Here’s the thing, it’s not easy to recognize toxic friends, especially when you’ve known them since you were six.
I met my “best friend” on the first day of kindergarten. Let’s call her Morgan. Morgan lived down the street from me (the prime spot for playdates and sleepovers). Morgan and I had the same, tight-knit group of friends since kindergarten, with only a couple girls switching up over the years. From the outside looking in, I don’t think anyone would have known that anything was wrong. Hell, I didn’t know anything was wrong back then. It’s nearly impossible to tell that the situation you’re in is unhealthy until you step back and see all the damage that was done.
Looking back, it was always little things. It was snide comments behind my back or inside jokes that I was left out of. It was how I somehow was always the one who ended up crying no matter what. In the moment, you think it’s you. You think that you are the problem because everyone else seems fine, everyone else is fine, so it’s you.
But it’s not.
Every friend group has drama, and ours had our share. When you’re little, it’s who sits next to who on the bus, but when you get older, it gets more complicated.
Here’s the thing, Morgan really wanted to be cool. And I really wasn’t.
I wasn’t, like, uncool. But I definitely wasn’t cool cool.
And that’s where the problems started.
You spend your entire childhood with one group of friends, these girls are a part of that childhood, a part of everything. I mean, I went on vacations with these girls, some of them were practically sisters to me. They tell you they love you every day and every time they hurt you, they promise not to do it again. They didn’t mean to hurt you. They’re sorry. They’re really, really sorry.
And that works for a while. Until it’s the same crap over and over again. And they tell you they love you. And you believe them because you’ve known them for ten years. And it’s okay for a while. Until it’s not.
Because you all went on a sweet-sixteen trip together in June, and now it’s September and they’re not speaking to you. And you don’t know why.
Because they told you that they loved you for ten years and then just stopped talking to you one day. And you don’t know why.
Because for years when you got too excited or too loud or too annoying, they would tell you and make you feel bothersome. Because they made you feel like you weren’t their first choice, and that made you feel small. Because when they stopped talking to you, you wondered what you did wrong. What you did to make them not like you anymore. It made you wonder what you did, that after ten years of them telling you that they loved you, that you were like a sister to them, that they didn’t need you in their life anymore. That you weren’t worth it.
So now, you have new friends. The rest of high school is okay, but you’re still surrounded by these girls and have to make polite chitchat with them when you used to tell them everything. But everyone else already has best friends, so you’re that peripheral friend that gets invited to things, but you don’t really have a person, or people. But you have fun, just not as much fun as you would’ve if you were with them.
So, you go to college. And you make new friends. And you’re really lucky because your roommate is amazing, and the girls down the hall are sweet and kind. And you feel good for the first time in a while.
But every time you get too excited or too loud, you worry. You worry that maybe you’ll be too much, and they won’t want to hang out with you anymore. You worry that they all like each other more than they like you. Because why wouldn’t they?
So now every time something seemingly insignificant happens, you worry, you doubt. Because your “friends,” they knew you for ten years, they knew you better than most people. And they just seemingly decided one day that you weren’t really someone that they needed in their life.
And it really hurt.
It hurts because they knew me. Like, knew me knew me.
So now what? I have my guard up constantly? Always watching myself to make sure I don’t become “too much” and drive people away? It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting having to—wait, no.
It’s exhausting thinking that I have to do this.
And here’s what I’ve learned. I don’t have to do this.
And you don’t either.
I am so grateful for the friends that I have now, for the people that I have now, but I don’t know if I’ll ever 100% trust the people around me to be my complete, authentic self. And that’s not because I don’t want to trust them. I’m just afraid. Because if that’s what happened to me after ten years, how do I trust someone after two years?
I’ve realized now that it’s not about how long you’ve known someone. Clearly.
It’s about the quality of the people. Of the person.
So, I’m learning. I’m trying to be myself unafraid of being judged or making people want to leave.
Again, I am so grateful for the support system that I have found here at school, and for my support system at home who helped me through that experience.
But I still overthink texts sometimes. I read too much into someone not inviting me to come along. I shut down when someone critiques me in a way that they used to.
Even though I feel that I’ve grown, and I feel like I’m better now, what they said and did to me, and how they made me feel still affects me on a daily basis. And I try so hard not to let it. Some days it’s easier than others.
And for the record, no matter how this article comes across, I bear no ill will for these girls.
I’ve talked to some of them since, and they are good people. I don’t think that it was their intent to hurt me, I’m sure they rationalized their actions. We were kids, we were all just figuring ourselves out, and I’m no saint.
I don’t think any of them will read this, but if they do, I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago, but it still hurts sometimes.
When I started writing this, I thought that I had to include all the good memories along with the bad ones. I thought that I had to justify why I stayed with these friends for so long. Because there were good times. There were more good times than bad, but I have trouble remembering them sometimes. The good times. And that’s not my fault.
But I did have a childhood with these girls, I grew up with these girls. I loved these girls. And if they called me tomorrow, I’d answer. But I’m not sure if they’d answer my call.
And that’s okay.
I have high expectations of people, and that’s not always fair. Everyone has their own capacity for what they can give in a relationship, in a friendship.
I’m just trying to be the best friend that I can be, the most authentic version of me. And that’s all I can ask of someone else.
That’s all I can ask of you.
Because yes, it hurts sometimes, but it wasn’t all bad.
It took me a long time to process my experience with my toxic friends. And to be honest, I’m unsure about how I feel about it. On the one hand, I’m glad I went through it, because it made me who I am today. But does that mean that I would go through it again? Was it worth it? If I could do it over, would I change anything?
I don’t know. I really don’t know.
What I do know is that I like who I am today. I like the person who came out of this.
So, no matter what you’ve been through, whether it relates to my experience or not, regardless of how crappy it was, be glad of who you are today. And please be gentle with yourself, you’ve been through a lot.
Please, please, please, be yourself, your whole, true self. And please surround yourself with people who make you want to show them everything. Every part of you. The good and the bad. The loud and the quiet. The unique and the basic. You. And when you find those people, please hang onto them.