I recently had a falling out with several friends. I was going through a hard time and wasn’t handling it well. Rather than try to be supportive or interested in what was going on, most of my friends didn’t care. They knew things were bad but didn’t want to know any more. That meant I handled things even worse until they didn’t want to be around me since I ‘wasn’t fun anymore.’
This has really made me think about all of the things that lead up to this. There was a group chat with almost 20 people. It started as a core group of less than 10 but ballooned over time. It wound up including people that probably shouldn’t have been there and pushed together people who might not have chosen to be friends.
I routinely butted heads with a couple of other people in the group. Had we not had that chat forcing us into regular contact, we wouldn’t have talked to each other. We’d have drifted apart, been pleasant at parties and not had nearly as many problems.
It also showed me how well people can hide their true colors. I had one friend abandon ship and when I didn’t handle that well, she went to HR. We don’t sit near each other or work with each other so there was no reason to bring personal drama into the office. I’m a contractor and she’s a FTE so she knew full well she could have gotten me fired. She didn’t care. It was more important to have her petty revenge.
A former male friend she has gotten very close to took great offense to my recent meltdown. He tried to ghost me about a wedding invitation and when that (obviously) didn’t work, he yelled at me, demanded an apology, and blocked me on FB. I then found out he was going around to all our mutual friends telling/asking them not to come to my wedding.
This isn’t even the worst of what I’ve been through recently but it inspired me to take a really hard look at the people I was surrounding myself with. Maybe part of the problem wasn’t just the contrived situation but the quality of people. As bad as I was at my worst, I never tried to take something away from anyone that had nothing to do with me.
I’m reevaluating the friends I have left and taking some time for self-care. I need to focus on making myself better and surrounding myself with people who will further that goal. I don’t need more pain and selfishness in my life.