*names have been changed
I entered into my sophomore year of college feeling like I was on my own again. I hadn’t clicked well with the girls who had lives on my floor during my freshman year and my closest friend from the previous semester had moved away. I was basically looking for a new crew to chill with and I was open to meeting new people. Lucky for me, I met Katie* during September of my sophomore year and we instantly became close friends. I met Katie at a house party during the beginning of the semester and it was safe to say that I was hypnotized by her. She was gorgeous but in a way that you don’t see that often in college. She was tall and thin, with long blonde hair and bright blue eyes but she was wearing a hoodie and a backwards cap like one of the guys. She looked like a gorgeous model rocking her boyfriend’s clothes and she looked at me in a way that made my stomach turn. She was the kind of person who would look you straight in the eyes and in that moment I wasn’t sure if she was hitting on me when she asked for my number. But as a bisexual with a sore spot for androgynous girls, I was hooked and the two of us exchanged numbers. The next day I learned that I was actually at a party at her house and that unfortunately Katie was not the seductive lesbian I was looking for, but just a really chill straight girl. But this girl intrigued me; I wanted to get to know her and we soon begun hanging out together.
Hanging out with Katie was extremely refreshing. She didn’t care to involve herself with the drama that I was used to during my freshman year of college and I felt like I could be myself around her. I soon learned that the two of us had a lot in common; we both rode long boards and loved to draw while listening to jam music. Katie was cool and unique, someone that I didn’t expect meet after feeling like an outsider in my surroundings. She didn’t have a lot of girlfriends at the school even though she was two grades ahead of me and we both filled an empty void in each other’s lives. We soon became inseparable and would do everything together. She was my girl and we were a connected pair. I began to drift away from everyone else in my life, because they just didn’t understand me like Katie did. And life was grand, that was until winter break rolled around and Katie came to visit me.
I was so excited when Katie said that she was coming to visit me back home. I wanted to show her the ropes of my small town and give her a tour of where I grew up. I had this whole trip planned out and I knew that she would love where I was from. And Katie did love my hometown, but not for the reasons that I would have liked. Katie liked to drink; I’d known this about her for a while. In fact, she was pretty drunk the night that I’d met her. We would go out to parties together or just hang out with her guy friends, and Katie would always end up pretty wasted. She wasn’t exactly white girl wasted but she definitely had a drunken personality. Sometimes she would get really opinionated and judgmental of others while she was drunk. Other times she would turn into a totally softy and be all lovey the whole night. It was weird but she was my friend and I cared about her. But when she came to visit me, she took it way too far. I began our first day by taking her on a tour of the Magic Hat Brewery and of course, she did some sampling. I wasn’t 21 at the time so I didn’t partake. Then we went and hung out in the downtown area, and instead of exploring her surroundings, Katie wanted to go to a pub and drink some more. She was technically my guest, so I went along with it. We walked around a bit after that and then she spotted another bar that she wanted to check out. I was like, are you serious? She had already had like 4-5 drinks and it wasn’t even five pm. But I relented as I always do and we went to the second bar. But this time, I wasn’t even allowed in because I was underage so I waited outside of the bar for an hour while she finished two drinks. I was pretty upset at this point but I tried not to let this affect the rest of the day. We had a jam band concert coming up and I was actually pretty excited. But when we got to the venue, she got even more drinks. I couldn’t believe that she was still standing or alive even considering she weighed 120 pounds. But I just wanted us to have a good time and despite her behavior, Katie never really got sloppy when she drank. That was until this night. We were at the concert, having a good time jamming out to the jam when a guy approached us. I realized that he actually went to school with us back in New York and I was kind of shocked to see him. He and Katie didn’t really get along well, so I expected her to just ignore him. Instead she was falling all over him during the concert and the two started making out. I was in shock. She had a boyfriend and she had always preached that she was such a monogamous person who never cheated. What the hell Katie, I thought and I realized that I probably should have cut her off a while ago. When the two separated, Katie got all weird and demanded that we left the concert immediately. I was so disappointed, this day was not what I had planned and Katie had basically ruined it by getting so wasted.
When I returned back to school, Katie’s alcohol problems became more and more apparent to me. She would need to get drunk to do anything, from going to class to going to the gym. It was disgusting to watch and I hated being around her. I felt trapped in this friendship and stuck in her house. Had I made the wrong choice befriending this girl? Could I have done something different and have been having a better time with other people? But it wasn’t just the drinking that pissed me off about Katie. She was a really bad friend.
Katie would take any opportunity that came her way to tell me that I was wrong. I was wrong for having tattoos, because in her eyes tattoos were like scars. I was wrong for being a vegan and that eating healthy was gross. I was wrong for talking to boys period and if I did it was because I was desperate for attention. I felt trapped in this toxic relationship where someone that I cared about was making me feel terrible about myself. Being friends with her was like a drug habit that I couldn’t kick and I actually started believing that what she said about me was true. But it wasn’t until the end of the semester that I realized that she had to go.
I was in a dance club at the time and we were having our big showcase at the end of the semester. I had invited Katie along with some of my other friends and I was excited that they were supporting me. But Katie ruined it. She showed up wasted and made me feel so embarrassed. She was loud and rude and left halfway through the showcase. I then learned from one of my friends and a former friend of Katie, that Katie had sent her a nasty text during my performance saying how she was a shitty person. I was so angry that she had done this during my performance all because one of my friends had come to support me. It was no surprise that Katie was drunk that whole time and I also learned that she had sideswiped a car on the way to the show and was yet again cheating on her boyfriend with some random guy. It was only in this moment when it all came together and I realized that enough was enough. I had to breakup with Katie.
I stopped talking to Katie after that semester and I didn’t hear anything from her until Halloween of 2015. She texted me all buddy-buddy wanting to see me, and told me how much she’d missed me. And I completely blew her off. She was upset and probably confused but at that point I knew for certain that I couldn’t afford to have someone like her in my life. She was a toxic friend and a negative force in my life and it took me getting rid of her to see how unhappy I’d been as her friend. I feel so much better now that she is out of my life and I now understand why she doesn’t have a lot of close friends. People like her are energy vampires and as someone who is very empathetic naturally, it was a friendship made for disaster. I do wish her the best out of her life but I know that I can’t be happy if she is in my life. It took a lot for me to put my happiness over someone else’s and realize that I deserve to take care of myself.