Being Manipulated

For years I considered one girl to be my best friend. I met her at the beginning of high school and, like most friendships, it started off great. We talked about everything, and it felt like nothing could go wrong. I told her my fears about losing my close friends as high school went on. Instead of being reassuring, she managed to convince me that my friends from middle school were awful people. This happened multiple times but at that point I didn’t notice how much I was being manipulated.

As I matured, I started to notice her manipulations more and started to stand for them less. By the end of my junior year I started to wonder if this friendship was worth it. At this point, I’m in my first relationship and she is determined to know everything.

At that moment I was sure that I wanted out of this friendship.

After that I did my best to drift from her, but she has this habit of sending big blocks of text when she thinks she did something wrong. On the first day of senior year, she sends me this big paragraph about how she was sick of trying to “pull this friendship along” and how I made her feel horrible. She told me that she quit theatre and switched out of the class I was in because she didn’t want to be around me. I read this text and on one hand I’m telling myself that this is my chance to get out of this toxic relationship, but at the same time I feel that I’m being ridiculous for wanting this friendship to end.

I know that she wants me to say I’m sorry and that I will try to do better, and I do apologize that she felt she had to quit something she loved because of me.I say that I am willing for us to ignore each other if that will make her more comfortable. Her response is one sentence, “If you decide you want to make it work and put in the effort, then we will go from there, if not, then you’ve made it very clear that you don’t care about me.” I read this sentence and my heart plummets. I knew that my response would change our entire