friend breakup haunts me
I (24, F) was very close friends with Anna (25, F). We meet 4 years ago and immediately clicked. It has now been one year since me and my friends stopped talking to her.
There's a lot I don't remember, it was so painful that I would have nightmares about it for weeks and then I would forget most of it.
Anna was very funny and intelligent, I looked up to her, she was the one person I knew I could talk about anything, and I'm pretty sure she felt the same. She could be incredibly bitchy and judgemental towards other people, and I would laugh and indulge this. I always felt like we had twinned minds and were living in our own bubble.
We were there for each other, even when we fought or had misunderstandings, we would talk, get over it and keep being friends, and we thought we would be together forever.
She had a complicated home life and was very depressed, and this would come with moods and harmful choices. She would talk to me the most. She would get very self-conscious at times and talk about how much she hated herself, other times she would get easily annoyed and get angry. She was going through a lot, would often make suicide jokes. It felt like a cry for help and I was in a constant state of worry on her worst days.
When I moved out, my life quickly got busier than ever and we couldn't talk as much. (I didn't know this at the time, but she became resentful and felt like I had abandoned her.)
It was like a switch. She started snapping at me, name calling, making mean comments or throwing shade. I was being treated the same way she would usually talk about the people she didn't like.
At first, I thought I had done something I shouldn't have. I became self conscious around her, and I couldn't say how I was feeling to my other friends. I was lonely, i thought it was probably all in my head and I was being too sensitive. I kept enduring it, and it got worse. At some point I confronted her, told her there was no need to talk to me in an unkind way, and she doubled down on the poison
One day I came over. We hadn't seen each other in a long time, and had planned an hangout between all our friends. She treated me so badly that I had to take a minute to go cry in the bathroom. Our friends noticed the way she spoke to me.
They reached out to me in private and that's when they told me that she was also being awful to Pen (25,F). (It was kind of a relief, I had felt so alone in this but it wasn't just in my head? She was actually treating me badly and I wasn't imagining things?)
Pen was devastated and angry, she wanted to talk to Anna but was scared to do it alone. She asked our friends to join her so that we could actually speak to Anna as a group.
We set a day, asked Anna to come and had an intervention. We talked about how she had been mistreating us for weeks, how she treated the Pen and I like we were dirt on her shoe and that we couldn't keep going like this. We all cried, I remember I was shaking the whole time.
We aren't stupid, we knew this felt like a trap and that we were caging her. We knew she would not feel good or rational about it, and we told her that it was completely fine to feel betrayed or unsafe. (We basically went behind her back to plan a way to confront her, how was she supposed to react to that? Of course she would be surprised and react badly. )
We told her all of this, and that we only wanted to speak to her as her friends, our goal was for things to get better between us, we wanted to understand her side but told Anna she didn't have to talk to us in that exact moment. After all, we had had time to think what we wanted to say and we wanted Anna to have that same opportunity. We encouraged her to talk to one of us privately if she wanted to, or to reach out to other friends so that she could make sense of things on her own.
It was a rough time for her I'm sure, and I don't think she ever moved on from that confrontation. Some days passed, we had other talks about it. Once about how she felt I had grown apart and that we weren't as close, to which I told her that when we first became friends, I would often confide in her when I was feeling troubled, to the point of dependence. But our friendship had become much more mutual. I didn't have to rely on her for everything, and I could take my own steps and be there for her as well when she needed me. Our friendship evolved a lot, so much so that I felt we were much closer and at the same level even if we didn't talk as much.
I don't think she took this well. I think she felt used.
Things didn't really change, we just grew apart. We stopped talking to each other, she found other friends, trash talking Pen to many people. (I wonder what she told others about me)
I think about this often. What if this had been the tipping point for her? What if she had hurt herself?
She had had other friendships that also ended in hurtful ways. She blamed herself. She also has the bad habit of pushing people away when she feels misunderstood.
I know all of this and yet I wasn't able to be what she needed.
At the same time, I was also not in a good place. I could barely take care of myself when this was happening, I felt very useless.
I've kept an eye on her, she found other friends that worship her to an unhealthy degree, but I think she's happier nowadays. She's also still a big bitch to people, got even worse actually... Will put anyone down if she thinks they are bellow her... In the end, I guess I'm glad I don't need to see her act this way anymore.
Anna completely changed how I feel about my friends. I'm constantly worried of making a mistake bit enough that I'm cast away from them. They all feel this way as well. We are all scared of losing each other even if we know rationally that It will probably never get to that point.
I'm also afraid of making others feel responsible for me in the same way I felt responsible for Anna. I'm worried about being too dependent, about crossing a line, about being too snappy or too bitchy, about replicating my relationship with Anna with someone else and ruining them, or them ruining me. Sometimes I resent Pen for speaking up, even if I know it's not her fault and that shit would hit the fan eventually. I watch myself fall in the same patterns I saw in Anna, I'm more angry, I'm moody, I'm depressed. I think about pushing others away (better early than later), I wonder if others talk in secret about me, If they secretly dislike me. I'm afraid of becoming like Anna, I'm afraid of someone treating me like Anna once did.
Even if I don't really regret leaving our friendship, I still feel crushed. A lot of times I just need to reset, to snap myself out of it. But I'm forever mourning the friendships I've lost