As I was reading the post, this gave me a good laugh:
I used this as the perfect opportunity to tell her that we hadn't been good for each other at all in a long while and that we should just leave each other be for a while. She then replied being like "well that's a bit harsh" to which i said "well obviously not given the extensive list you've just sent me where you've stated all I've done is harm you"
I'll share a horrible friendship to help you feel better. If you're into reading, perhaps you can settle in like it's a long short story.
I met another woman in grad school, we had some similar interests and, as with most toxic relationships, became too close too quickly rather than taking the time to get to know each other, decide if we actually liked and respected each other, and build trust slowly. That was the beginning of ten years of a toxic "best" friendship.
I bought a condo and wanted a roommate. In lieu of paying rent, she was to do all the housecleaning. Never happened. There was always some bullshit, and I didn't have the internal strength then to say, "Do what you agreed to or move out." This went on for about a year, and it was all about her when I decided to sell the condo and move out of state to pursue better opportunities. She couldn't even get her ass in gear to pack up her own room, and time was running out, so I packed her stuff. When her dad came to get the boxes, she and he both bitched -- for years afterward -- about one very heavy box, in which I'd put all her books rather than distributing the weight. I never stood up and said, "You should have packed your own fucking stuff then."
She had all the classic symptoms of BPD, thought I didn't know until years later. The best one was splitting -- I was either the best person in the world or the worst. A few months after she moved in with me, and had already claimed me as her best friend, yet regularly bitched about me, I asked, "If you don't like me, why do you live with me?" She backed off a bit. Really should have kicked her ass out early on.
Once, before she moved in with me, she was still living at home and commuting to our school from another state. She had forgotten to return some library books and wanted me to make the trip to return them for her. I didn't feel like making the four-mile trip just to drop off her books and said no. For years afterward, she would remind me how she and her mother complained that I wasn't a good friend, that those were the kinds of things friends did for each other. Did I mention she had been a recovering alcoholic and addict for years before I met her, and still had a lot of the manipulative and self-centered traits? No? Well now I have. And I had no experience before her with substance abuser tactics. I didn't know what a dry drunk was, but over ten years she put me through plenty of them.
After I moved out of state, she wanted to move there, too, so I let her move in with me. She was a slob. Her mother was as well. She wanted to live like she did at her parents', and just leave shit everywhere, including shared spaces, rather than keep her mess to her room, and she resented it but complied. But her shit always had to spill over into my space. I finally set a boundary about the fridge and pantry, I claimed shelves and said, "Even if there's nothing on them, they're mine. I need the space for when I do buy things." Could she lay off the spaces? Hell no. They were like magnets.
One day her dog drank a fish oil supplement. We got her into the bathroom and induced vomiting. So the bathroom reeked of fish oil all that night, I couldn't sleep. The next day, instead of cleaning the bathroom, she talked on the phone about the experience and how bad the smell was. I packed a bag and without telling her where I was going, I left for two days. Scared the shit out of her, she knew she was wrong, but then she was helpless as to know how to clean it up. Guess who cleaned it up?
She had a weak-egoed, abusive boyfriend. He and I did not get along. They were talking marriage. One day he and met somewhere because he wanted to have a private talk, and he told me that he'd always had a bit of a crush on me. That put me in such a horrible position. I went home and told her what had happened, of course he had already called her to try to tell a different story. I felt awful. She started ranting that I'd always wanted them to split up and how much I was enjoying it, and I utterly lost my shit, which I have to be really seriously pushed to do. I yelled at her about the position he'd put me in, I didn't want it, and how shitty she was being. She went into a freeze reaction and just stood there, bug-eyed, not saying a word. I grabbed my purse, left the apartment, slammed the door behind me, went down the stairs to my car, realized I'd forgotten something, came back up the stairs, opened the door, and she was still frozen in place and looking terrified. I grabbed what I needed and left. Mind you, this woman had been in plenty of fights in the years before I met her, she was physically strong, and a blackout fighter. So her PTSD reaction to my going off was not the norm. Anyhow, like with the fish oil vomit, she apologized because I'd made it clear she'd pushed way beyond the limits, but nothing changed. In fact, she married the asshole and they moved in with her dad, where he was abusive to her for two years and her dad played the liberal wuss. She got a divorce, I saw her a couple of times over the years. Swore I'd never live with her again so we could be friends.
But then...
PTSD started kicking my ass. I couldn't work. I had no one to really help me. I asked her if she'd come stay with me a month and help me. She said yes. I got a feeling it wasn't going to be just a month, though, and when she was packing, I said, "You're packing all your stuff and moving in, aren't you?" She said yes, and of course I convinced myself that this time it would work out, and I also needed help with the rent since my income had significantly decreased with the disability insurance and unemployment.
Any time I had a personal drama in my life, the focus had to shift to her, and this was no different. She drove across country, and on the way, had a meltdown about some of the terrain she had to cover. So her dad bought a one-way plane ticket, I flew to where she was, and drove the rest of the way. She was supposed to come take care of me, and for the next two years, I spent a significant amount of time taking care of her during all her meltdowns, and the rare times I fell apart and sincerely needed her, she was utterly incapable of listening or even giving hugs.
It was a one-bedroom apartment that we had to convert, so her bedroom was the walk-through to the kitchen. She wasn't taking proper care of her dogs, and one was getting older, so there were pee spots on the floor all the time. She'd soak them in a solution, and I'd step in the cold wet spots all the time, which was fucking irritating. So I cut up a bunch of old rags and asked her to just put one on each spot as a marker. She did it maybe half the time.
We both had issues with consistent housecleaning, but the worst was the dishes. There was no dishwasher and a very small sink. The dishes would pile up, we'd agree to each do our own dishes as soon as we used them, but if I didn't keep up with mine perfectly, the moment I let just one or two dishes sit out, that was her cue to stop trying and go back to letting everything pile up. So I fucking gave up.
Over those couple of years, she got more and more dramatic and everything in her life spilled over into mine. I finally had enough and gave her four months to move out. She ended up getting back with a different ex and moved across the country. We didn't hug goodbye. We didn't talk for several years.
Things in my life improved. I missed certain wonderful things about her. I contacted her on Facebook. She wrote back. Like the other times we'd stopped living together, we had gone a while without talking, then I'd contact her, she'd say what a shit she'd been, that she'd had dry drunks, never actually apologize or seek the amends that a 10-year plus veteran AAer would make, so there was always forgiveness on my part, but no mutual efforts to sort through issues to create genuine reconciliation and healing. This time when I contacted her, we had a couple of good conversations, but she'd barely respond to things I'd say about myself, then go off onto her famous drawn-out rants about whatever was bothering her in her life. When we'd first become friends, mutual bitching about everything and everyone else had been a foundation of our friendship, but I'd long outgrown it, and it was exhausting and toxic.
The kicker was at Christmas. I was alone and dealing with shit. I told her about it, got some acknowledgment, and then hours later it was an extreme drawn-out rant about some petty frustrations with her fiancee's family for the holiday.
I wrote to her and called it out. I said that I loved her and liked a lot of things about her, but until things changed, I likely wouldn't contact her again, and I haven't and I won't.
There is so much more that I could tell. And I admit I was not a saint, I am not perfect, I made errors along the way. But if you can imagine a set of scales, even she would admit that my sins toward here were pebbles, while hers toward me were boulders. But with the admittance never came improvement, but in fact with every renewal of our friendship, and every new living situation, she brought even bigger and heavier boulders than before.
I miss our laughter, I miss a lot of her insights, I miss our mutual creativity, but I do not miss a second of the drama, the manipulations (there were so many), the turning everything around to be about her, the aggressive helplessness, and the constant toxic bitching, sometimes about me, more often about anyone or anything I liked that she disliked or who wasn't her, because all other relationships and interests were a threat. She hated everyone I liked, and deep down she knew that she was the one I should have hated.
She knew a lot, but she was incapable of doing anything with the knowledge, and I am no longer co-dependent. In ten years I didn't fix her or anything for her, I just carried her smelly, burdenous shit, and she carried the burden of hating herself for dumping on me rather than taking the actual burdens that belonged to her.
Fuck that. I'm done.
