I wasn't 21 yet when I started to hang out with her, but it didn't stop me from keeping up with her when we went out with our friends. One part of my brain screamed "She's not the best influence!" but the other part didn't give a shit, so I went along with her binge drinking anyway.
Before we stopped being friends, her family had practically adopted me---her dad authorizing me to sign for packages when they came to the door or when a repairman would come over to fix something. I even helped decorate their house for Christmas one year.
We had played softball together as kids and were friends, but it wasn't until I was 20-years-old that we really started hanging out.
We had reconnected on Facebook and she invited me to a party at her friends' house. I rolled in with two other people because I didn't know anyone else there. That night, I was introduced to a new drinking game called Auctioneer; one that I still like to play from time to time. It ended in me getting ridiculously drunk and was the beginning of a poisonous two year friendship that would inevitably cave in on itself.
It really started when we took a softball class together. We had both played up until the junior or senior year of high school, so we know our shit. We were the only ones in that class who did. On occasion, I'd skip my Art History class and go over to her house instead. We'd take shots of vodka, make mixed drinks, and watch movies or re-runs of Jersey Shore before heading back to school. Before we'd leave, we had made it a habit to spike our Gatorade---her's blue and mine red---with at least 3 shots of vodka. It was always most amusing that no one could tell how drunk we actually were, even on the days when we were really blasted and rolling around in the outfield.
I didn't realize it then but I was really starting to dig myself into a deep, deep hole. As the semester went on, we hung out more and more. She introduced me to a bunch of her friends and every weekend was a new adventure.
I've always been kind of a half-assed student---making attempts to study and do homework but never really succeeding. I had started to frequent Barnes and Noble with other friends to work and she'd come with me, but most of her time was spent complaining, saying things like "If you were 21, we'd be at a bar right now." Or "I passing up a a ton of free drinks right now to hang out with you." I still don't really understand why she would always come with me because she mostly just wanted to vent about her familial issues, but she would stick around nonetheless.
Our weekends were typically filled with parties at various guys' houses and I was always the youngest one there. By hanging out with her, I had learned to build up a big tolerance to alcohol because if you couldn't hang, you'd never hear the end of it.
I had started to stray away from my other friends---people I had known and trusted for years---because I had absorbed her "party on" mentality. I would verbally fight with some of my other friends and defend her lifestyle because she was my friend---my sister. Her parents always had an extra portion of food for me at dinnertime and would make me breakfast foods at noon on those days that I was too hungover from the night before. They took me to Dodger games and invited me to all of their family events. More often than not, they would give me money and ask me to take their cars to get food for dinner or run to the store and buy some food ingredient. Growing up in an extremely dysfunctional household, it felt good to be accepted for who I was by a pair of adults.
As that first year past by, I noticed that I was becoming increasingly more angry or upset about stupid shit the more drunk I became. My drunk alter-ego was completely sick and tired of her teen-angst. Who still blames the world for their issues when they're 22? Why couldn't she accept responsibility for her actions?
I never did anything about my anger---not realizing that most of it was being directed at people who didn't deserve it. People like my best friend have witnessed me on more than one occasion hit walls and cuss out people who had done absolutely nothing wrong. I started avoiding certain friends and events because there wasn't any booze or she didn't want to go because she didn't get along with one or two people who were there. Her influence was flowing through my veins and I didn't even pay attention to the warning signs.
The night before her 23rd birthday, she managed to break a toe and had to use crutches for a few weeks. I was there by her side every day, hanging out with her when she was sad that she couldn't go to parties, making sure she was doing OK. I will never say that I am a good or a great friend to have around, but if I talk to you enough, I will never want you to be upset. And for me, that's all I was doing for her. making sure she wasn't alone when the rest of our friends were playing beer pong, because I liked to think that she'd do the same for me.
She didn't.
That March, I broke my ankle and had to be in a cast for a month. It was horrible. I couldn't drive anywhere or wear regular jeans---either wearing basketball shorts or baggy sweatpants everywhere I went. I mostly slept on the couch for the first few days after the accident because it was extremely difficult to get up the stairs and I won't go into detail how difficult it is to take a shower with 4 trash bags wrapped around a leg you can't use, but let me tell you, it was a challenge. In that month that I spent at home, I'm fairly certain that she visited me twice. Once to pick me up and take me to a party toward the end of my recovery, and another time to watch horror movies with me. I had a few friends come over fairly frequently to hang out and keep me company, but she wasn't one of them. I still don't know why I didn't see it until later on, but it never occurred to me that she wasn't being a good friend.
The night before her 23rd birthday, she managed to break a toe and had to use crutches for a few weeks. I was there by her side every day, hanging out with her when she was sad that she couldn't go to parties, making sure she was doing OK. I will never say that I am a good or a great friend to have around, but if I talk to you enough, I will never want you to be upset. And for me, that's all I was doing for her. making sure she wasn't alone when the rest of our friends were playing beer pong, because I liked to think that she'd do the same for me.
She didn't.
That March, I broke my ankle and had to be in a cast for a month. It was horrible. I couldn't drive anywhere or wear regular jeans---either wearing basketball shorts or baggy sweatpants everywhere I went. I mostly slept on the couch for the first few days after the accident because it was extremely difficult to get up the stairs and I won't go into detail how difficult it is to take a shower with 4 trash bags wrapped around a leg you can't use, but let me tell you, it was a challenge. In that month that I spent at home, I'm fairly certain that she visited me twice. Once to pick me up and take me to a party toward the end of my recovery, and another time to watch horror movies with me. I had a few friends come over fairly frequently to hang out and keep me company, but she wasn't one of them. I still don't know why I didn't see it until later on, but it never occurred to me that she wasn't being a good friend.
To this day, I can confidently say that she was more excited for my 21st birthday than I was. On my actual birthday, she took me out to a couple of bars in Hollywood and bought me a bottle of Jack Daniels. She made sure that our of-aged friends bought me a plethora of drinks and that one of her friends was our designated driver. It was instances like this when I looked passed her bullshit and saw her as a good friend. We got incredibly drunk and it was one of the most memorable nights I've ever had. I had eaten red velvet waffles at a place called The Waffle, on Sunset Boulevard, so when I threw up in the morning I panicked because I thought I was throwing up blood. I rushed out of the bathroom in a panic, only to be reassured that I was just throwing up red velvet waffles and not my innards.
Later that year, she started dating her first boyfriend. It was kind of a controversial issue because she had met him through a mutual friend who was also attracted to him.
They began to secretly date---myself being one of the few who knew---behind our other friend's back. She claimed to feel terrible about it, but never did anything to stop it. After she'd gotten the OK to date him, I was finally introduced. He seemed nice on the surface, but like a guy who'd been around the block more than a few times. Not that that was a bad thing, but I never got the best vibe from him. It was around this time that I started to take a step back from her lifestyle and spend more time with the friends I had been neglecting.
From the get-go, the two would fight over the dumbest things. He was 19 and she 23, so the age difference would always play into their arguments. One night in particular, we were sitting in her living room drinking Jack and Cokes and watching horror movies. He was the jealous type, so she and I started to text back and forth about the hot guys on-screen, when he started to get visibly angry. He stood up and walked out of the house---slamming the screen door behind him. She went after him as I started to leave and told me to stay there and watch the dog. Even though I thought it was pointless, I did it anyway. After a 20 minute screaming match in her front yard, they came back inside and she stormed into her bedroom. He flew after her, shutting the door as quietly as possible so as to not wake her parents. After sitting on the couch for another 10 minutes, I finally just got up and went home, because it was always like that with them. "in love" one minute and an angry, embarrassing spectacle the next.
I started to take vacations to San Diego more and more. My best friend lived there at the time and although she'd never admit it, was never too fond of the poisonous one, so I'd go alone. We would drink and party, but it would be without the drama and I wouldn't be forced to drink a gallon of alcohol if I didn't want to. We'd just relax and hang out.
Whenever I'd go on these vacations, I would tell her not to call or text me with her problems because I needed a break. It never failed though; my leave would always trigger the fight of the century and I would be forced to spend countless hours on the phone trying to console her or help fix the problem.
Eventually, he dumped her, triggering the ultimate end of our friendship. She had become a complete mess---rarely leaving the house, calling me frequently to come over and watch movies with her. She had stopped eating all things except for chips, salsa, and candy. But even those things reminded him of her. It went so far as her mom calling me, asking to come to dinner and try and get her to eat. I've never really known what to do when someone cries in front of me, and this time period was no different, but I would always come with something in hand to try and cheer her up. I'd listen to her talk about him and how she could get him back, not really knowing what to do or say to make her feel better, other than sit there and listen.
The deeper she sunk into a depression over a guy she hadn't known for more than six months, the further we started to drift apart. I was working almost 40 hours a week while going to school, so my time spent as her shoulder to cry on was limited. I was making new friends and so busy with work and school, that I started to find it difficult for me to comprehend and tolerate her sadness. She stopped going to school and work; just sitting in her house day in and day out.
I started hanging out with a new group of friends who had been customers at my work, and I immediately loved them. They were fun and relatively drama-free, and some of them have their lives on track and have an inevitable goal to reach. They were different, and I liked that.
It was about this time that she snapped out of her stupor and wanted to meet my new friends. Most of them did not like her from the start, but hid the way they felt because of me. But despite her happy existence on the surface, she was still troubled about the ex.
Soon enough she stopped texting me and it was a little while before I really noticed. At one point I heard from a mutual friend that she hated me, and I don't think I'll ever be 100 percent sure why. Some of our mutual friends stopped talking to me and others stopped talking to her, and there were the few who didn't pick a side and still talk to both of us. I've reconciled with one friend who I lost at the end of the friendship, who later realized that her anger didn't make sense, but I don't think I'll ever talk to the others. Two of those friends I had known since I was 5-years-old, but their silence since then has shown me who my real friends are.
Even now, a year and a half later, she still can't be anywhere I am. More than once she has made it painfully obvious that if I am there, she won't be. We went to our mutual friends' party a few months ago and although I said nothing more to her than "Hi" and "Bye," you could still cut the tension with a plastic butterknife. I didn't go there to bother her or pick a fight, but the entire vibe of the party could feel the hatred she has for me. People throughout the night were coming up to me in the backyard, informing me that she was inside talking shit and those people would ask what I was going to do about it. I didn't do anything. I let it go.
Although my friendship with her was toxic from the start, I wouldn't take it back for the world. We had some good times and I like to think that I've grown up a lot since then, not drinking nearly as much as I used to and actually going to class. I don't regret our friendship because without it, I wouldn't be who I am today or have some of the friends I do now---people I will remain friends with until my dying day. I wouldn't have known that the two people I'd counted on since elementary school were so disloyal and easily manipulated.
Later this month, we're both supposed to go to a party at the same house as before. i'm curious to see if she'll try and back out at the last second or act like a civil human being. As for me, I'm going to see my old friends. I don't care about some illogical feud. We're not kids anymore.
The deeper she sunk into a depression over a guy she hadn't known for more than six months, the further we started to drift apart. I was working almost 40 hours a week while going to school, so my time spent as her shoulder to cry on was limited. I was making new friends and so busy with work and school, that I started to find it difficult for me to comprehend and tolerate her sadness. She stopped going to school and work; just sitting in her house day in and day out.
I started hanging out with a new group of friends who had been customers at my work, and I immediately loved them. They were fun and relatively drama-free, and some of them have their lives on track and have an inevitable goal to reach. They were different, and I liked that.
It was about this time that she snapped out of her stupor and wanted to meet my new friends. Most of them did not like her from the start, but hid the way they felt because of me. But despite her happy existence on the surface, she was still troubled about the ex.
Soon enough she stopped texting me and it was a little while before I really noticed. At one point I heard from a mutual friend that she hated me, and I don't think I'll ever be 100 percent sure why. Some of our mutual friends stopped talking to me and others stopped talking to her, and there were the few who didn't pick a side and still talk to both of us. I've reconciled with one friend who I lost at the end of the friendship, who later realized that her anger didn't make sense, but I don't think I'll ever talk to the others. Two of those friends I had known since I was 5-years-old, but their silence since then has shown me who my real friends are.
Even now, a year and a half later, she still can't be anywhere I am. More than once she has made it painfully obvious that if I am there, she won't be. We went to our mutual friends' party a few months ago and although I said nothing more to her than "Hi" and "Bye," you could still cut the tension with a plastic butterknife. I didn't go there to bother her or pick a fight, but the entire vibe of the party could feel the hatred she has for me. People throughout the night were coming up to me in the backyard, informing me that she was inside talking shit and those people would ask what I was going to do about it. I didn't do anything. I let it go.
Although my friendship with her was toxic from the start, I wouldn't take it back for the world. We had some good times and I like to think that I've grown up a lot since then, not drinking nearly as much as I used to and actually going to class. I don't regret our friendship because without it, I wouldn't be who I am today or have some of the friends I do now---people I will remain friends with until my dying day. I wouldn't have known that the two people I'd counted on since elementary school were so disloyal and easily manipulated.
Later this month, we're both supposed to go to a party at the same house as before. i'm curious to see if she'll try and back out at the last second or act like a civil human being. As for me, I'm going to see my old friends. I don't care about some illogical feud. We're not kids anymore.
