people. But Ill continue to write for my therapy, for my creativity and for understanding. I used my pen to write about these experiences to understand that no one is ever perfect. Ill accept the hand I dealt with in these friendships. I accept any wrongdoing I may have contributed to, but I know those friends I’ve lost may never accept their part in it all. And thats okay because, I hate to quote Leigh Bardugo but if you dont like me as I am,

“Fine, make me your villain.”

My biggest advice from losing friendships myself is understand that it may not always be you. Accept what you may have contributed to and work on yourself. If you know yourself without a doubt, the friends you want and need in your life will follow. With that full confidence in yourself, you can select your friends from what you want and need in your life. That’s a life lesson I am starting to follow and so far, it has been pretty peaceful. And anyone who is experiencing a friend break-up, I know its painful right now but it will get better. You will find your people. I promise. Hope you have a good day and ill see you all in the next post.