u/HaloAngel150

Hey, idk how to start this I’m 18, non-binary, and sobbing in the bathroom and idk where else to go to talk to about this at this point, so hi!! Apologies for length.

Last year, when i was 17, i was dropped by a friend group out of nowhere by a group of girls who I had been very close with for years. A little bit of context is that i have had depression for honestly as long as i can remember and i also suffer with NPD and ADHD. One girl in this friend group (who i did not know even slightly as well as the others) hated me because I was getting close to her best friend (we almost started dating) and she began to shit talk me to all of the other girls, using my mental health issues as leverage. They ignored me for 3 months while I continued to sit with them and beg to know what was happening. This all culminated when, who i thought was my best friend, someone i saw as a sister, added me to a gc and they all took it in turns to say everything they found annoying about me.

It’s been over a year. I have not spoken to any of them since. It was honestly pretty traumatic, I have always struggled with my social life due to childhood depression and my history of mental illness, I thought these girls were it for me, I thought I’d found my people. The main girl I was closest with, i’ll call her N, I had been best friends with for 4 years. I met her when we were both identifying as nonbinary and it was so important to be with someone who i could relate to. We were the only queer people in my year. When we got to sixth form and she detransitioned it was perfectly whatever but it did kinda mean i was only openly queer kid in my very neurotypical year group.

They all dropped me, never spoke to me, talked behind my back. It was awful. Because I was in sixth form and my year was small, everyone already had their own friend groups. I am not popular and it sent my already depressed self completely spiralling. I barely spoke to any other people in my year for about 6 months. I was insanely depressed.

Since this happened I have gotten therapy, found new, awesome friends, and generally matured and realised how lowkey shitty they all were to me. However, theres that one girl, N. I just cannot get over. We were best friends for 4 years, it felt like losing a sister and yet she cant even look at me. She knows i didn’t even do anything wrong because in this past year all the girls in that group who weren’t actively spreading stuff about me have apologised! I don’t know what I did to make her still hate me.

Thing is, with how fast she dropped me and how she treated me in those last few months, I would never want to be her friend again. I just miss her so much. I just want her to talk to me again. I can’t even look at her without this overwhelming feeling of like, grief i guess. I don’t want her back, i just don’t want her to hate me.

In 3 weeks I leave school, i will never see her again and i have come to terms with the fact that i will never see her again, nor will i get that apology. I just want to stop missing her. Is that pain going to go away?

Tldr: vaguely traumatic friendship breakup is haunting my existence. Does the pain of losing a best friend go away?

Right, been getting sick and tired of all of the classic ‘I really don’t like Johnny’ posts so I’m here to make a ‘I really love Johnny’ post. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about how little I see focus being put on the absolute tragedy that is his life and his narrative.

Sure, it’s sad overall, watching him spiral down this horrible pit, but theres so many small stand out scenes that I never see anybody else talk about that genuinely make me cry when I think about them too hard, like:

Him having to sell his CD collection so he can buy his meds. I mean it’s just heartbreaking. Whether you like him or not that scene is so hard to read. Johnny didn’t have much to hold on to and that was the moment that made me realise I was in for a rough time with his character.

Him going back to The Whale in chapter 21 and staying in his mother’s old room. I was already upset from Lude’s death earlier in the chapter but this absolutely destroyed me. ‘I sat down and waited for her to find me.’ Johnny stop it.

Lude’s death and how it affected him as a whole is something I don’t see discussed a lot. I know theres a lot of debate on if he was real or not but he’s my favourite character so I think about him and Johnny’s relationship a lot. Their final scene in the hospital together is also heartbreaking.

Theres definitely a lot more than this! These are just the ones that come back to me the most. Too much Johnny negativity in this sub! What are you guys’ favourite tragic moments? Do you think that he’s alright, wherever he ended up?