I’ve been thinking about this guy that used to be my best friend, who I’ll call “S”. I have literally never laughed harder in my entire life than I have with him. And it was mutual. We were always laughing together senior year in high school when I met him, and in college we were joined at the hip. Always next to each other, always laughing about something. It started to become painful because gradually I fell in love with him. I wanted him to want me so bad. At the time he was closeted and calling himself “bisexual” so I thought I had a chance. I’m bisexual myself, so I was pretty gung ho about it. But as time went on, his inability to return my feelings became more and more obvious. He tried to ask me out one day and wrote the question on a piece of paper before running off to his room. I started to read it and he bursts out of the room yelling,”WAIT NO DON’T READ IT!” Lmao, he immediately slammed the door when he saw my hands were already on it though. I knew he was forcing it, and I declined bittersweet. It took a minute for me to come to terms with the fact that he would never have the feelings I had towards him. I cried to him Halloween of 2011 expressing that I thought I was in love with him. I even embarrassingly told him that when we were alone, I had these desires for him to…be intimate with me. I poured my heart out until I was exhausted, and started to doze off in the middle of my rambling. I fell asleep, and he just sat there waiting for me to wake back up. When I blinked myself awake, he was still there and he smiled at me with this fond look in his eyes. He told me he couldn’t be what I wanted then and it hurt. But I had to accept that.
Months later, I found someone I liked a lot. A guy that I never thought I’d be capable of getting. This guy, I’ll refer to as “N”, was a walking cliche I didn’t think existed in real life. Long haired Dominican guy who skate boarded and played guitar. When N drunkenly kissed me one night in early 2012, I was starting to get over my best friend. I was happy to know that “N” liked me too, I thought dating out of my race was going to be impossible for me because black girls are statistically the least desirable, but I was wrong thankfully. I was happy, but when I got over him romantically and sexually, “S” started to change. All of a sudden, he would avoid me and he would look the other way when he saw me coming. All our friends (myself included) started drinking heavily and all hell would break loose at our get togethers. “S” would ignore me sober, and confront me drunk crying and saying he’s a horrible person for ignoring me. “S” would get really violent, and start trying to hurt himself. It became a bit much to handle but I was no better. I was drunkenly very mean to “N” and apparently said out loud that I still loved “S”. I feel horrible, because I know I said worse than that, I just don’t remember exactly what I said. Gradually, everyone started to ignore my boyfriend and talk shit about him for no reason. I tried to play the fence, and it ended up hurting “N” more. I couldn’t deny “S”, so I thought. But I couldn’t hang out with them if they were just going to do that, so I stopped being around them as much. There was a huge falling out between “N” and the ring leader of our college friend group. The ring leader who I’ll call “the ugly one”, had a huge crush on me and I couldn’t return his feelings. So he and “S” basically put everyone against me and “N” until there was nowhere else to turn. “N” called me one day when I was hanging out with everyone, and asked where I was, “the ugly one” told me I couldn’t invite him because it was his dorm and he didn’t want him there. So I begrudgingly stood up and walked out. I started spiraling, but I overheard what everyone was saying about me behind the door. It was dead silent at first, until one of our friends, “D” said that “S” and “the ugly one” were being unfair to me. “S” starts yelling, claiming that I abandoned him and chose someone else over him. He said it was my own fault and ranted about all his true feelings. I stood by the door and listened to all of it feeling pretty conflicted and overwhelmed.
Then I heard, the door to the stair well suddenly open from way down the hall. “N” was heading towards the room in a hurry, I tried to stop him and blocked his path, but he brushed past me leaving me a bit flustered. He gets to the door and starts beating on it like crazy. I tried to calm him down, and took his hand, but he started kicking at the door instead. So hard in fact, that the deadbolt broke and the hinges came off their tracks. “N” had been in a group home most of his teen life from a huge anger problem. I wasn’t aware of that when we started dating. He was unstoppable and it took me threatening to break up with him to make him stop. He went quiet and started crying, I was having a panic attack, but I tried to console him anyway. I told him I was on his side, and that we weren’t being treated fairly. I begged for him to sit down and wait for me to get something off my chest. He sat by the elevator on the floor, and I knocked on the door and tried to speak to “S”. “The ugly one” let me in because it wasn’t “N”. I took one step inside ready to blow my top, and “N” just breezes past me so fast it was difficult to fathom. He gets in “the ugly one’s” face and postures to fight. Everyone bum rushes “N” and starts dragging him out the room. I walked off down the hall to the elevator pulled out a spare razor and cut myself pretty deep. I didn’t feel anything, but seeing the blood and the fatty deposits got my eyes to widen a bit. One of my neutral friends came out and saw me, she starts panicking and takes away the razor passing it off for her boyfriend to discard. A few of our friends gathered around and saw me like that. One of them, “D” suddenly stood me up and walked me back to his room to clean it out. He was quite nice, but had no idea how to clean it properly. He poured hydrogen peroxide over it and was confused why it kept on bleeding. He had this used bandage wrap that he was trying to use to patch me up, but the girl I mentioned earlier saw what he was doing and took control herself. She also cut from time to time, so she put it on herself to watch me the for an hour or so and remove sharp things from my room. “S” and “the ugly one” found out what happened and tried to talk to me, but I didn’t want to talk. They took offense to that.
Everyone stopped talking to me, and one night “S” and “the ugly one” called me to have a sit down. When I went, I was met with a barrage of assumptions from “S”, he called me a bad friend and said that he was done with me. “The ugly one” just sat there watching the drama he worsened unfold, nodding every so often in agreement with what “S” said. That night I went kind of numb, I vented to my other best friend, and she immediately too my side. Now my best friend, whom I’ve known since 7th grade is hilarious. She does what she wants and doesn’t apologize unless she feels she’s done wrong. She goes on Facebook and messes with “S” posting a bunch of relevant memes from 2012 to show how petty he was being. Later in the day I get a message from “S” asking me to tell my best friend to leave him alone. I respond with,”I don’t control what she does. Talk to her. yourself” We both knew her from high school, and at a time they were also good friends, so it seemed weird to me that he hadn’t just yelled at her himself.
That started a all out war online somehow. All of my past friends spamming me and telling how shit I am for leaving “S” behind when he was the one who left me. I tried to defend myself but the insults and assumptions just kept coming. I did notice, that “S” said nothing else to me. He did have a conversation with my other best friend. They went back and forth. He was saying that he didn’t hate me and would still watch over me from afar. My best friend said that was redundant and that he’d done enough. I collapsed in on myself like a dying star and just gave up carving “You All Win” into my arm as if that would make it stop. I cried and wrote out my feelings for everyone that betrayed me and stayed coped up in my dorm for a month. No attending class, no going to the cafeteria, nothing.
During that month, some of the more neutral friends I had came by to see me and check that I was still alive. And their eyes would flicker to my arms noticing all sorts of new cuts and scar tissue. I stood there, smiled and told them I was fine. I wasn’t. I could see them from my dorm window going to class and back or hanging out in the common space and every time I looked at “S” I felt nothing but rage. 3 weeks into my isolation, “the ugly one” stopped by. He tells me he feels bad and is worried about me, and at the time no one knew he was manipulating all of us, including me. I was desperate for “S” to talk to me again and asked if he would talk to him for me. He said he would, and that he would come see me again. The next time I saw him, he showed up to my room “drunk”. I say that, because I don’t think he was. He claims that he’s going to kill himself and poorly acts out like he’ll overdose on my ADHD medication. I thought it was weird but played along urging him not to take them. He sat on my bed and vented to me for awhile, so I listened. He stood up went to the bathroom and came back.
When he came back, he starts trying to lay me down. I resist and back away on my bed, but he starts undoing my jeans. I squirmed when he suddenly climbed on top of me and grabbed his hands for him to stop. But he snatched them away and went undo his own jeans. I laughed nervously and told him to stop trying to get up. When I saw it I panicked and wriggled underneath him but it only seemed to help him pulling my pants and underwear down. I had lost my virginity to “N” a month or so prior, so there was absolutely nothing that would prevent it. I should have seen it coming, since he’d gotten me like that before, but the last time he tried, my hymen stopped him. This time, he got me and I was stunned to silence. I stopped moving, went completely stiff and just laid there too shocked to think or do anything. I just wanted it to be over. I don’t know why, but the only thing to come out of my mouth was,”The least you could do is wear a condom.” Here’s the stupid part, he actually got up and took one out of his pocket and rolled it out. That entire time, I could’ve ran or kicked or did anything but I just laid there watching him. He got back inside me and continued on for another 2 minutes or so. They couldn’t have gone any slower. When he was done, he climbed off of me and zipped up his pants. He started to throw away the condom in my garbage, but I told him to put it in the garbage chute outside. I didn’t want to explain it to “N”.
When he left, I sort of just sat there for a moment. Then I was walking over to my night stand, grabbing a more recent razor and swiping across my arm. My bedroom door was open, but I didn’t care. When “the ugly one” came back and saw what I was doing he tried to stop me, but I stood there laughing eventually murmuring that I had said, “Stop” and that he didn’t stop when I asked him to. I started smiling and I truly felt like the situation was hilarious when I said,”You’re a rapist.” It seemed to strike a nerve, he lowered his head and asked me not to call it that or tell anyone. I didn’t answer, I just pretended it didn’t happen and went on talking to him like nothing, asking him once again, if he would talk to “S” for me. He said he would, and the guilt made sure that he kept his word. When he left, I had a small freak out. I tried to lay down and go to sleep, but it didn’t smell like me or my boyfriend, it smelled like “the ugly one”. I start hyperventilating and take all the sheets off my bed, take off my clothes, and laid naked on a small blanket from home. The next day, I got upset looking at myself and being by myself all day. My boyfriend, “N”, returned from his weekend at home and we had sex almost as soon as he walked through the door. We used a condom, but I didn’t want him to, I wanted him to replace what happened earlier. He left going to his own dorm, and when I saw him next, he was going out with friends. I opened up the browser of his laptop to search something and saw a bunch of porn. I felt inadequate, and went numb for awhile returning to my room. Something about seeing myself in the mirror set me off. So I punched it and it shattered all over the carpet. I saw the vase of flowers he’d given me a month prior and threw it to the floor as well. Then I just stood there trying to figure out how to clean it up.
When “N” came back to my room, and saw he didn’t say anything, but he looked disturbed. On his own, he grabs a broom from my common area and starts sweeping it up. We fell asleep avoiding speaking with each other and when I woke up he was heading back to his own room again. The next day, “S” knocked on my door and took me by surprise. He asked what happened to my mirror, to which I replied I broke it. We didn’t talk about the obvious, he just chatted with me about what he’d been up to and my old friends. When he asked why he hadn’t seen me around campus, I told him I hadn’t left my room in close to a month. He seemed to feel bad, and invited me to lunch with my old friends. When I got there, I received mixed responses. We all went back to normal avoiding talking about the obvious. At the end of the semester, everyone left and went home one by one. In the time apart from “S”, he started talking to some guy he’d met by chance on Chat Roulette. He was introduced to the guy by “the ugly one” when he was switching chats. The reminder of time I had left at college with “S”, was spent giving him advice on his first gay relationship. I was happy to friends with him again, but mostly bitter. When he left, it was just me and my boyfriend. We got in a fight, and I was really cold to him again. So on our very last day he broke up with me as we were moving out.
I started crying in front of everyone busily moving out. He stood there for a few minutes awkwardly asking me if I would be O.K. until he felt there was nothing more to say, and he walked off riding home with his mom. I did the same, but the second I got in the car, I broke down and started wailing. The kind of gross crying that you can’t stop and takes over you. I talked about killing myself several times, and my mom freaked out calling my therapist(now my boss). My therapist had me placed on suicide watch and got me enrolled in a Partial Hospitalization Program for adults at this Mental Hospital.
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