I don't remember a lot about my relationship with my childhood best friend. I've sort of blocked everything she did out. That's how my brain has always dealt with bad memories. But those big empty spaces in my memory leave space for me to think "Maybe I was the problem? Maybe she was mean to me because I did something wrong? Maybe I misunderstood her? If I would have communicated my feelings better would she have stopped hurting me? How did she hurt me? I don't really remember... Maybe I imagined all of it?"
I was 18 when I finally stopped talking to her, now I'm in my mid-twenties, and even after almost a decade I find myself going back to this thought process. The "What if everything was my fault and I stopped talking to my bestest friend in the world for no reason" thought process.
But I found something interesting the other day.
An old reddit post I made a very, very long time ago. We were in middle school, and someone had asked "What's the stupidest thing someone's been mad at you for"
And I described something I don't remember at all. I was sleeping at her house, as I did much of the time. It had gotten late, she was about to take her nightly shower, but I wanted to brush my teeth before she showered because I thought I might fall asleep before she was done showering, teeth unbrushed. She became very angry with me for brushing my teeth before her shower, to the point she would not speak to me for the rest of the night. Because I delayed her shower for 2 minutes by brushing my teeth.
Then, the next day, she gave me the silent treatment for most of the next day, and when she did finally speak to me, it was laced with obvious annoyance.
This by itself, is a story of two 13 year olds who have spent too much time together recently, and like sisters, just start arguing about dumb things, as 13 year olds who have spent too much time together tend to do.
But in actuality, this is how it always was. I have just conveniently forgotten. She was constantly giving me the silent treatment for crimes I had apparently committed, except she wouldn't tell me what the crimes were. And on the rare occasion that I understood what the crimes were, I didn't understand the punishment.
The boy she liked was vaguely nice to me, and I responded politely? (NOT flirtatiously) I was an evil skank who deserved death glares and silence for hours, days, weeks?
A boy at a theme park flirted with me and I'm telling our friend about it? She walks into the room after overhearing and shouts at me angrily, declaring that she had seen that boy walking around with another girl at another point in the day, and that was probably his girlfriend (something I did not witness or know about)
Our friends were extra nice to me one day, and that made her feel jealous? She's not going to speak to me for 2 weeks.
Her parents complimented something I did in front of her? She's silently angry at me for the rest of the night, and when I ask her what's wrong, she shortly says "Nothing."
She asks me to go get her laundry from downstairs one day when I have been in bed all day with a mixture of severe heat sickness and a newly broken toe, when I explain to her that I'm too sick and in pain to carry her laundry up the stairs she says "UGH, FINE! STOP WHINING!"? She is annoyed with me for the rest of the day.
These are all small petty things, but this was almost every day with her from 13-18. In elementary school we were both sweet children who loved spending time with each other more than anything else, but I guess something changed at some point.
I often wonder why she didn't end our relationship. Through our teen years she acted like she hated me a lot of the time. I would try to pull away, give her distance, because I figured SHE wanted this relationship to end since she hated me so much, but then she would become upset that I was pulling away from her.
Something that was also difficult in this time, is that we shared all the same friends, and I knew if I ever stopped speaking to her, they would choose her over me and never speak to me again. Everyone believed she was the nicest girl alive, they constantly told her how wonderfully kind she was. I wondered if we were spending time with the same person.
Despite everything, I blamed myself for the ills of our relationship. If I just did everything right she wouldn't be angry I thought, it's not her fault she feels insecure sometimes I thought, if I just become the perfect best friend and shrink myself so small I can't upset her anymore everything will be good again!!!
I felt that way until... She dated her first boyfriend. And I witnessed how she treated him. So incredibly controlling and condescending. I never understood why she even dated him. She treated him more like a dog than a boyfriend. Hell, she was nicer to her dogs.
That's when I realized, she harmed anyone that she became close with. Me, our other best friend, her boyfriend, her sister. All close to her had to feel her wrath.
I remember our last day as friends. It was a good day actually. She had just started college a few weeks prior, and she had come back home to visit family and friends. We got coffee and walked around town, we talked about her new college life and the boy she liked, we ate lemon iceys from the dollar store like when we were kids. I told her I thought I might be trans, she told me she thought that made sense. Ironically that was my easiest coming out, I knew she would support me in that way.
She also said some things about our friends, people I really loved and cared about, she talked about how annoying and clingy they were. One of these friends was a girl I had feelings for, who my best friend had aggressively tried to "steal from me" earlier that year (unsuccessfully) putting yet another nail in the coffin containing our relationship.
Something about hearing her bad mouth these friends of ours I cared about, this girl I had feelings for who she had borderline used to hurt me, made me snap. She had done so much worse than this, but for some reason this was the last straw for me.
We had a great day. I hugged her goodbye, told her I loved her. We took some pictures together. She left.
And I walked into my house, and realized I had to end our relationship completely.
This is what I remember. But I know I don't remember almost anything, so I always wonder what I'm forgetting.
After I ended our friendship, I realized I had collected a lot of trauma during our relationship. Which felt pretty dramatic. But I started having severe difficulties starting and maintaining relationships.
I was constantly waiting for the people I met to punish me. To give me the silent treatment, or to randomly cut me down, to become enraged at me but refuse to tell me why.
I became extremely anxious. Trying to anticipate every need of the other person so they would not become angry and lash out at me. I realized after a while, that our relationship had made me a complete shell of a person.
I didn't know how to be a friend anymore. I didn't know how to let people be nice to me anymore.
So many years later, I've gone through therapy and I'm around better people, and I still find myself cringing when someone is kind to me.
When my partner is kind to me, sometimes I tell him I need a minute because the emotions are overwhelming, and that sometimes it's scary when people are really kind to me because it feels like I don't deserve it, and because sometimes it even feels like a threat. He understands, he's always really good about it, and he continues to be kind to me. My kindness threshold had gotten wider over time, so slowly it is easier not to freak out when he's kind to me.
Sometimes I don't know if I could have begun recovering if I hadn't met him. Maybe it would have just been a lot slower. I don't know. But I'm really grateful for him and our friendship and our relationship.
I don't know how to tie up this slightly traumatic ramble.
I guess, I think I need to remind myself that just because I don't remember something, it doesn't mean I was automatically the problem. And just because I don't remember something, doesn't mean my body doesn't remember. The body doesn't experience trauma responses for no reason.
I hope going forward, as I'm meeting more people, I can become good at accepting kindness, expecting it even, from my loved ones. I hope I can learn how to be myself with more people, and not feel like all of my traits are inherently bad and irritating. I hope I can find people, that actually genuinely like having me around.