I’m the Problem

I recently learned that a person I used to be friends with has been telling our mutual friends that I'm an awful human being. My immediate reaction was anger and betrayal. I chalked it up to them having a victim complex, walked away from my phone and got on with my day. Except, I couldn't get on with my day. I had a pit in my chest so deep that it threatened to swallow me whole and, by the end of the day, I almost wanted it to.

For my entire life my biggest fear, insecurity and worry has been who I am and how people perceive me; specifically whether I am a good and kind person. To be so suddenly affronted with the knowledge that my nightmare was reality almost knocked me prone on my bedroom floor. Following a lot of introspection, I came to the horrifying conclusion that they were right. I did everything that they accused me of doing; I was passive-aggressive, I made snide remarks, I bitched about them with other people, and I was a terrible friend.

At the time of our friendship, I thought I was just giving them a taste of their own medicine. After years of teasing, bitching, backhanded compliments, name calling etc. etc. etc. at some point I had obviously made the subconscious decision to be a vigilante, like some sort of bitchy Batman, take matters into my own hands, and reflect it right back onto them.

Now I can see that all I was doing was perpetuating the cycle.

I, too, was the problem.

I was far too cowardly to just walk away gracefully and risk ostracising myself from my other friends. Every time I'd brought up other issues to this person, I'd been dismissed and teased even more for being "too sensitive", so the only thing left to do was treat them how they treated me. In this case, I'd decided who this person was without giving them the chance to prove otherwise, apologise, make amends and grow. Instead, I took their words and actions at face value and I decided for them that they didn't have the capacity to become a better friend, or treat me the way I wanted to be treated. They hurt me, so I hurt them. I'd become the exact person I'd spent my life dreading others saw me as; petty and spiteful and mean.

As someone who has dedicated her whole life to trying to be a good person, the kind of person that others go to to feel good, that realisation shook me to my core. I then began to think on other past friendships and realised that I have treated some people badly. I have bitched about people. I have made fun of people. I have told people's secrets. I have ghosted people I no longer wanted to associate with, rather than granting them the common decency of an explanation.

I could talk about about how this was an inevitable result of masking my undiagnosed autism. The popular people, and a lot of my other friends, treated people this way so, to fit in, I did it too because those friends found it funny. Whilst I do believe this did play a factor, it would be reductive, dismissive and unfair to not acknowledge that, at the end of the day, it was my decision to behave that way. While it may not have been conscious, my actions hurt other people and I'd spent so long putting up with abuse from people that I hadn't realised I was, in turn, abusing others.

It doesn't matter what this person had done and said to and about me, and other "close friends" of theirs. It was my responsibility to hold my head up high and take the mature approach of being honest, talking with them about it, and working with them to become better friends for each other, or perhaps mutually decide that the friendship had run its course. I'd failed to do that.

What I did was wrong and mean and to that person, and everyone else I've ever hurt, I am sorry.

While I will never be comfortable with the knowledge that I have upset people, I have to become comfortable with who I am, my morals, and what I've done in the past, and use these things to guide me in the future.