Have you ever had someone disappoint you?
Last November, my cat had gotten really sick. I had taken him to the vet four times and on the fourth visit, I was told I had to leave him overnight so he could have bloodwork done. Naturally, I was a mess of emotions. My best friend at the time offered to stay with me, so when I got back to my apartment I texted her and asked what time she would come over.
She said she would be there soon, so I waited. And I waited. And I waited.
She never showed.
After a few hours of trying to get ahold of her, she finally texted back and said that she “couldn’t drive right now”. I thought her response was a little weird and asked if everything was okay. I ended up checking Snapchat while I was waiting for her to text back and to my surprise, she was in Pittsburgh.
It suddenly realized what she was doing and why she never showed up at my apartment.
She had ditched me.
But she didn’t just ditch me. She ditched me AND she was drinking. She had made the conscious decision to go out when she had said only a few short hours ago that she would be there for me.
When I tried to confront her about it, she ignored me. She didn’t answer any of my messages or my calls for about a week until my mom mentioned that she had run into her at Walmart. By that time, I had already figured out that she had met up with one of her Tinder matches, so my mom made a comment about it. She tried to say that she made plans with some friends from college, but I knew that was a lie.
So I confronted her a second time. This time, I told her I knew she had lied and I had figured out what she was actually doing.
She tried to say that I had no reason to be angry, and I wasn’t at first. I was hurt and disappointed, but now she was trying to gaslight me and tell me that she didn’t do anything wrong, that it was somehow my fault for believing her when she said that she would be there for me.
I realized that she was never going to take accountability for her actions.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. She never had the emotional maturity to hold herself accountable for anything she had done wrong in the past. Why was I so surprised now?
It took about another week before I finally told her that I didn’t want to be friends anymore, and it was an agonizingly painful decision. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but after talking to some mutual friends I realized that she wasn’t a very good friend to me. They helped me to realize that our friendship had been very one-sided for a very long time.
She was only my friend when it was convenient for her, like when she needed a place to stay or when she needed someone to pay for her $400 parking ticket. I had deluded myself into believing she was a good friend and a good person because of things we had in common, like our taste in music.
I had been the only one putting effort and energy into our friendship, and the worst part was I never even realized how toxic and draining until someone pointed it out. Then all of the red flags that I had been ignoring up until that point were suddenly very plain to see.
I ended up blocking her number. I blocked her on social media too.
Since then, it’s been like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. And I have found better friends, real friends, friends that actually do care about me.
The difference has been like night and day.