u/Beginning_Sun577

It is my senior year of high school, and I am currently mourning a ten year friendship with a girl I’ll call Gina. We were more than just friends we were sisters. I had my own room in her house, a seat at her family dinners, and a level of closeness that made the world feel small and safe.

But looking back from the wreckage of this year, I can see that the foundation was cracking as far back as when we were eleven. That was when I first realized I might be gay. Being young and feeling the social pressure to have a crush, I told Gina I liked her. She didn't feel the same, which was fine, and I realized within weeks that I had confused platonic love for a crush. However, Gina never let that moment die. For the next two years, she weaponized it, constantly telling me that people were spreading rumors we were a couple. I felt a deep, gut-wrenching guilt, convinced that my very presence was embarrassing her, and she let me live in that shame.

By the time we were fourteen, the isolation tactics became more aggressive. I had a brief, messy "relationship" with another girl, and Gina convinced me that this girl was actually hitting on her and making her uncomfortable. She also claimed this girl’s best friend was the one fueling the rumors about me and Gina. I was so protective of her that I confronted them both, only for them to look at me like I was genuinely delusional. I lost that friend group in the fallout, and Gina, who had stayed silent during the entire argument, told me it was better this way because "it was against the world” I believed her.

A year later, it happened again. I started dating a new girl at fifteen, and Gina became so "uncomfortable" that I eventually asked if she wanted me to break up with her. She said the girl was horrible to her, so I chose my "sister" and ended the relationship, retreating back into our small, suffocating bubble.

The patterns became more apparent as we got older. When I was sixteen, I was supporting another friend through a severe mental health crisis. It was a toxic, codependent situation that left me a bit of a zombie, I wasn't eating or sleeping because I was constantly on call for this girl’s emergencies. Instead of supporting me, Gina demanded I cut the girl off with total radio silence because the drama was upsetting her. Even though it went against every moral fiber I had, I did it because I couldn't stand to see Gina upset.

Then came last summer. Gina suffered a family bereavement and began blowing me off, claiming her mother didn't want anyone over. Yet, I’d see her sister on social media constantly out with friends or hosting people at the house. I started to realize that in a whole decade, Gina had never once been the one to initiate a plan or text me first. When I finally found a boyfriend I really liked, she swooped in with rumors she’d "heard from her sister" until I felt I had to break up with him too.

Everything shattered during our senior year. I watched our friend group dissolve into a toxic mess with horrible jealousy and competitive eating disorders. At an autumn prom, Gina’s mother told me I looked like a princess, and Gina acted like I had slapped her, she told me her mother hadn't reacted that way to her and she ignored me for the rest of the night.

The final explosion happened in January. I was at a party, crying to a girl I’d just met about a devastating week my family was having. Gina walked in, got inexplicably angry at my vulnerability, and stormed off. She spent the rest of the night telling the group a twisted version of events, making them believe I had done something terrible to her. When we finally spoke that Monday, she admitted I hadn't actually done anything wrong at the party, but she told me she didn't want to be best friends anymore. As I sobbed, she looked at me with a horrible lack of emotion and simply said, "You can cry if you want”

The aftermath was a slow, cruel freezing out. She would act like we were fine in private, but ignore me entirely when the group was watching. On my 18th birthday, I sat in tears while she and another girl, Sara, stayed in the bathroom for literal hours doing gif knows what and neither even give me a card. This was after I had spent hundreds on Gina’s birthday and bought Sara flowers and champagne for hers.

I eventually stopped speaking to all of them, but the betrayal feels permanent. I find myself wondering how I could have sacrificed every other relationship I ever valued for someone who could watch me break and feel nothing. I missed my own graduation just to avoid the sight of them together, and even though I’ve grown closer to a girl named Ramona who also escaped that circle, I still feel like I’m standing still while they all move on. Was I wrong to leave?

It’s my senior year of high school, and I have been best friends with this girl, let’s call her Gina, for 19 years now. Me and Gina were like sisters, I’m talking I had a room in her house, and was included in family dinners when they went out kind of close.

When we were around 11 I had come to realise the fact that I was potentially gay, of course Gina was the first person I told, and having been quite young and new to this I had decided like my peers I’d have to have a crush, and the only person I could think of that I liked that much was Gina, so I had told Gina I had a crush on her and she told me the feeling wasn’t mutual, which I didn’t mind, and within a month or so I realised that I hadn’t actually liked her in that way to begin with. However over the next two years Gina would constantly tell me that people were making up rumours we were going out, I had felt unbelievably guilty about this fact as I felt it was my fault for always wanting to hang out with her, and a larger part of me was embarrassed by having told her I had a crush on her when we were 11, and these rumours just had me relive that cringe at my tween self each time I heard it, and she knew this. Anyway, it ended up when we were fourteen she had insisted that a girl I had had a sort of on/off ‘relationship’ (albeit, we were like 13, so it wasn’t exactly real, despite how it felt at the time) with a few months prior, had actually been coming onto Gina and that Gina was very uncomfortable with the situation, and that the girls best friend who was also in our friend group at the time was spreading rumours that me and Gina were going out. Outraged, I confronted the pair, who responded like I had lost my mind, and was being completely unreasonable with what I was saying to them, and I subsequently lost that friend group, meanwhile, Gina, who said nothing throughout the confrontation insisted it was better we were in our own now and that everyone was against us, I never had any reason to doubt Gina and so I accepted this.

The year after we had a new friend, who from the get go Gina couldn’t stand, I started going out with the girl when we were 15 and Gina started getting so strange with me, to the point where I sat her down and asked her if she wanted me to break up with the girl, to which she told me the girl was horrible to her and that she didn’t want to be around her. Again, being loyal to the girl I saw as a sister, I broke off the relationship, and stopped speaking to the girl, then it was just me and Gina again mainly and two other girls we weren’t very close with but had formed a sort of pseudo group with.

The next year one of the girls had moved from our school, but had been heavily reliant on me for her mental health issues, which I admit myself was becoming a toxic codependency which would have to end eventually, however the girl was in a terrible place and I did not want to leave her in such a vulnerable time either, during this period I was a bit of a walking ghost, I barely ate or slept out of stress as this girl was always messaging me in crisis, it meant I wasn’t giving the same time i usually gave to Gina. One day Gina demanded i absolutely had to end it with this girl, that it was too much and I had to just cut her off and give her radio silence, Gina seemed quite upset when asking me and so I cut the girl off, despite it going against everything in me, because I hated to see Gina upset.

Between 16-17 we had become a part of this new friend group, which I had thought was brilliant at the beginning, everyone seemed genuinely nice, Gina had no qualms with them, and life was brilliant, then last summer hit and Gina had a family bereavement in our last semester, I had tried to be there for as much as possible but it was difficult given that she was constantly blowing me off and saying we couldn’t hang out, I just put this down to grief, and she had told me her mother dint want her going out or people coming around, this was what began to make me question her a bit internally, as her sister was posting constantly being out with her friends and having them at her house. I didn’t say anything at the time, assuming u just didn’t have the full picture, but again, the seeds of doubt were planted as I was forced to acknowledge that never in our friendship had this girl ever initiated the plans or called or text first.

Either way, last summer I was quite distracted from this whole growing suspicion as I was out with the friend group every week sometimes multiple times a week, we had a blast, although Gina wasn’t there of course. Around this time I had gotten myself a boyfriend, who I was really taken by, however Gina wasn’t quick to swoop in and tell me awful things about him that she had apparently heard from her sister and I ended up having to break up with him, trusting that Gina had my best interest at heart. I had started to get a lot of attention from boys that summer, and it seemed Gina didn’t want to know about it, Infact when she did start attending parties come the end of the summer she almost never chose to hang around with me, opting for some other one of the girls.

Then senior year started and shit hit the fan in our friend group, one of our girls had come to me about another girl in the group who was being horrible to her, with constant nasty slights that led her to constant panic attacks and anxiety. This girl, let’s call her ramona, told me this but no one else in October time, and I swore I wouldn’t tell anyone because it wasn’t anyone else’s business. The girl she had an issue with was best friends with another girl let’s call the pair Cathy and Jane, Cathy and Jane had began to engage in what can only be described as a competitive eating disorder, which had influenced another girl In the group to become self conscious, we’ll call this one Sara. (As an aside, we had an autumn prom, and at this prom Gina’s mother had come over to me squealing that I looked like a princess, I had tried to laugh about it with Gina later that night but she scowled and said her mother hadn’t reacted like that to her, and avoided me most of the night) Well long story short, ramona left the group, and ended up in antidepressants as Cathy had done a number on her, before she left she had text Sara to try and go over what was up but Sara totally brushed her off, having put Cathy and Jane on a strange pedestal.

Furthermore, around this time Sarah had come to Gina one night crying that now ramona had left she had no best friend, and after that Gina and Ramona had this little duo thing going on, I feel it is relevant to add that neither Gina or Ramona got much male attention, and it was becoming quite obvious there was an undercurrent of resentment towards those of us who did get approached on nights out, this resentment seemed to become the foundation of their relationship. However, at the same time, Gina would call me to bitch that Sara was delusional and self involved and that she would never make it into the career she wanted, her and another girl I was close with at the time, georgie, were both in my ear about this so much so that I told them to stop talking to me about it as it was becoming mean. They were also becoming more and more volatile privately about Jane and Cathy. Now Jane and I Cathy I think resented the fact that I wouldn’t bitch about Ramona with them and that I didn’t tell them when Ramona had come to me about Cathy.

By January, things became totally out of hand,We were at a party one night and I was upset about something that happened in my family earlier that week, that the girls all knew about, it was me, Gina, Georgie and Sarah out that night. Well me and Gina were in the bathroom and I was crying to a girl I had met about my shitty week, and all of a sudden Gina got really really angry with me, and I couldn’t understand why, she had stormed off and I had went into the cubicle to cry, I came out about 15 or 20 minutes later after I realised the girls had been calling me, which I don’t hear over the blasting music as my phone was in my jacket pocket hung on the door. When I came out Gina was visibly angry and the girls kept trying to ask me what was wrong, I said it was fine and asked to go dance, but no one would move, Gina moved to the other side of the room and the girls kept petting around me, drunk and getting more and more upset I had swatted them away and told them to leave it, then Gina’s sister came over and asked me what was wrong as the girls went over to Gina, I told her I couldn’t understand what everyone’s problem was and she had told me that Gina was just having a hard time with her family, I said i understand that and that I had been nothing but supportive about it for the last few months but it didn’t explain why she was upset about me being upset about my shitty week, her sisters demeanor changed and she walked off to Gina and I ended up crying in a random girl and making an absolute show of myself as I was thoroughly pissed off at how everyone was acting, the girls then left me alone outside the party, her sisters friends seen me in the street and insisted I shouldn’t be alone but her sister looked straight through me and told them to just leave me there, and when I got home I messaged them that night apologising for showing myself up, none of them replied until the next night, and I spent the whole day in hysterics thinking I must have blacked out and done something terrible for them to all be acting this way, keep in mind they had all gone to Sara’s house that night and the rest of the group were at her house that day so they had all been talking to each other and Gina had obviously told them I had said something terrible to her. Which I hadn’t.

That Monday me and Gina had a conversation away from the group and she had told me that essentially I hadn’t actually done anything at the party to upset her, although it was evident she had told the girls I had, and that she thought we shouldn’t be best friends anymore, I broke down in tears and she said that “I could cry if I wanted” with no emotion in her voice, I told her I didn’t understand what she wanted from me, I had lost every relationship and friendship I valued over the head of her and cared so deeply for her and she just said “absolve yourself” I told her I felt I had spent the whole friendship caring far more than she did and all she said was “yeah” it was like she had no emotions whatsoever. (Also I forgot to mention this girl had literally lied to out VP about having a tumour last year, it wasn’t a tumour, it was an abscess, and she knew this)

The next few weeks were abysmal, I was sat in the group and everyone would ignore me, then in private Gina acted like nothing was wrong and we were still tight, it was clear she was living for being the centre of attention in the group. By my 18th birthday I had finally had enough. Gina and Sarah barely came near me the whole night, and I was left sitting in tears while no one said anything, when gina and Sarah were alone with me Gina turned her shoulder and the two started watching her phone as though u wasn’t there, neither got me so much as a card. I slept well over 200 on Gina’s birthday, and gotten Sara flowers and champagne and a necklace on hers, as well as similar for the other girls, two of the girls came together to get me a pair of pyjamas and a mug in a gift bag I had actually given one of them and that’s all I received from the entire group. I spoke to Sara and Gina separately the next day, I asked Sarah where they went and she said they were in the bathroom I said they were away ages, she said they were taking pictures, I said I g out no pictures and she couldn’t give me a proper response. I asked Gina why she stood outside for 20 minutes after she told me her lift was there, I had only noticed because when I went out for my ride she was still standing there, and all she said was I wanted air. I stopped speaking to all of them the next day.

I feel utterly depressed, used, betrayed and angry, how could anyone treat another human being like that, moreover how does anyone believe their lies, it’s horrid. The one good thing about this whole ordeal is that me and Ramona have gotten far more close, but still, it was hard not to feel like I was totally alone when I had to skip graduation and see them all posted up together on instagram. What do I even do now, I can’t seem to move forward.

I’ve just ended a 10 year friendship and I have never felt more alone, I have been isolated by this one girl who I thought was my best friend for 10 years, every other friend or partner I’ve had she’s found a reason to make me leave them, now, after she decided she’s bored of messing me about, she’s decided to make up a bunch of lies about me, and leave me totally alone. I have exams soon, and I am utterly depressed, what do I do?

It’s my senior year of high school, and I have been best friends with this girl, let’s call her Gina, for 19 years now. Me and Gina were like sisters, I’m talking I had a room in her house, and was included in family dinners when they went out kind of close.

When we were around 11 I had come to realise the fact that I was potentially gay, of course Gina was the first person I told, and having been quite young and new to this I had decided like my peers I’d have to have a crush, and the only person I could think of that I liked that much was Gina, so I had told Gina I had a crush on her and she told me the feeling wasn’t mutual, which I didn’t mind, and within a month or so I realised that I hadn’t actually liked her in that way to begin with. However over the next two years Gina would constantly tell me that people were making up rumours we were going out, I had felt unbelievably guilty about this fact as I felt it was my fault for always wanting to hang out with her, and a larger part of me was embarrassed by having told her I had a crush on her when we were 11, and these rumours just had me relive that cringe at my tween self each time I heard it, and she knew this. Anyway, it ended up when we were fourteen she had insisted that a girl I had had a sort of on/off ‘relationship’ (albeit, we were like 13, so it wasn’t exactly real, despite how it felt at the time) with a few months prior, had actually been coming onto Gina and that Gina was very uncomfortable with the situation, and that the girls best friend who was also in our friend group at the time was spreading rumours that me and Gina were going out. Outraged, I confronted the pair, who responded like I had lost my mind, and was being completely unreasonable with what I was saying to them, and I subsequently lost that friend group, meanwhile, Gina, who said nothing throughout the confrontation insisted it was better we were in our own now and that everyone was against us, I never had any reason to doubt Gina and so I accepted this.

The year after we had a new friend, who from the get go Gina couldn’t stand, I started going out with the girl when we were 15 and Gina started getting so strange with me, to the point where I sat her down and asked her if she wanted me to break up with the girl, to which she told me the girl was horrible to her and that she didn’t want to be around her. Again, being loyal to the girl I saw as a sister, I broke off the relationship, and stopped speaking to the girl, then it was just me and Gina again mainly and two other girls we weren’t very close with but had formed a sort of pseudo group with.

The next year one of the girls had moved from our school, but had been heavily reliant on me for her mental health issues, which I admit myself was becoming a toxic codependency which would have to end eventually, however the girl was in a terrible place and I did not want to leave her in such a vulnerable time either, during this period I was a bit of a walking ghost, I barely ate or slept out of stress as this girl was always messaging me in crisis, it meant I wasn’t giving the same time i usually gave to Gina. One day Gina demanded i absolutely had to end it with this girl, that it was too much and I had to just cut her off and give her radio silence, Gina seemed quite upset when asking me and so I cut the girl off, despite it going against everything in me, because I hated to see Gina upset.

Between 16-17 we had become a part of this new friend group, which I had thought was brilliant at the beginning, everyone seemed genuinely nice, Gina had no qualms with them, and life was brilliant, then last summer hit and Gina had a family bereavement in our last semester, I had tried to be there for as much as possible but it was difficult given that she was constantly blowing me off and saying we couldn’t hang out, I just put this down to grief, and she had told me her mother dint want her going out or people coming around, this was what began to make me question her a bit internally, as her sister was posting constantly being out with her friends and having them at her house. I didn’t say anything at the time, assuming u just didn’t have the full picture, but again, the seeds of doubt were planted as I was forced to acknowledge that never in our friendship had this girl ever initiated the plans or called or text first.

Either way, last summer I was quite distracted from this whole growing suspicion as I was out with the friend group every week sometimes multiple times a week, we had a blast, although Gina wasn’t there of course. Around this time I had gotten myself a boyfriend, who I was really taken by, however Gina wasn’t quick to swoop in and tell me awful things about him that she had apparently heard from her sister and I ended up having to break up with him, trusting that Gina had my best interest at heart. I had started to get a lot of attention from boys that summer, and it seemed Gina didn’t want to know about it, Infact when she did start attending parties come the end of the summer she almost never chose to hang around with me, opting for some other one of the girls.

Then senior year started and shit hit the fan in our friend group, one of our girls had come to me about another girl in the group who was being horrible to her, with constant nasty slights that led her to constant panic attacks and anxiety. This girl, let’s call her ramona, told me this but no one else in October time, and I swore I wouldn’t tell anyone because it wasn’t anyone else’s business. The girl she had an issue with was best friends with another girl let’s call the pair Cathy and Jane, Cathy and Jane had began to engage in what can only be described as a competitive eating disorder, which had influenced another girl In the group to become self conscious, we’ll call this one Sara. (As an aside, we had an autumn prom, and at this prom Gina’s mother had come over to me squealing that I looked like a princess, I had tried to laugh about it with Gina later that night but she scowled and said her mother hadn’t reacted like that to her, and avoided me most of the night) Well long story short, ramona left the group, and ended up in antidepressants as Cathy had done a number on her, before she left she had text Sara to try and go over what was up but Sara totally brushed her off, having put Cathy and Jane on a strange pedestal.

Furthermore, around this time Sarah had come to Gina one night crying that now ramona had left she had no best friend, and after that Gina and Ramona had this little duo thing going on, I feel it is relevant to add that neither Gina or Ramona got much male attention, and it was becoming quite obvious there was an undercurrent of resentment towards those of us who did get approached on nights out, this resentment seemed to become the foundation of their relationship. However, at the same time, Gina would call me to bitch that Sara was delusional and self involved and that she would never make it into the career she wanted, her and another girl I was close with at the time, georgie, were both in my ear about this so much so that I told them to stop talking to me about it as it was becoming mean. They were also becoming more and more volatile privately about Jane and Cathy. Now Jane and I Cathy I think resented the fact that I wouldn’t bitch about Ramona with them and that I didn’t tell them when Ramona had come to me about Cathy.

By January, things became totally out of hand,We were at a party one night and I was upset about something that happened in my family earlier that week, that the girls all knew about, it was me, Gina, Georgie and Sarah out that night. Well me and Gina were in the bathroom and I was crying to a girl I had met about my shitty week, and all of a sudden Gina got really really angry with me, and I couldn’t understand why, she had stormed off and I had went into the cubicle to cry, I came out about 15 or 20 minutes later after I realised the girls had been calling me, which I don’t hear over the blasting music as my phone was in my jacket pocket hung on the door. When I came out Gina was visibly angry and the girls kept trying to ask me what was wrong, I said it was fine and asked to go dance, but no one would move, Gina moved to the other side of the room and the girls kept petting around me, drunk and getting more and more upset I had swatted them away and told them to leave it, then Gina’s sister came over and asked me what was wrong as the girls went over to Gina, I told her I couldn’t understand what everyone’s problem was and she had told me that Gina was just having a hard time with her family, I said i understand that and that I had been nothing but supportive about it for the last few months but it didn’t explain why she was upset about me being upset about my shitty week, her sisters demeanor changed and she walked off to Gina and I ended up crying in a random girl and making an absolute show of myself as I was thoroughly pissed off at how everyone was acting, the girls then left me alone outside the party, her sisters friends seen me in the street and insisted I shouldn’t be alone but her sister looked straight through me and told them to just leave me there, and when I got home I messaged them that night apologising for showing myself up, none of them replied until the next night, and I spent the whole day in hysterics thinking I must have blacked out and done something terrible for them to all be acting this way, keep in mind they had all gone to Sara’s house that night and the rest of the group were at her house that day so they had all been talking to each other and Gina had obviously told them I had said something terrible to her. Which I hadn’t.

That Monday me and Gina had a conversation away from the group and she had told me that essentially I hadn’t actually done anything at the party to upset her, although it was evident she had told the girls I had, and that she thought we shouldn’t be best friends anymore, I broke down in tears and she said that “I could cry if I wanted” with no emotion in her voice, I told her I didn’t understand what she wanted from me, I had lost every relationship and friendship I valued over the head of her and cared so deeply for her and she just said “absolve yourself” I told her I felt I had spent the whole friendship caring far more than she did and all she said was “yeah” it was like she had no emotions whatsoever. (Also I forgot to mention this girl had literally lied to out VP about having a tumour last year, it wasn’t a tumour, it was an abscess, and she knew this)

The next few weeks were abysmal, I was sat in the group and everyone would ignore me, then in private Gina acted like nothing was wrong and we were still tight, it was clear she was living for being the centre of attention in the group. By my 18th birthday I had finally had enough. Gina and Sarah barely came near me the whole night, and I was left sitting in tears while no one said anything, when gina and Sarah were alone with me Gina turned her shoulder and the two started watching her phone as though u wasn’t there, neither got me so much as a card. I slept well over 200 on Gina’s birthday, and gotten Sara flowers and champagne and a necklace on hers, as well as similar for the other girls, two of the girls came together to get me a pair of pyjamas and a mug in a gift bag I had actually given one of them and that’s all I received from the entire group. I spoke to Sara and Gina separately the next day, I asked Sarah where they went and she said they were in the bathroom I said they were away ages, she said they were taking pictures, I said I g out no pictures and she couldn’t give me a proper response. I asked Gina why she stood outside for 20 minutes after she told me her lift was there, I had only noticed because when I went out for my ride she was still standing there, and all she said was I wanted air. I stopped speaking to all of them the next day.

I feel utterly depressed, used, betrayed and angry, how could anyone treat another human being like that, moreover how does anyone believe their lies, it’s horrid. The one good thing about this whole ordeal is that me and Ramona have gotten far more close, but still, it was hard not to feel like I was totally alone when I had to skip graduation and see them all posted up together on instagram. What do I even do now, I can’t seem to move forward.