i feel kinda like i've had my head in a big muddy puddle for the past month. i can tell that my depression is bad, but i don't want to do anything about it. it's so much easier it is to just let it happen and lay there. i suppose that's why i've spent most of my life cowering in bed, which i've been thinking about a lot recently.

i'm trying to hype myself up to look forward to tomodachi life: living the dream and my friend mailing me a PS vita, though...! i've been looking forward to more tomodachi life forever... i really got into it in 2023 when i was having a monumentally difficult time in my life, so it means a lot to me. i do kind of wish that i played it when i was in high school, i had a friend who really enjoyed it and would bring his DS to school to dick around on it. i had a hard time getting into playing my 3DS at that time because the screen was so small and the lack of antialiasing gave me a damn headache, but getting the new 3DS XL made a world of difference.

uuugghh... omg. i've been trying so hard to be good about my own boundaries with myself, but i'm feeling wrapped up in nostalgia (i guess...?) for an emotionally abusive friendship i had to leave. it feels like very little time has passed since then, but also that i can scarcely remember the years we had been friends. i need to dump my heart somewhere since i dredged up all those terrible feelings again today. i'm frustrated and just need to get this out of my system for the Nth time.

we were very close friends for almost a decade and they, like myself, struggled with mental health. when i was younger, i essentially thought i had to be self-sacrificing to be a good friend, to always be there whenever someone needed help. i ended up becoming a sort of caretaker for them and it became intensely codependent. there's no easy way out of that, especially because they did not respect many of the boundaries i tried to impose as we grew into adults. we had troubles, like any friendship (healthy or not), and there were times when i was absolutely at fault and needed to be set on the right track. same with them, they weren't all bad, of course. pobody's nerfect and all that.

but, gradually, they would get upset with me for how they reacted when i spoke, even when genuinely trying to be sensitive to their emotional needs. but they were kind of like a ticking time-bomb. if i didn't meet their impossible expectations of micro-managing my language they would like... self-destruct. there was a lot of guilt-tripping and giving me the silent treatment. deleting hordes of messages, turning their profile blank with a concerning status, and blocking me. sometimes in the middle of conversations. i feel silly being so deeply hurt by something so childish, but it was painful.

i would get a horrible pit in my stomach whenever they would tell me they were upset/something bad happened because i knew that i would have to put everything on pause, no matter where i was, and tend to them. sometimes for hours. i was the one they relied on for their mental health, their emotional landfill. i still get terrified whenever i'm messaged about something bad happening or someone not feeling well.

i could go on for much longer about how they hurt me, especially when i was trying to do damage control and salvage our friendship in the last few days of it, but i don't want to mull over this blog entry forever.

anyways. what i really want to say with all of this is how it's very, very strange for me to continue to be simultaneously idolized and demonized by them, even after i have disappeared from their life. once, about a year ago now, i stupidly checked their account. admittedly, it was during one day when i had started to spiral at the thought of them having killed themself because i wasn't there for them. i was still holding myself responsible for their mental health like 6 months after i had left. i needed to know they were alive.

they are, which is relieved me, but... it was unsettling, to say the least, to find that they have begun to go by a previous chosen name i went by for years and they have even chosen a username that is very similar to one i used on twitter for almost the whole time i used it. it was scary. i felt like my personhood was violated and was afraid that they were going through some dissociative episode, becoming increasingly worried. but then i scrolled down to see them say awful lies about me, calling me an abusive racist. and it clicked.

i had seen this happen before with other people who had left them, so many times over the course of our friendship.

it didn't matter how much i debased myself to coddle them, to apologize for perceived missteps on their eggshells. it never mattered. because whenever someone leaves them, that person always becomes the "bad guy".

i knew them for so long, comforted them any time someone had (allegedly) abandoned them. then they would say "oh, they were actually X-phobic/ racist/ ableist and abused me the whole time! they're the worst!" when that was the first i had ever heard of that person being hateful, when they told me everything and showed me screenshots of conversations with these supposedly abusive people that were perfectly normal. it had become a routine. i would never doubt that there are terrible, hateful people in the world, but this was too many times to be coincidence. and now it's my turn. i did everything i could to be kind to them, to meet them where they were, but it doesn't matter.

it does still feel insulting, after i tried my damnedest to 1) save the friendship while respecting myself and 2) wrote a deeply heartfelt and encouraging email to them when breaking things off, taking care to include all of the artwork i could find that we had made together since we were teenagers. i tried so, so fucking hard to be good to them, mostly because i was scared they would hurt themself. but a part of myself knew how likely it was that they would turn on me after i left, how easily they would twist everything in order to justify all their feelings and continue always being the victim. i spent days writing that letter. i got multiple friends and my therapist to read it before i sent it. i was told that i was being exceedingly kind, how i didn't need to do this after this "friend" literally called me a "thing [they] go to when [they're] upset" and said plainly that they didn't consider my feelings.

ugh. i suppose there is a sense of freedom in understanding this was doomed from the start. plus, i'm finally able to put my phone down for a few hours without worrying about being responsible for a friend's suicide... even though my instinct is to want to know what i did wrong for them to say such awful things about me, i'm trying not to put any value in their insults. i know they're not true. the idolization seems to have morphed into a kind of mimicry of the "old me", i suppose. now all that's left is to be demonized.

fuckin' whaaaateeevveerrr, i guess.