two years out.

today is a pretty big day for me because its officially been two years since i cut off my ex friends. im gonna go into detail about them in a sec but in case youre wondering, my mental health at the time was utter dogshit because of them. im going to give them the names "rat man," "batra," and "tetro" to avoid confusion, and because i dont want people finding and harassing them nor do i think they deserve to have their names said.

first, we have rat man. he would randomly ghost me and others without reason, and he made it a habit to guilt trip me and others into feeling bad for him whenever someone finally pointed out that he was treating others poorly... it admittedly worked for a while. me and my best friend had explicitly stated that we were not comfortable with him talking about his sexual habits to us, and he still did so to me knowing i wasnt comfortable with it. at some point he started always acting standoffish towards me, and pretended i was exxaggerating or misinterpreting his behavior when i pointed it out. he was pretty good at pretending he was neutral about  everything that happened with batra (ill get to him later). he constantly showed favoritism towards the other two, and whenever i would call this out he'd cry crocodile tears and promise to work on it... he never did. i cut off batra first, and because i know batra's one to twist words and play the victim, i told rat man first... he acknowledged it and was understanding of the situation... AND THEN POSTED ABOUT HIM AND BATRA BEING BEST FRIENDS LITERALLY THE NEXT DAY. like i said, he tried acting "indifferent" to everything that went down but its pretty clear whose side he was on. eventually i had enough, and told him that it was obvious he didnt take our friendship seriously, at which point his solution was to ghost me. he kept tabs on my tiktok page for literally FIFTEEN MONTHS after i cut him off, and he talked shit about me on his page multiple times. last year he made a post about how he wished he could apologize for what happened, and while i did consider letting him reach out for like a week, i changed my mind after i realized he never wanted to, he wanted me to reach back out to him to try and start over. every so often he'd change his bio on discord to be some "woe is me, i miss you, i can be a better friend" type bullshit, but the funny thing is, hed still talk shit about me on his page. interesting guy, i know. 

then we have Batra. he was also a big fan of playing the victim, but he had a habit of getting psised with me whenever i stood my ground about anything. there were a couple instances where hed lash out at others for stupid reasons, and he only really apologized for it once because someone who was already tired of how often hed start arguments had to be around to see it. whenever i was upset with him he made me out to be the problem. i vented about how i felt like the group was ignoring me at the time and he blamed me for it by insisting i was the one who was pushing him away. i remember him saying that he felt like he was part of the reason the group was on edge, and when i responded by telling him that if he felt like that he probably needs time to process things he snapped at me again, probably because he was trying to get me to feel bad for him and failed to do so. my final straw with him was when he snapped at me for enjoying the recent season of a show that the whole group liked (after he claimed the reason he barely talked to me in the group was because we "didnt have amny interests in common" a few months prior, too). he once visited the country (hes european) and had the high honor of getting to meet up with my best friend, and used their money for a bathing suit and lunch and NEVER paid them back. pretty much he believed that he was never at fault for anything, and anyone who had any issue with him was the real problem.

lastly, theres Tetro. tetro is an interesting case, because he was actually the least of a problem out of the three... which was exactly the problem with him. similar to rat man, tetro tried to seem "neutral" with everything going on, but in reality it was pretty clear where he stood. he was (for the pure sake of not knowing whether or not he still is) dating Batra, so it made a lot of sense for him to side with him all the time. the biggest notable offense from him (aside from the repeated times he treated my closest friend like shit) was that he would screenshot and send personal vents i made back to Batra when asked not to. the problem with tetro was never that he started any actual problems, it's that he'd pretend to not want to get involved, only to all of a sudden be quite interested when it meant talking behind peoples' backs.

all three of these people talked shit about me and my best friend, both while we were all friends and after we cut them off. legend says theyre still doing it now. they took a massive toll on my mental and emotional wellbeing, and i genuinely felt a huge weight lift off me when i cut them off. ive been doing a lot better ever since, and ive had a lot more room and time to explore myself as a person. to celebrate im having sardines, my favorite fancy ice cream (honeycomb), and a lavender lemonade :)