#waking up to unread messages was such a weirdly comforting thing for me a few yrs ago when i was in contact w a lot of internet friends

[yeehawpim]

sometimes caring feels like a contradiction but let's wake up tomorrow to unread messages together

[prorevenge]

Hurt my friend? I'll force you to drop out of college

So in my first year of university, I lived in a flat with five other girls. Next-door to our flat was a studio flat, where one girl lived alone. During the first week, she joined our flat for a party, and became friends with all six of us. Let's call her Mary. Mary had been long-term dating a boy who lived in another county in an open relationship. She was very fun to be around, and we all got on really well.

Time goes by and she visits us regularly for company. Through this she ends up meeting most of my friends, including my best friend, who we'll call Sarah (as she has a part to play in this story). Mary opens up about her shitty family, and how her parents never taught her to cook anything -- so me being me, I offer for her to come round one night and I'll teach her how to cook her first meal. We agree on a simple stir fry to start us off, and I bought the ingredients. On the night, she tells me about her relationship; and how she's looking to experiment with specifically women (and how her bf had given her permission); and how she found asian people particularly attractive. She was well aware that me and my friend group are mostly LGBT girls, and I'm pretty clearly asian. I'm a kind of stereo-typically attractive woman; and have experienced similar uncomfortable situations with men many times... so without her directly asking in the first place, I made it clear I wasn't into doing that and she happily told me that was totally okay.

She tells me about her passion for becoming a nurse, and more about her bf; and how she gets a little jealous sometimes, causing her to look through his phone often when they're together. That struck me as really unhealthy, so I told her it was. She found it weird I thought it was a bad thing to do. That should have been a huge red flag for me there and then, but I'm a big idiot who always tries to see the best in people. I tell her to maybe stop that habit and just trust him (as the way she talked about it made her sound like she was an r/ nicegirl who somehow scored with some poor pushover of a dude and it worried me a bit).

As the night goes on, my flatmates all arrive and hang out. When everyone was there, Mary let as know that our front door closes really loud when we leave it to shut automatically, and directly through the wall was her bed. It wakes her up often, so we should always slowly, manually close the door ourselves so as not to wake her up ever (she gets very tired as she's doing a nursing degree with crazy hours). We all agree to do this for her because it's not much effort for us, and the night ends.

Fast forward a few months and I need to find a place to live in my second year of university. I go looking for houses with Mary, as Sarah was staying in the same place for the next year and all my current flatmates had already arranged stuff (I had left it late like a fool). A lot of my friends had spare places in flats, but like Mary I was going to try to rent in a house, so we go to visit a 2-person small house on the nice side of town with her parents. It's lovely, I can *just* afford it and everything's fine except Mary keeps getting angry with her parents for what looked like no good reason. I would understand some hostility if you grew up with such a bad family, but she was actively berating and shouting at her parents in front of the estate agent. I don't know why I overlooked it... probably because my own family wasn't great and I still thought that much negativity was okay? Fuck, I dunno.

The estate agents' office we went to seemed a little dodgy, which made me feel uneasy. Mary desperately wanted a place to live though as she had nobody else to go with (in hindsight I freaking wonder why); and she pressured me very hard to sign. So I reluctantly do the tenancy agreement, and we're set to move in next year, no backing out now, deposit laid, all that. I'm a little nervous, but I'm convinced Mary has some good in her heart and that she can learn to be a better person while we live together with my love and encouragement. She likes my company because I'm always trying to put a smile on her face even when she's down, and I'm hoping she'll learn she can be happy when she's with the right people for her.

She tells me that she doesn't let her boyfriend interact with other girls, and she doesn't let me see him when he visits. She outright asks me to try sexual stuff with her a few times over the months, using her depression as a pity card. I say no each time, and worry starts to grow inside me about how I was going to have to move in with this person... I felt grateful our bedroom doors would have locks on them.

My flatmates started getting uncomfortable around her. They were all straight, and her lowkey sexual behaviour towards them made them ask me if that was okay; and made me irritated that she was reinforcing that whole gay-predator stereotype on them. We were her only friends though, so I told everyone to just try and help her learn to be better, as long as they were okay and comfortable with that. My kind flatmates all did just that, bless them! The fact Mary was getting good influences from these people boosted my assurance that she'd break out of her toxic attitude just like how I and so many other people did as teens.

One night, I get a message from Mary. She says she's feeling incredibly depressed, and asks if she could come over for company. It was late as hell, so I just left it on unread and went back to trying to sleep. About half an hour later, I hear scuffling coming from the other side of the wall, where Mary's apartment is; something very unusual. I felt bad for ignoring her message, but I was tired and couldn't bear any of her burdens tonight, so I let it go and went to sleep. We were meeting the next day anyway to discuss our housing situation for next year over a cup of tea.

The following morning, I wake up to see a BILLION messages from Sarah. Apparently, Mary called Sarah over since Mary was feeling depressed and needed company. Sarah is a strong and tough person, but our first year of university was a stressful time for her and her head was a bit of a mess, and she was uncomfortable in her own body. Even though it was late, she went over to Mary's place, where it was weirdly boiling hot (Mary cranked up the central heating no doubt). This meant Sarah had to strip down to just her tank top... and I won't spare you the details, but Mary peer-pressured Sarah into getting into Mary's double bed together in a "girly sleepover" type way, and then did something very illegal. Sarah didn't know what to do, and was too scared to leave afterwards. She had a horrible, horrible night; and sneaked out once Mary was asleep.

I'm a passionate person, I'd say, but I'm not generally angry. I learned that when you look like me, nobody takes you seriously when you get angry. However, I was shamelessly pissed off. Mary was being a pretty bad friend recently, and that final act of shittiness set me COMPLETELY over the edge and then some.

Despite that, Sarah took priority. I messaged the flat group chat with a "block Mary on social media, I'll explain when I get back," while Sarah and I went to the student support office and explained everything. She was traumatised as hell, and seeing strong Sarah completely break down over something Mary had done made me absolutely fucking livid. I felt this crazy mix of sadness, pity, and pure rage; seeing my sweet best friend in such a state. She did nothing wrong and had been going through some tough times - it was the last thing on earth she needed. She didn't want to press charges as her family had no money, there was nothing she could do.

I needed to get out of the tenancy agreement for next year. I was absolutely kicking myself for signing it in the first place. I went into that estate agents' office with little-to-no plan, other than "get out in any way possible, even if it means flirting your way through." It wasn't pretty and I felt awful, but somehow, I managed. I was free from living with her at the expense of my day and dignity, which made me even more pissed off.

The arranged time of our meeting at her apartment was approaching. I was well-aware of how I'd just absolutely fucked her over for next year by backing out of that tenancy agreement. I was fine though, I had several offers from friends in apartments to come live with them, so I just had to say goodbye to the idea of living in a house. Outside the corner where her and my front doors to our apartments are, I send a message to my flat's chat saying I won't be long and I'm almost home. I knock on Mary's door, and she lets me in. The sight of her face makes me want to spontaneously combust right there, but for the sake of my pacifist lifestyle, I hold it together. Inside her flat, I calmly tell her that because of what she did I would not be moving in with her next year, and the tenancy agreement was terminated.

She EXPLODES at me, and outright denies everything. That made my blood boil; I trust Sarah with my life and the experience of her relieving all that nasty crap was fucking harrowing. All I had done was make Mary food and talk about life with her and try to help her be better and thought she was making progress, but she was going MENTAL at ME after SHE had done one of the worst things you can do, saying personal things like "Are you fucking kidding me?! You ended it with ME because of what some OTHER person said, without talking to ME about it!?? What does that say about YOU?! What kind of person does that make YOU? How selfish do you have to be?!" And then some more personal stuff about how I'm a failure as a student and my choice in academia would lead me nowhere and how I look ugly, stuff that would really hurt your self esteem if you're not ridiculously self-assured like I am. It pissed me off even more that she would try to hurt me into thinking I was wrong, though. Some lovely toxic manipulation right there.

So for the first time since I was a kid, I lost it at someone. I let loose on all the things I disliked about her; yelled back that she was a terrible person for what she did to her boyfriend, for not seeing anything wrong with what she did to Sarah, for being manipulative as hell, and she was lucky the police weren't up her ass right now. I told her to fuck off, that she wasn't getting anything from me or my flat any more, that she was never going to be a nurse with a personality like that; and then, on a really awful personal note... that she was crazy for doing something so fucking awful just because she wasn't hot enough to score with me or Sarah.

I saw her expression twist, and it was the ugliest I'd ever seen anyone look. She reached an ultrasonic pitch screeching stuff at me, but I just stormed out her flat while she was still talking.

Back in my flat, I see 4/5 flatmates at the kitchen table with cups of tea, waiting for me. They asked me how it went... and I told them we were ignoring Mary from now on, because if any of them wanted to talk to her, I'd want to cut them out of my life as well. The sighs of relief from the table filled me with sweet validation. Then, the last flatmate loudly arrives through the front door. Mary is crying and wailing behind her at the other side of the doorway. We watch flatmate 6 pose dramatically as the huge, heavy door swings shut behind her with a massive SLAM. The racket Mary makes becomes quiet and muffled. Flatmate smiles at us, and we all cheer and yell and hug together.

After that, we didn't bother gently closing the door for her, and since we knew her timetable, scheduled parties for her prime sleeping time; where lots of people would be loudly storming in and out the flat and music would be blasting. I don't even like parties, lmao.

Because she did that, Mary now has no friends, no sleep, and no accommodation for the upcoming year. We told her boyfriend what she had done via facebook, so no boyfriend too.

Her academic life was effectively ruined from then on. The lack of sleep meant her grades and attendance plummeted. Her personal life was completely dead all of a sudden. We didn't care, and kept doing whatever we wanted with no consideration for her life. She dropped out of university before the semester ended, and I haven't heard from her since.

I just finished my dissertation in some macroevolutionary morphological analysis, and my side-hobby as an illustrator on the internet is doing so well now (this is a side-acc so you'll never know who I am :P) that I don't need a job any more to pay for everything while I'm studying. Sarah fell in love with a beautiful girl and they've been dating for over a year now, she's doing amazing and has already been accepted into postgraduate study with near-perfect grades.

(source) story by (/u/mifukichan)