“Back in high school, I had a very small group of friends.
My then best friend, who we’ll call Jenna, was one of the only people who knew a lot about me. Not that I wouldn’t tell people about myself, I just never bothered to unless asked. But Jenna and I would talk about everything and anything we could, as best friends do. We had our ups and downs for sure, but in the end we were inseparable. That is, until “the incident” happened.
To make a long and frankly complicated story short, what happened is that one of my other friends and I wanted to celebrate our birthdays together since we’re a couple days apart.
My friend was best pals with Jenna’s ex, so I asked Jenna if she would be okay to party with her ex there. I said it was fine if she wasn’t, and that we could go out to lunch or do something else. Jenna said it was okay and we had a fun day at the amusement park. Up until about the last hour, where I was in line with Jenna’s ex and a few of our friends while she went to get a locker.
I guess I said something that her ex took as flirting and they kissed me. Literally out of the blue. I wasn’t expecting it, no one else was expecting it- least of all Jenna, who had turned around and was walking back to us at that exact moment. I was absolutely mortified.
I profusely apologized to Jenna, even though everyone in my friend group agreed that I didn’t initiate anything and that I was caught off guard and wasn’t a consenting member.
But Jenna was absolutely livid. At every opportunity she could, she’d bring it up- to invalidate anything I disagreed with her on. It didn’t matter what I said, how often I apologized, how genuine I was, or how crappy I felt about it, she kept bringing it up to hang over me. It was a gotcha card in any argument we had, and I eventually got sick of it and told her that, look, I have apologized so many times for an event that wasn’t my fault.
I wanted no part of it, and everyone in our group agreed that it was out of nowhere.
After a while, we drifted apart because she was emotionally abusive towards me, and I finally put my foot down and ended our friendship. Come to find out later though, she was spreading lies and rumors about me to anyone who would listen- that I was an attention seeker, that I loved drama, that I was a terrible human being who feels nothing, basically she was telling people I was a sociopath with no empathy and an inability to care about other people.
She used a lot of the deep, personal things I had told her against me. She turned people against me before they had even met me. I told them that I was witchy and callous and that I was looking for a reason to start drama- which cannot be further from the truth. I actively avoid drama at all costs because I do not have the time or energy to deal with the emotional toll it costs- my parents gave me enough emotional trauma to deal with.
This is when I finally snapped. Because it takes a lot to really get me riled up to a point where I’m gonna do something about it. But I had dealt with her emotional abuse for years, and I finally got sick of it and ended crap between us. But when she made a point to try to ruin my reputation, I finally snapped and had had enough. So I made it a point to do the same crap she was doing to me, but worse and make it seem like I wasn’t doing anything to her at all.
In fact, I played it off like nothing was wrong at all.
She had found another best friend after me, who we’ll call Martha. Martha had just moved from Florida and had no previous knowledge of Jenna or me, but Jenna had turned her against me based solely on her undying thirst to get people to hate me. So I turned my kindness up to an eleven. Martha and I had the same lunch, but Jenna didn’t.
I’d sit and talk to Martha, and lowkey put in little digs about Jenna that I knew Martha had a hard time dealing with. It didn’t take long before Martha and I were best friends and Jenna had to find someone new to associate with.
She moved on to another girl who we’ll call Katherine. The same thing that I did to Martha, I did to Katherine. I found a little bit of irritation and made it grow into full-blown annoyance, nearing hatred.
For some reason, Jenna could not keep a best friend for more than a few weeks before they’d blow up at her and stop talking to her.
This would happen to every single person who would be her “best friend.” She’d befriend them, and I would swoop in and slowly turn them against her by using nothing but truths about her. Unraveling her friendships before they could really take hold with only the issues she would cause herself.
Sometimes these problems would take a little longer to manifest themselves, but I’m a patient person when it comes to these kinds of things. The moment I saw a weakness, I would talk them away from it simply being a minor issue to part of a full-blown problem that they personally had with her. I suppose I’d talk them up, in a way. Rile them up so they’d be the ones to get mad at her without them ever connecting the pieces that it was me who got them there in the first place.
When we eventually graduated, Jenna had no friends and was nearly universally hated. Not that I made up lies about her, everything I did or said was true and based on actual things she said or did that already annoyed person. I just got good at pointing that stuff out and forcing people to re-examine their relationships with her. She could never figure out why no one wanted to be friends with her, or why the people she was briefly friends with would leave her in the dust after a very short period of time.
She had to move out of state for college because she had no friends from high school at home that she could associate with. No one wanted to be around Jenna.
But in truth, all I had to do was point out how poorly she was treating people for them to realize how she was using them. She did most of the work herself. I just shortened the lifespan of her friendships and made it so she got a taste of her own medicine.
Minus the bullcrap and lies.
This may initially seem a little petty and childish, but I assure you. I cannot express how much her social life was secretly ruined without her even realizing it. She never suspected me because I made sure to never say what annoyed me about her, I’d simply listen for a small bit of information then take it and run with it. People never said it was me who was talking trash because, in their minds, it was their own personal issue.
In reality, I was the one who sent them over the edge.
She believes people just hate her for no reason. Not because she took her anger a step too far and pushed me over my limit.”
