Friends with Selfishness

I had this friend for the most part of high school. She got close with one of my close friends and then I became friends with her. I didn’t know how I felt about her during the beginning of freshman year, but I warmed up to her. So did my other friends. The five of us were a group. Always together and always talking. We even have a group name, we called ourselves the ‘strawbabies’. We didn’t actually call ourselves that, but that’s what our group chat was called.

When this friend started to date another friend in the group, problems became apparent. This friend got super depressed during our sophomore year, and I truly think that became toxic for her girlfriend, who I am still friends with to this day.

Fast forward through junior year, and into senior year. We started to notice changes in their relationship and with this friend in particular. A month into the school year, they decided to take a break. To figure out their sexuality, or at least that’s what that friend wanted. And I think that she always did the talking in the relationship and her girlfriend just went along with it. Obviously a break up isn’t easy and it was hard on the both of them.

Also at this time, I was getting very flirty with a boy who I liked a lot. I didn’t think it would go anywhere because he was moving later on in that year, but that didn’t change my feelings for him. One day, he just stopped talking to me, and as a person who suffers from severe anxiety, this did not sit well with me. I just kept thinking about what I did wrong. Was I not pretty enough? Was it my body? Did I say something?

Then I get a text from this friend around ten o’clock on a Thursday night. I didn’t even have to open it to know what it was about. I was watching tv with my mom and debated waiting until she went to bed to open it. I didn’t. I opened it and it said “So like, I wanna tell you something and I was gonna just do it tomorrow but idk when I’ll have time so I’m just gonna text you because you’re my friend and I feel weird just not saying anything about this”. Obviously that stressed me out. She told me that she has been talking to the boy and hanging out with him. I didn’t know how to feel. I was thankful to have some answers, but I was mad. I was mad at him for leading me on, and I was mad at her for hanging out with him when she knew I liked him.

I got over him quickly because whatever, but my mental health declined so much. He moved earlier than expected. I was glad I wouldn’t have to see him anymore.

But I still hung out with that friend, even though I shouldn’t have. She was selfish. She always had been. She always made things about her when they weren’t. Always. No apologies. I hung out with her for the remainder of 2016.

I remember one day after school in January, during speech practice- I just snapped. I had had enough. We had this group chat. It started out with the five of us, then four, and then three. If you have an iPhone, you know that you need a minimum of four people in the group chat to leave. There were only three of us. Me, her, and a different friend. I couldn’t leave it and I wanted to so bad. I put in someone’s email and left the chat. Her and the friend texted me like, why’d you do that. I told them I just needed a break. I had decided to stop being friends with her. It was weird. It had been weird for a while.

I haven’t talked to her in a long time, but I feel like I would have been friends with her still if all she had given me was an apology. A simple, I’m sorry Grace for doing this to you. I’m thankful she told me, but she caused so much other problems for other people. She never took blame for anything. Always played the “I don’t know what I did wrong” card. She never apologized for anything. Not for hurting me, for hurting my other friends, for dipping out in her commitments, nothing. She even said “I won’t apologize because I know I’ll do it again”.