Freshman year of high school was like moving to a new school AGAIN. I had just moved in seventh grade but when eighth grade hit, I learned that the high schools were changing the borders. I ended up going to a separate school from all the new friends I had just made.
My first day of high school started off with choir, and after I sat down, a girl I didn't know sat down next to me. We didn't talk for the first few days but after finding out we lived in the same neighborhood, we started talking and hanging out and we clicked immediately. For the next year, we would be inseparable. We hung out every day and took late night adventures walking to the nearby town just talking all night. This was the good part of our relationship
As we grew older, I noticed she would continuously put me down. She would always act as if everything she said was right and put down anything I had to say about something. She made me feel bad about myself all the time. It's like she wanted to act like she was better than me, and I just let her. However, I was so happy to finally have a best friend that I would ignore it. I learned to just stay quiet and let her talk so we could move on and have fun. I convinced myself that these things didn't matter and I started not even noticing when she said or did these things.
Sometimes I was feeling gutsy and would say what I thought or would bring it up if she was wrong. Often she would deny it or ignore me like I wasn't even talking.
One of the times I died my hair by myself (Which by the way, actually didn't look bad. It was even in color and nobody could even tell I did it by myself), she got mad because I didn't let her do it. She liked to tell people she was a hair stylist but I didn't trust her - we were 16 after all.
Another time, she told me my hair looked like shit because it was frizzy. Don't get me wrong I DO NOT have straight hair. It's wavy with a very strange texture that causes it to be very frizzy most of the time. But I have tried a lot of products and it's frizzy no matter what.
Starting junior year, I gained some weight. Partly because freshman year we never really had food in the house so I didn't have the option of eating most of the time. But also partly because I started stress eating due to the events of junior year. I was still self-conscious even though it was my own fault. But she said to me "I love you (Like that makes it any better), but you have gained A LOT of weight."
She always found a way to make me feel like shit even though she wasn't better than anybody else herself.
Sometimes It feels like the voice in my head telling me I'm not good enough is her.
Point being, If during any time in this article you felt like you've experienced this before, you should try to find a way to unfriend the person who makes you feel like crap. Nobody deserves to feel the way that I felt when I was friends with this person still. It's okay to unfriend people if they don't help you grow as a person or if they make you feel bad about yourself. Because I didn't know this, most of my high school experience was miserable. I felt trapped by her.
If you feel trapped by anybody, the best thing to do for yourself is to drop them. They might get mad at you but it's not your problem anymore, what's important is yourself.
It's okay to have enough respect for yourself to understand that people who do this to you, don't deserve to be in your life.
I've realized since then who my real best friends are. Best friends are the people who genuinely care about you. All the people that I realize now are my true best friends are the same people who would always ask me why I was still friends with the person I just wrote about. They noticed she continuously put me down and knew when I wasn't okay and actually make an effort to help me through stuff. I love those people. They're true friends and I wish I had realized it earlier.
