u/Sadsettingz

EDIT TLDR: I reconnected with my childhood best friend and got close with her whole friend group (both irl and online). For a while everything was great, but over time some of them started lowkey bullying me and excluding me, and my best friend slowly got distant too.
I tried to address it in a calm way, even asked her before posting anything, and she said it was fine but later admitted that’s when she started seeing me differently. After that, things just kept getting worse. I was getting left out of plans, there were group chats without me, and I was constantly made to feel like I was overreacting when I brought up anything.
The final argument happened when I planned a trip and wanted to meet up with another friend, and she turned it into me being “inconsiderate.” (SEE TEXTS) We argued, she said she was done with me, and then literally everyone in the group blocked me at the same time with no explanation.
So yeah, I basically went from having a whole friend group to nothing overnight. It was probably planned, especially since I found out they did something similar to someone else before. I’m in a much better place now with better friends, but it was a formative experience for me.

Hey! Long time listener first time poster so if this isn’t okay please tell me what to correct :D
Sorry this is so long I cut out A LOT. Any and all comments are welcome

This happened a few years ago beginning of February-April of 2024. All of the people in this story ages range from 19-23. I’ve been told for the past few years that I should post this and get others opinions because the situation has caused a lot of discourse in my life. Throw away account

**Backstory**: My friend, Maya (fake names will be used), and I were friends since we were nine, we had our ups and down as all long term friends do but the love was always there. Freshmen year of highschool we slowly stopped talking due to personal life and the fact we went to different high schools. We talked and hung out a few times but it was very rare, until I was 19. i reached out again and we started spending more and more time together, It was like nothing had changed. We quickly became best friends again.

Within 2 months of us hanging out again we planned a trip to a different state to see a concert. I paid for the plane tickets and the concert tickets, (vip tickets) and gave them the price they owed me and they told me that was fine and they’d pay me back. I even paid for Ubers and food while we were there. **I never got it back** but while we were friends I maybe brought up the money 3 times a year cause I didn’t want it to be a major strain on our friendship.

They introduced me to their IRL friend group and we kinda hit it off. I wasn’t instant besties with any of them yet but we had fun and I looked forward to the next hang out. After a few hang outs they added me to a ***new*** group chat saying they were cutting off another member. I only spoke to this other person twice and the groups side of the story seemed legit so I didn’t feel it was my place to say anything. (This becomes relevant later).

Then Maya introduced me to their online friends. We all started playing Minecraft and we hit it off instantly. There was about 3 members of the group i instantly liked and enjoyed gaming with. It encouraged me to get a pc and start PC gaming (the best thing to happen to me fr). Things were good for a long time like that. I gamed with them online and the irl friends and I got closer and we even started a DND campaign which I loved. I even started hanging with the irl friends one on one. Going to movies and to one of their houses on Easter. And maya was basically my sister. We hung out at least once a week if not more. We had sleep overs, went to so many movies we started keeping track and ranking them. we talked every other day at least. I genuinely felt like even if my life was falling apart around me it would be okay because I had good friends and a best friend. I always saw their brother as my brother, their mom was more of a mom to me than mine was, I went to family, school events, and holidays with them, their nieces loved me. maya, their boyfriend and I went on a beach trip together. He was also a very close friend and I loved him like a brother.

I took Maya so many places and I paid everytime. Movies, concerts, universal, dinners, they didn’t drive so I drove and paid gas, they didn’t have a job and didn’t want one so they just stayed at home playing video games and worked on their art. I even took them on a trip to LA for their birthday and got them a 100 dollar collector doll. I again paid for everything, hotel, gas, food. But I didn’t care, I always felt I’d rather pay for things and have my friend with me than have to do them alone. (I do stuff alone all the time btw and I love it, but there’s certain things you want to experience with your friends)

**The beginning**: I don’t know when it started honestly cause it took me a while to realize what was happening wasn’t okay but their online friends started to bully me. It was slow but they’d snip at me when I played with them and put me down. There was times when I’d get a private message from maya asking if I was okay after a comment was made towards me. It caused me to take a break from gaming cause I just didn’t feel wanted. It was a big group so i eventually started gaming again and only joined if certain people weren’t there but they were hard to avoid. It started bleeding into social media where they’d hate on things me and other members liked for no reason and put down people for liking those things. There was also a few comments left on my posts and this was all private, only the members of the group would see it so it HAD to be targeted.

I know during this time, multiple separate group chats leaving certain people out were created because I was apart of a few of them. I mostly ignored them and just stayed in so I could stay updated on what was going on. But I never felt like it was my place to comment because I only knew these people so well. I still have all the group messages to back up my claims and when I did comment it was just to say to communicate with whoever they had an issue with. I’m huge on "just talk to me." I’m Neurodivergent and have a hard time picking up signs so if you don’t flat out tell me you have an issue I might never know which is probably why I felt like all the bullying and drama came from no where because I missed the original signs.

Eventually I got fed up with the bullying and decided to post something for them all to see. It was a simple message about what you post because your friends can see it. Before I posted it, I sent it to maya. I told them I didn’t feel comfortable posting it if they had an issue with it. We all had been friends for a year at that point but they were still a lot closer to them than I was and I didn’t want to “start anything”. They said the message seemed okay and said it was good to post. They even commented on the posting saying they loved me.

The post: “I’m going to say this now and I’m sorry if any of you don’t like me for it but actively hating on something knowing your friends are fans of it and knowing they can see it or hear you isn’t cool. You can have your own feelings about certain things and not be fans of it but if you’re really their friend you’d either have a conversation with them about your concerns or why you don’t like something or just keep your thought to yourself if you know they’re listening. The worse kind of person is someone who makes you feel bad or stupid for liking something. These are just my thoughts and I’ve kinda kept to myself for a while now because of how I’ve been feeling and thought I was just over reacting but I just felt like it was time I did make my feelings known. I really don’t want anyone to get offended by my post but I’m also open to talk about it. It’s not directed at any one person to just be clear either. I still appreciate you all for letting me be your friend and love you guys”

That was the day before valentine’s Day was great, we’d get dressed up, I took them to dinner and we exchanged gifts, they spent the night and we even spent the entire next day together. I did notice though they only took the monetary gifts I gave them. And my hand made gift and letter was left at my house. That hurt my feelings but I thought it was an accident. (They never end up taking them :/)

A few days everything was fine but we got into a small disagreement about fan culture, I didn’t think anything but it wasn’t a serious topic and sometimes friends butt heads about topics. But I noticed in the car, they kinda shut down and for the rest of our friendship that’s how they kinda stayed towards me. Early March her mom asked me to watch her brother while she went out of town for work. I said yes. (That’s how close we were.) Maya could’ve very well stayed with their brother but their mom trusted me more. I’m not trying to sound mean but that was word for word what their mom said. They all lived in trailers a minute walk from each other and I lived 25 minutes away so I was even going out of my way to do it. One night we all hung out and I was exhausted. I was still working and school and had an internship and I go through periods where I just don’t sleep. So while we were hanging out with their brother playing the Wii, I was out of it, quiet. I apologized for the low energy and explained but Maya was also distant and this put more of a strain on us. I felt so guilty I even called one of our irl friends and tried to figure out how to fix it, I was crying on the phone to them cause we had a group trip coming up and I didn’t understand how a few bad moments could lead to such a strain so fast. Maya was distant every time we talked, seemed like she didn’t want me around in group settings or was upset when I was getting along with her friends. Everything I said got snipped at or ignored.

I was going on a trip with her and the irl friends to see our other irl friend and a concert about 4-5 hours away, and I was so anxious about that trip and how maya was treating me that I called maya and spoke to her about everything. I told her if she didn’t want me to come, id back out of the trip. But the thing is, **I was driving everyone in my car.** No one else drove or had a car other than the friend we were meeting. Before I was invited on the trip they were gonna take the train so I just said they can do that and offered to help pay for the train tickets since I was the one backing out. She said she was fine and was wanted me there. She agreed things have been weird but that she wasn’t upset with me.

But she also said that after my message towards their online friends she started to see me different but then wouldn’t really elaborate. I just kinda said okay and dropped it but it stuck with me. At this point I was so anxious and crying over everything. Everything felt like the knife was twisting deeper and every time I brought it up everyone around me acted like I was crazy. The ones I hung out with online didn’t say anything to me and I even got closer to a few of them during this. Because I had to step away from maya, I was spending more time with them. The ones who didn’t bully me.

**The trip:** I drove everyone reluctantly, I had a good time there’s small details I won’t get into here for length but can give more context later if needed. I will say, I found out they had a group chat I wasn’t apart of because they were constantly using it in front of me and putting important information that I needed to know about the trip in it then when I was confused they’d go “I put it in the group chat!” Not the one I’m in!

But long story short, I was supposed to drive home with maya and our other friend would drive the rest of them. Maya ends up backing out and making me drive home alone the entire 4-5 hours. And I was supposed to be back for work but since everyone was so slow in the morning and maya didn’t tell me until RIGHT before I had to go. I ended up being late for work and that was a drive from hell. The traffic was so bad I was sitting there for an hour straight with no movement on a bridge. I ended up calling my (now) ex who had just woken up cause I was losing my mind and needed someone to help me stay focused. I’m normally okay with long drives but with everything that happened I got into my head about it.

After that they started hanging irl all the time without me. And we were on Life360 so **ID GET NOTIFIED** when they all were at each other’s houses cause life360 has a check in feature that was automatically goes off. They also all made matching friendship bracelets and posted them, which is something i introduced to maya cause i had gotten really into it and other crafts. I know i don’t own friendship bracelets but she only had the supplies because that’s what we would do together and it felt like a slap in the face to do it without me and make matching ones purposely leaving me out. I had gotten closer to the irl friends, even surprised one of them with concert tickets to their favorite artist and drove them to see them which was 4 hours away. They even posted pics of the matching bracelets in our discord server so they knew id see it.

There was also a sleep over incident where maya kept snapping at me and purposely leaving me out, showing the others stuff on her phone. And talking about stuff they’d spoken about without me there. So I had my little sister make up a fake phone call where she called me crying asking if I could come get her because my mom “was being crazy” which was a major thing in my life that everyone knew about so it was a valid excuse to leave. And other small incidents like that.

April comes and i decided impulsively I’m going to go to New York and see my favorite broadway actor in an adaptation of my favorite book. I was so excited. I realized one of our online friends were close by so I reached out asking if we could meet if our schedules lined up while I was there. He said yes and was super excited. He told me he couldn’t give me a definite yes until the date got closer cause he had school but he wanted to try. I posted about this on that private social media which led to maya texting me the next day. I will provided a few of the texts but not all of them since there is personal info and there’s a lot. This fight lasted all day.

Basically after they messaged me that I confronted them. I brought up the instances i mentioned here and a few others of her acting weird towards me. And I wasn’t even mad about being left out, they can hang out with whoever they want but they were acting like I was crazy for noticing all this stuff and that it wasn’t a big deal.

Maya then flipped it onto me and said I was the one not taking her into consideration if I went and met our online friend. I messaged Devin, the online friend and asked him about it. I told him Mayas feelings and asked his opinion. Devin and Maya were as close as me and Maya if not closer in those last few months so if he said he wasn’t okay with it then I was gonna back off and take no as an answer. I did understand where Maya was coming from but also they had treated me horribly for months at this point so I didn’t feel like they had a right to say I couldn’t see my other friends?

Devin said if our schedules still lined up he’d be happy to see me and he knew of mayas feelings but he still wanted to see me. He didn’t give an opinion on the feelings just that if it worked he’d still see me so I took that as this is all okay. And I told maya that. I told maya it wouldn’t be my intention to hurt them but it ultimately was mine and Devin’s decision.

Anyways it all ended with Maya saying they were done with me... and then the major crashing point for me.

I went to find I was removed and blocked by ALL MY FRIENDS. All our group chats, discord, social media, even steam. Every single one of them. Even the ones who had nothing to do with any of this. None of them would speak to me. It the matter of minutes I was out. I tried to reach out to two of them and nothing. No one even told me. Maya was just “done” and suddenly i have no friends. I checked life360 and i saw all of them together and thats when i realized this was probably all planned and talked about for a bit but im assuming.

I luckily have amazing friends now, years later, including the one who got “booted” earlier. I reached out to them the NEXT DAY and told them my story. Something similar happened to them but they had stood up for themselves (props to them) and left the group, which wasn’t the story that was told to me. They are genuinely one of my best friends and we joke about how the friend group tried to nerf us by separating us. I also got a two diagnosis after this because it messed with me so much which has helped with my feelings. This is genuinely my side of the story, I KNOW theres stuff missing but i dont have the pieces which made coming to terms with everything really hard for me. i'm okay with everything now but it was a major turning point that has so many holes so i still think about it.