I became really close friends with a girl from my master’s program. I think part of why I got attached so quickly is because she was one of the first people outside my close circle that I told I’m trans, and she reacted really well. I felt safe with her, so I started including her in everything. I even helped her get a job where I work.

But from the beginning, there were weird situations.

She had this really close friend group from our program: two girls and another guy. At the time, one of the girls and the guy were even living with her, and they all seemed extremely close. They had even gone on a trip together and were basically inseparable, so it genuinely shocked me when they suddenly stopped speaking to her entirely.

According to her, the fallout started because the other girls “excluded” her from a Day of the Dead event while she was in class. Then the story started changing multiple times. At one point she admitted she had checked their locations on Life360 after class to see where they were. Every time she retold the story, details changed completely. In some versions, the guy wasn’t even involved at all, and only the two girls were part of the conflict. In another version, all three of them had supposedly gone together. The inconsistency honestly started confusing me. Eventually the girl and the guy who lived with her moved out, and the entire group cut ties with her. At the time I thought maybe it was all just misunderstandings.

Then things started happening with me too.

One morning my cat escaped right before work. I texted her immediately and stayed behind looking for him. After I found him, she called asking how long I’d take, and when I told her I still hadn’t left, she responded in this annoyed, rude tone like “you STILL haven’t left?” That genuinely upset me because I wasn’t being irresponsible, I was literally trying to get my cat back inside safely. We argued later and technically “made up,” but she never apologized for the way she initially spoke to me.

Another time we went clubbing with coworkers and she started aggressively dancing on someone who was already in a relationship. It made me uncomfortable, so I said I was leaving. The thing is, I had actually told people multiple times that I was heading out, and somehow everyone else knew except her. Honestly, I think she was so busy grinding on that guy that she just didn’t pay attention. She then spammed me with angry texts accusing me of abandoning her and apparently crying over it, even though she was surrounded by friends and coworkers she knew well.

Over time I also started noticing how emotionally exhausting she was in relationships. She constantly came to me crying over guys who treated her badly, asking for advice, but if I ever suggested boundaries or asked why she kept tolerating it, she would either ignore me or immediately change the subject. It felt like I was being used as an emotional dumping ground, but she never actually wanted honesty or help.

At the same time, she treated the guys who liked her terribly. She openly admitted to letting them pay for everything, drive her around, buy her gifts, flowers, dinners, etc., while fully knowing they wanted something serious. Some had already confessed feelings to her and been rejected, but she still kept them emotionally hooked while pretending they were “just friends.”

There were also multiple moments where she reacted badly anytime someone told her something she didn’t want to hear. Once I expressed concern because her heart rate during workouts was staying above 180 bpm for almost entire sessions. I have years of experience in sports and combat sports, and she knew that, so I wasn’t just making things up. But she snapped at me and basically said she didn’t care as long as she stayed skinny.

Work became frustrating too. It was a part-time job, so I never expected her to be there every day of the week, especially not on Mondays. But she would constantly ask to leave early or switch the days she was supposed to be in the office without telling me beforehand, even though I was the person organizing tasks for her. One time she switched days without notifying me at all, so I planned the entire week assuming she wouldn’t be there. Then she suddenly showed up on Monday expecting me to already have tasks prepared for her, even though Mondays were usually the day I used to review ongoing work and organize the rest of the week.

But the final straw happened all in the same day during and after a car ride with another coworker.

She started retelling all her relationship stories again, except this time the stories were completely different from the versions she had told me privately. Suddenly she was always the innocent victim. That’s when I realized she did this constantly: privately she admitted the messy details where she was also being cruel or manipulative, but publicly she rewrote the stories to make herself look completely blameless.

Then she made comments that honestly changed the way I saw her. She described a guy she had rejected using a nickname that could honestly be considered homophobic in my language, basically implying he “wasn’t man enough” because she didn’t see him as masculine enough. What made it worse was that she talked about it like it was completely normal while happily bragging that she still let him drive her around, buy her flowers, take her to dinner, etc. Another coworker even pointed out that the guy obviously wanted more, and she just acted oblivious.

Later that same day, there was also a weird incident on the subway that stuck with me because it felt so unnecessarily inconsiderate. At one point it genuinely felt like she was trying to push past me so she could get into the train first. Later, when we got off to transfer lines, I said something to her and she answered, but while we were going up the stairs I started falling behind because the crowd on my side was moving slowly. When I finally got upstairs, she hadn’t waited for me at all. She was already far ahead, walking extremely fast, turned a corner, and completely disappeared. I never saw her again after that and had to make the rest of the trip alone.

After all of this, I finally ended the friendship. I tried to do it as calmly and respectfully as possible. I told her I felt uncomfortable after an incident in the subway where I felt like she shoved past me and then abruptly left without saying anything, but I also explained that it wasn’t really about that one moment, it was the accumulation of stress, discomfort, and unresolved feelings that had been building for months. I even thanked her for the friendship and said I still wanted us to remain cordial coworkers.

Her response honestly ended up being more absurd than hurtful. Instead of trying to have a calm conversation, she immediately became defensive and hostile. She accused me of treating her badly for months and claimed “everyone at the office” noticed it, so afterward I actually asked a couple coworkers who sat closest to her. They told me she had mentioned feeling like I was acting differently lately, but none of them thought I had been rude or cruel to her.

She also brought up my transition and said her psychologist had told her to “be patient with my process,” which honestly just made me laugh because she constantly does that. She never seems to fully own her decisions; there’s always some third party who supposedly told her to do something or suggested it first.

Another thing she said was that she was “the only person at the office who looked for me” and that she “always stayed with me during meetings.” But we go to the office to work, not socialize all day, and honestly it sometimes annoyed me when she came over to chat while I was clearly busy. And the meetings comment was especially weird because I actively choose to sit a little farther away from people sometimes simply because I like having space.

I also didn’t fully explain the real reasons I wanted to distance myself from her, because I knew the conversation would turn ugly if I did. The truth is that what bothered me most was the way she treated people who liked her and how she constantly framed herself as the victim in every conflict. I didn’t want to start listing all of that while emotions were already high, so I tried to keep the conversation more surface-level instead of escalating it into a full character critique. She interpreted that as me saying I didn’t want to talk to her at all and responded with something like “so my feelings just aren’t valid then?” I clarified that wasn’t what I meant and told her we could continue talking later because that particular moment clearly wasn’t productive. Then she immediately started sending angry texts saying “it’s never going to be the right moment,” which honestly just reinforced my point that it was not a good moment to continue the conversation.

She also repeatedly framed herself as the victim who had tolerated me out of love and loyalty, and kept insisting I was ending the friendship over “being pushed in the metro,” even though I had explicitly explained it was about a much larger pattern of incompatibilities and behavior over time.

The “breaking my heart” comments especially stood out because she framed it the same way she framed the fallout with her former friend group, saying I was abandoning her just like they did. At that point it honestly felt less sad and more emotionally manipulative than anything else.

Ironically, one of the funniest parts afterward was that she got upset because I removed her from Instagram and Facebook. She asked me if I “hated her that much.” But if I’m ending a friendship with someone, why would I keep them on all my social media? I also still don’t even know if she blocked me on WhatsApp or just removed me from contacts because I can’t see her profile picture anymore, only her iCloud one.

Eventually I also ended up hearing the version of events from her former friend group, and honestly it changed the way I saw everything. They told me she had a pattern of becoming really aggressive when upset, yelling, slamming doors, throwing things around, that kind of behavior. Suddenly all the inconsistencies and tension surrounding that fallout made a lot more sense to me.

I think the hardest part is realizing I kept dismissing every red flag one at a time because I genuinely cared about her and wanted to believe she was a good person underneath all the chaos.

I recently deleted my old Instagram, Threads, and Facebook accounts for personal reasons and made new ones.

When I created my new Instagram account, I also logged into Threads with it. At first everything seemed completely normal. My partner followed me there and that was basically it, because I honestly hadn’t even started using the app yet.

The next day I decided to actually start setting up the account and following people, but I suddenly couldn’t log in anymore. I kept getting random errors and after trying a few times it asked me for a verification code.

So I enter the code thinking it’ll finally let me into my account… and instead I suddenly get a message saying I submitted an appeal for a banned account.

Except I never appealed anything because I didn’t even know I was banned in the first place. I was literally just trying to log in.

Then a few moments later I get another message saying the ban is permanent and the decision cannot be appealed.

So apparently my account got permanently banned before I even got to properly use it.

At that point I was mostly annoyed and confused, but what’s making me lose my mind is that Instagram still keeps showing me Threads notifications. I still have the stupid “9+” badge on the Threads icon on my Instagram profile even though Threads itself says my account is gone. I also keep getting prompts trying to push me back into Threads through Facebook.

So naturally I tried using the support chatbot and it was honestly one of the most useless experiences possible. It basically just kept repeating that the notifications are probably related to the account deletion grace period and that eventually they should disappear.

But how does that make sense if they already told me that my account is permanently banned and the decision cannot be appealed

Like… what exactly is the point of having a grace period if there’s literally nothing I’m allowed to do with the account anymore? Why am I still getting notifications and prompts for an account that supposedly no longer exists?

¿Qué libro nos recomiendan a mi prometide y a mí?

Queremos empezar una nueva lectura en conjunto y no sabemos cuál de los dos elegir, les dejo un poco de contexto sobre nosotras.

A elle le gustan la cienca ficción, fantasía, romcom y misterio. Recientemente leyó El Priorato del Naranjo y La Enciclopedia de Hadas de Emily Wilde y ambos le gustaron mucho. Unos de sus libros favoritos son El Resplandor y los libros de Mundo Disco.

A mí igual me gusta la ciencia ficción y la fantasía, y en general suelo disfrutar los libros de misterio y policiacos. Recientemente leí, y me gustaron, El Priorato del Naranjo y Promesa de Sangre. Entre mis libros favoritos se encuentran Takarabune, La Hija de los Huesos y Guideon la Novena.

En este momento tenemos ganas de algo aventuroso y que tenga una que otra dosis de comedia. Estamos entre estos dos libros porque mi prometide los leyó alguna vez y cree que me van a gustar bastante.