After my freshman year, I had transferred to a different high school. One of the fun things about this new high school was that it was an early college and my best friend from middle school went there. I was devastated as a freshman to find out my best friend was going to another high school, and even more so that she didn’t tell me (Yes, I was a tad bit clingy. But, I didn’t realize this at the time). Plus, since the early college’s curriculum can be rigorous, I did not hear from her often. But we still saw each other when we could. Side note: She was kind of shook when she realized my voice and mannerisms changed when we met up for the first time after a while. Basically, I had a twang in my voice, I twerked a lot, and I cussed A LOT. It’s crazy how a high school’s culture can shape and change you over the course of a year.
Even after getting into the same high school as my best friend, I was still yearning to be back at my home school. It was a tough adjustment, but that’s a story for another day. Over the course of my time there, I obviously adapted and made new friends. I made two more female friendships that completed my supportive girl group. I met them through my best friend and I eventually created my own, unique friendships with the both of them. The four of us referred to ourselves as the “T-Rex Crew” and it was common to see one of us, primarily my best friend, run up to each other as a T-Rex. Yep, that was some of the weird sh** we did. However, we celebrated our weirdness and uniqueness, and it was wonderful. In addition, we were always there for each other when we really needed it. I’m thankful for all the sleepovers, movie dates, and fun late-night trips.
Once we graduated high school, we stayed connected through our group chat. Things were good, but I started to slowly realize that my best friend from middle school was starting to drift away from me. And I didn’t understand why. However, after many grueling hours of therapy for depression and trying to understand myself more, I realized it was because I was toxic and negative almost ALL the time. Our friendship became a one-way street. Then, in the first semester of my sophomore year of college, I f***ed sh** up with my other two best friends. Out of respect and much consideration, I will not be going into all of the specifics as it was a traumatic lieu of events.To put it simply, I said some things that I am not proud of that were accusatory and vile. As one could say, it was anti-feminist, unlady-like, and relentless.
I was in a dark place. I was depressed and extremely paranoid due to family issues, relationship issues, and my variety pack of insecurities. And I decided one night that I would speak on something that I had no right to speak on. No matter what I believed at the time, it was not my place to insert myself or have an opinion on a very personal experience that was not my own. So, as you might expect, they both cut me out of their lives. Unfortunately, I did not take responsibility for my actions right away. I made some rude, and even more accusatory comments towards the same best friend a few months later on her Insta spam account. Yeaaaa, it was not my brightest moment.
Over the course of two years, I became severely depressed and isolated from the outside world. I viewed myself as a monster and believed I did not have any worth as a human-being. At the start of my junior year of college, my best friend from middle school finally cut off ties with me. Prior to that, I tried to repair our friendship but she was honest and admitted that she did not have the time nor patience. That is tough to hear, not gonna lie. Eventually, my patience with her wore thin and for the first time ever, I erupted at her. She was like a sister to me and I vowed to myself that I would never lose my patience with her (I know, I was kind of an insane person or at least I felt like one). And I tried calling her to apologize a few weeks later, and I knew by the tone of her voice that she was done with the friendship. After that, I was a TRAINWRECK.
I had never felt so low in my life. For some reason, I managed not to destroy my entire college career and still did fairly well in school. Because to be honest, that was all I had left besides my family. College and my loving, neurotic family. Don’t get me wrong, if it wasn’t for my four crazy younger siblings, I probably would not have made it through my rough patch. Despite that, I still trapped myself into a mental prison that was filled with guilt, self-hate, anger, and sadness. If you have trouble understanding depression, it basically is like a mental prison. The best way to explain it is that in your mental prison, you’re the guard as well as the prisoner. You’re trapped in a cell with your darkest thoughts, insecurities, and memories. You want so badly to get out of that prison, but since you’re also the guard of it you keep yourself locked in. You keep yourself locked in because you believe you deserve it.
Eventually, I realized I did not deserve it anymore nor did I want to continue feeling that way. When you over analyze yourself and the things that happened, it leaves you mentally exhausted. And I was tired of feeling exhausted. So, I went to therapy. It was instrumental in helping me shift my mindset and perspective of friendships, life, and family. I truly believe that making an effort every day to remain positive, not stressing over the little things, and doing things that bring you joy are instrumental in improving your mental health. Of course, there are other things like good nutrition, exercise, sleep, etc., but shifting your mindset is also important.
Over this past summer, I reached out to one of my former best friends for forgiveness. I had tried to reach out for forgiveness before then, but I don’t think I fully accepted and understood what I did until this year. Luckily, she responded back and forgave me. When I say a literal weight fell off my chest, I mean it. I felt like I could breathe again. I had been suffocated by guilt and self-hatred for so long that I forgot what it felt like to truly breathe. She gave me the greatest gift of all with her forgiveness, and I’ll forever be grateful. Because not everyone forgives, and I thought for sure that she would take this to the grave. I wouldn’t have blamed her but knowing her, I NEVER thought she would forgive me. Plus, I truly was nasty to her and my other best friend who I targeted most of my anger towards.
During that conversation, she mentioned that she had changed and evolved. As did I in many ways. She mentioned a story of a girl that had said some unkind things to one of her friends during her time studying abroad. Obviously, she was not here for that sh**, which makes sense. She explained how that girl felt so bad about what she did that she cried and explained to her friend why she thought the way she did. Ultimately, the girl’s friend forgave her and that led my former bestie to feel guilty. She felt guilty because she heard that after that incident, the girl felt lonely for months afterward and felt like she was the reason. She didn’t like that she made that girl feel that way, even if she felt like the girl deserved it for some time.
And what stuck with me the most is that she said, “I only hope that now you can forgive me for being so angry at you for so long to the point where you couldn’t move on without my say so. I don’t like that I have held that kind of ‘power’ over you.” To be clear, she did not have to forgive, let alone apologize to me. But her saying those words made me teary-eyed. I did not know how much I needed that until she said it. Because that is the other flip of the coin, I caused hurt to other people and I rightfully deserved to be shunned. However, being shunned leaves you isolated and lonely. I lost my close friend group in an instant. They were always there to support me, uplift me, and reassure me.
So, I took it into my own hands to outcast myself and make sure that I did not cause harm to anyone else. Additionally, not having forgiveness or closure drives you insane. Well, it did for me. I was stuck in the past and could not forgive myself for the life of me. I started using LSD here and there to escape from the negative thoughts that pervaded my mind. I NEVER thought I’d do drugs, other than maybe some Mary J. I even robo tripped once. Yea, BIG MISTAKE. Do not do it, folks. It was a barf fest and my heart was racing so fast that I thought it was going to burst. Also, I took a hot shower afterwards, and that almost put my body into shock. I mention this because I got to the point where my reality felt so insufferable that I turned to drugs to escape the pain.
But after my former best friend forgave me, I started to progress at a faster pace and slowly gained the confidence to approach other females. For a while, I steered clear of ANY and ALL females, other than my mother and three sisters. I was like, “NOPE, do not need that trauma.” I was fearful that I would make the same mistakes and also insecure that they would not like me. To be fair, I wasn’t exactly radiating happiness and positivity. So even if I wanted female friendships, I wasn’t necessarily a gravitating force. However, I eventually got over that fear and have started to form new friendships. I’m really proud of putting myself out there and as Tangela Mitchell stated in my previous article, “Moving through the fear,” and not waiting for it to go away before I did anything.
Although, there was STILL some unfinished business. Remember that best friend from middle school? Well, I was not exactly over that until VERY recently. It was not until a few weeks ago that I finally let go of getting closure from her, which has allowed me to move on. I think why it was so hard for me to move on is because she approached me to be her friend. In the sixth grade, we were in the cafeteria line and she was behind me, and asked, “Hey, do you want to sit together at lunch?” or something close to that. Again, it’s been a while. That moment was special to me because she saw something in me that was worth getting to know. Or maybe she was just being a kind human being that saw I was shy and looked like I needed a friend. Nonetheless, she was friendly and welcomed me in with open arms. I had never experienced that before with my friendships prior to hers. And so, we quickly became close and she became like family to me over the years. At the time, her dad was a single dad and being around them was such a joy. They were a normal family unit. I would make arepas with her and her dad, talk about life, and we even had an odd phase when her and I would role play. When I went to her place, it felt like a home away from home. So, when our friendship ended, I lost a sister and friend for life. I no longer had that home away from home.
So, a few weeks ago I tried to reach out to her on the app Groupme. I forgot I even had her on there since I barely used the app until recently. Needless to say, I was left on read. To clarify, there are no hard feelings. She has moved on and is in a great place in her life from what I’ve heard. And that makes me genuinely happy because she has faced hardships of her own throughout her life. But, I was still holding on for dear life. It is difficult to close chapters in your life because that means you have to rewrite them or start anew. And that can be exhausting. It takes effort to establish new friendships and nourish them to grow and prosper in the way you want them to. Side Note: Sometimes friendships are created when you least expect it. For example, I approached a resident (and I NEVER approach people first) at Allegro, which is an assisted living facility. After talking for about an hour, we genuinely connected and had a great conversation despite our age gap and generational differences. Also, the app Bumble is a good first step to find people in your area that are in your same age group to hang out with or talk to. It’s not just a dating app; you can also network and potentially find friends. And no, I did not write this entire article just to sponsor Bumble. But, wouldn’t that be something?
I was holding onto our friendship like it was the last drop of water that I needed to survive. So, I texted her stepmom at 1 AM (please don’t text people that early in the morning) and asked her thoughts on the situation. And what she replied back with was a tough pill to swallow but it was the thing that allowed me to fully move on. She said to me, “You and *blank* are not in high school anymore. You are a grown a** woman and it’s time that you move on. I am not going to stand in the middle of you and *blank*. She has a life and so do you. Get busy looking forward at what’s ahead of you instead of what is behind you. If *blank* wants to contact you, she can get in contact with you. If she doesn’t choose to do so, then move on and forget about it.”
As tough as that was to read, and as much as I wanted to catch an attitude (just being real), she was right. I was stuck in the past and I was not doing things that I knew would make me happy and prosper in life. I was not moving forward AT ALL. I was making some progress, but I was not doing the things that I knew would potentially bring me happiness. So, I want to thank her for providing clarity on the situation and being real with me about something I could not admit to myself. After a few hours of pondering her words, I was ready to accept the truth and finally freed myself from my mental prison. I still have my bad days like everybody else, but my perspective of life is a lot more positive. In my opinion, it’s more exhausting hating myself and being negative than making a conscious effort to remain positive and do good things.
So, that concludes my story about failed female friendships. As tough as that was to go through, I would not go back and change what I did. Do I regret it? FOR SURE. I hurt people that I genuinely cared about, and still do. However, that experience allowed me to self-reflect on how I treated and viewed female friendships. I was a loyal friend, but I also had unhealthy preconceived notions and stereotypes about females — which I probably got from my mother. Sorry mom, but it’s true. I was taught to always be a little cautious and wary of females, and so that eventually evolved into paranoia and distrust. The combination of paranoia and distrust is a toxic cocktail for any friendship, relationship, situationship, etc. I realized that I was always placing blame on others, especially females, for my problems. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to be friends with a person like that. It’s possible, but it ain’t healthy.
If you have read this far, thank you. I know it’s a lot, and now we can finally breathe.The last thing I want to say is this: go into a friendship with kindness, humility, and honesty. And when I say honest, I don’t mean being a straight up savage. Unless, your friend welcomes it. Furthermore, learn to listen when it is your turn to listen and talk when it is your turn to talk. Be patient and sympathetic. Give your friends space when they need it, and do not take it personally. Humble yourself. And most importantly, have fun and laugh together often in this crazy, wild ride called life.