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How to Bounce Back When Your “Friends” Stomp on Your Face
The worst hurt is the one you don’t see coming.
Here’s what I carried before I stopped caring:
One friend stole thousands of dollars and lied about it. Another comforted me through bouts of depression while calling me a lunatic on social media. It became such that you couldn’t tell the difference between mask and skin with these two. One used me until she got what she wanted to get and the other used me as a punchline for a joke that wasn’t ever funny.
One friend I knew for a decade. I called her muffin. It was a running joke between us because if you knew her you’d know that she’s the antithesis of a muffin. I held her children in my arms and cooked her meals while her husband suffered a nervous breakdown in a hospital in Texas. For the first time since I’d known her, she was vulnerable. Drowning. For the first time since I’d known her, I wasn’t the one who needed fixing.
A month later, my mother died and I decided to move to Los Angeles. Three thousand miles away from all my history. Muffin was the first person I told. She was quiet. Her exhales over a phone line were proof of life. Are you still there? I joked. That was the last time we spoke. We lived a mile away from each other, but she managed to Houdini herself out of my life.
