An Open Letter to My Emotionally Abusive Ex-Best Friend

i am strong enough to survive your bullshit.

While we were the best of friends, no matter how many times people told me you were toxic and abusive, I never once believed them. I never gave them the benefit of the doubt. I never wanted to believe that you would hurt me in the most damaging way possible (for me, at least). You knew that my mind was my biggest weakness, and yet you still fucked with me emotionally. You yourself even told me that you once were in an emotionally abusive friendship, and yet from that you still didn’t learn. Honestly, I’m not sure that you are even aware of how much emotional damage you caused, but I wish you knew. I wish you knew everything you did to me, and how much it affects my daily life so that you will never do this to another human being again. And if you ever do, I hope next time you’ll learn your lesson.

Towards the middle to the end of our friendship, I often found myself googling things such as, “how to know if your in an emotionally abusive relationship,” “signs of an emotionally abusive relationship,” and “is this really emotional abuse.” Every time I saw an article or post that had anything to do with emotional abuse, I would always read it to see if I saw us in someone else’s emotionally abusive relationship. I wish I would have listened to my friends sooner. I wish I would have taken caution. I wish that I wasn’t so naive and blind to see how much you were screwing with my head. Even when I saw similarities between our friendship and a different emotionally abusive relationship I have been in, I still wouldn’t say you were abusive and toxic. Don’t get me wrong, I know I’ve done things that have messed with you mentally, but the difference is that I have always acknowledged on my own what my wrongdoings are and I would constantly apologize for it, where you never acknowledged your behavior or apologized once.

I am trying to find words, but I honestly don’t know where to start. There are so many things I can think of, but when I sit down and try to write, I can’t think of anything. I know eventually the words will come, and it may take days, weeks, months, but they will. And you know what else will come? My healing. I know that for me personally, it will take me a very, very long time to get over everything you have done to me. But I know that one day I will be healed, and I will be allowed to have a normal friendship, and I will be able to trust people again. All it takes is time. 

During our friendship, I always felt like everything was my fault, and I realized after you dropped me that you were the one who made me feel that way. If I ever tried to tell you how something you did or said hurt me, you always turned it around and made me feel like I was the one who was doing things to hurt you, and thus I would give you endless apologies. I remember constantly apologizing to you for things I shouldn’t have been, but you made me feel like I had to apologize. I never received apologies from you for the things that you did, and if I did receive one, it was never sincere. I clearly remember a time where you apologized for hurting me because of your actions, and you said “I will never do this to you again,” but the next week you already returned to your bad habits.

One thing you did so often in our friendship (which you deny to this day), is ignore me. I have never had anyone ignore me the way that you did. I still remember the very first time you ignored me, and every time I tried to tell you about it, you denied it full-heartedly. I remember always being so confused about what I did to you, and why I deserved this from someone who I thought actually cared about me. I remember the countless days of sobbing on the way to school and on my way home from school, screaming at myself for being so stupid. I beat myself up for the way you treated me, and that should have never happened. I wish I cut our friendship off at this point, but you were too important to me.

You were always saying how important I was to you, how I was your #1, and how no one was more important to you than I was, which are all lies. You constantly put other people before me, and I tolerated it for some reason. Especially when you got into a relationship, then you really put me on the back burner. I don’t know why I put up with this, but I did. I knew I wasn’t that important to you, but at times you really made me felt like I was. 

One of the most confusing things about the end of our friendship was how all throughout our friendship, you always said that when we were together, you were so genuinely happy. I have plenty of screenshots of texts saying that you were happiest when you were with me. But, you dropped me out of nowhere. And months later, the only thing you really said about it was that you weren’t happy with our friendship anymore. What changed? The worst part about our friendship ending wasn’t that you dropped me, but that I wasn’t worth an explanation. I have tried to talk to you about this several times, and all you do is make up s**t that I supposedly did during our friendship, none of which is true. I have spent so many days and nights crying over what it was that I did to ruin this friendship, when in reality, one person can not ruin it. You put all the blame on me, and so did I. You were so emotionally insensitive to me and my pain and were too selfish to see that I could hurt too.

One of the worst parts of our friendship was when you got your new boyfriend and you ignored me for two months. TWO. MONTHS. Who does that to someone who cares so deeply about you? I was completely lost and alone during these two months, and it was at a time when I really could have used you. I was so deeply hurt by this, and a year later I still feel the effects of those two months. I distinctly remember a time when we were arguing and you stated that I made up the pain I felt and that it wasn’t a big deal and shouldn’t have been so hurt by your actions. You completely disregarded my feelings and made me feel as if what I was feeling was invalid. This wasn’t the first time you made my feelings invalid. I was there for you no matter what (and honestly, I still am) and always listened to you when you told me things that made you upset. You were there for me (for the most part) but I do remember so many times when you would ignore me when I was telling you how upset I was and turned the conversation back to you. I still can’t believe you did that. 

There is so much more that I could write, so many more things that you did to me, but those are stories from another day. I need much, much more time to heal from all the emotional trauma I had from our friendship. But what I am hoping is that I will be stronger because of everything you put me through. I am slowly learning how to trust people again, how to get close to people. I still have so much trouble with being close to people because of our friendship, but once I explain (in much less detail) why I push people away, my friends are supportive and willing to listen to anything I have to say. I deserved a much better friendship than the one you gave me, and I know what I deserve is out there somewhere.