A few years ago, I had a best friend I was really close to. We were always together during school. A year later, she starts getting associated with these other group of kids, and I was completely fine with that. But that’s when she started to change her behaviour around me and we slowly developed a gap. She often ignored me or ditched me to hang out with the other group of kids, especially since they were "cooler" and always had high grades. I on the other hand was a nobody at school. It’s kinda obvious now, but I was a little dense back then, and kept following her around without realizing she didn’t want to hang out with me. This led to her talking behind my back, telling one of my other friends how she found me incredibly annoying because I wouldn’t stop following her. Eventually I started backing off from interacting with her since I was starting to realize she wanted to be with the cooler kids instead of me. Then on our graduation trip, we ended our friendship after she said that we were just never meant to be and it was clear by then she just didn’t want to deal with me anymore. I was pretty angry about all this, considering it was her that didn’t want this friendship to last and I tried to maintain our happiness. I honestly wished she’d come clean about finding me annoying for following her, or explaining that she wanted to join this other friend group. Sure I would have been sad, but I wouldn’t hold it against hers. Instead she decided to talk trash about me and ruined my confidence for a long time. And yet despite her doing me wrong, she actually got an award as best student from our principal that year. A few days ago, she came up in a conversation I had with a friend. I immediately started going off about how she was a terrible friend and how she should have never received the award. My friend told me I was going a bit far, since she heard that my ex friend seemed nice, and that I should probably let all of this go. Am I in the wrong for still being frustrated at her all these years later?
NTA, but I’ve gotta say bad mouthing people is never going to end well. Even though school is absolutely a mainstream process almost everyone endures, everyone there is young and immature, their social skills are poor and everyone is craving for acceptance. Through this process, your formative years, friendships are made and broken with absolutely no skill or finesse. This doesn’t mean that the people who made your life hell or just plain treated you poorly are assholes now. Often what seemed devastating at the time was just a throwaway line at the time. It would be interesting to see how she treats you now all these years later, with a bit of maturity and time passed. Don’t hold a grudge too tightly or it will shape you…
YTA. Talking negatively about other people says a lot more about you than it does about another person. Sure, she was crappy for not telling you the truth in high school, but who does?
Also, you’re being an a-hole to yourself for not forgiving and starting to let go/move on. You don’t need to forget, but allowing yourself to move through it is beneficial.
Look, behavior is a language. Hard to see when you’re school age young, but her distancing herself should’ve been your sign to distance as well. It hurts, but when people show you who they are you have to believe them. The main reason YTA now is because you’re still harboring this anger and talking badly of her, in the same way you got mad at her for. Plus the whole “she got a best student award” jealousy thing kind of proves my point, I’m assuming that award was for grades not a “best friend” award. Maturity is key here
I say NTA because she did the things that you were talking about. But, for your own sake, you need to move on and put this in the rearview mirror. Maybe talking to a therapist a couple of times would help you? It is hard to let go of old hurts, but not letting go often hurts us even more.
OMG who cares?
YTA it’s definitely not a good idea to badmouth her to another friend and give them the wrong impression when it’s been so many years and she could have changed. Sounds like she was really awful to you, but that whole thing is between you and her, not another third party that you’re bringing into it