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Ok, that makes it sound like I have tons of tales of woe, and I believe I only have one...posted, anyway. 
But...yeah. This is about my toxic ex-friend/gf Stephanie.
We met on a writing forum sometime in 2007. Summer 2007, maybe? I honestly can't remember why we started talking to each other, but it may have had to do with a mutual friend named Sarah [she had good taste in names
]. Sarah ended up breaking up with her bf, who was also on that site. Her ex was...he's the subject of a thread all on its own, if I ever want to torture myself some day. He was horrible. I am SO glad I finally grew a spine and told him to fuck off.
But anyway. We grew to be very close friends [even though Sarah ended up vanishing ], and even started calling ourselves twins. Stephanie is also the girl who helped me realize I'm bisexual. My bf at the time started questioning my feelings towards her and was like, "You LIKE her like her, don't you." Little Eisa had grown up in a very repressed, conservative, uber religious household--until about high school, she didn't even know it was possible to love/like someone of the same sex.
So that was a bit of a scary realization!
Bad stuff happened, and I ended up breaking up with the bf. In the process, I grew closer to Stephanie and we started looking at each other more like girlfriends than anything else, even though she also had a bf. He was supposedly fine with it [I actually found out MUCH later that he really wasn't, she just had never bothered to ask him! ]. He wanted to do a threesome with me and her, actually. Um...that might have worked out better if I had actually found him attractive. I still don't know how she did. Appearance-wise AND personality-wise, he just...wasn't.
Anyway. I met her at a "reunion" of some of our friends from the writing site. THAT was awesome.
I met some very wonderful people, one of whom I consider like another mother and another I consider the lovely gay brother I never had. Even though I hardly ever get to speak to him...*ahem*
I ended up making plans to spend the summer of 2008 with her. She lived in another state halfway across the country. One that starts with I. That was the first Greyhound bus ride I'd ever had and needless to say, I despised every second of it. Not really on topic of toxicity, but with the bus trip...my bus was late to Denver by several hours and I ended up having to spend the NIGHT there. Sleeping on the floor of a grungy bus station equals no fun. I also thought that Kansas was so flat, I ended up telling her that if there weren't some hills soon, I was gonna start looking down girls' shirts.
That is also the bus ride where...[I was 20 at the time, by the way] an 11-year-old and 13-year-old thought I was cute. One wanted to ask me out. I found out that both they AND a woman behind me...thought I was 12.
I know I look kind of young, but THAT young?!
Ok, so I got there and everything was peachy for a while. In fact, she's the one who gave me my first kiss.
But she told me that she'd "leave the rest of the firsts to T." T. by the way is my ex. I refuse to write out his name, on the grounds that it tends to make me want to 
T. and I became technically engaged [long story]. He ended up coming up from his state [he lived in yet another state...that begins with T and is rather large] to Stephanie's state.
There began six weeks of pure hell. Which I shall not go over now, but suffice to say, I should have gone to the police the very first night and maybe some of it could have been avoided. Or maybe not, I have no way of knowing. But I still wish I'd gone to the police.
I tried to tell Stephanie while this was going on that something wasn't right. I wasn't actually sure, you see. I'd never been in a proper physical relationship before, so I was starting to think that everything was "normal." I mean...there was one time that we were watching Moulin Rouge and he kept, well, trying to put his hand down my pants. And I kept struggling away and saying "no..." while she just sat there and kind of watched us. Like it was a joke.
Then her bf [who I think is a complete asshole] got his mother to kick us out because he didn't like T. If he'd had the balls to do it himself, it was only supposed to be T. who was kicked out. NOT me. I was supposed to stay until the middle of August.
But no. His mommy comes and has to do it...and says that we have to be out the SAME DAY. Stephanie was leaving on a retreat that day, and so she apparently couldn't do anything. I don't know, I personally think she could have done SOMETHING, like maybe told her bf's mom to fuck off, or even made it so I could stay...something. Anything. But no. She didn't. I guess it's hard to blame her because her bf's mom was a very...aggressive, bitchy kind of woman. It would be hard to stand up to that.
So we're out. That is the first [and I hope only] night I have ever had to spend sleeping on a park bench by the train station. The next day was misery and hell as we got to the bus station to get down to that state that begins with T. I wish at that point, too, that I'd done something like figure out how to get the fuck back to ID. Hindsight is ever 20/20, right?
More hell and misery down in T-state. Finally get back for school to start.
Now here's where it gets interesting. I told Stephanie what T. did to me. My ex-bf [who later became my bf again and is my bf now...he's the nice, lovely, wonderful one
] helped me realize that hey, what T. did was unbelievably wrong. Stephanie didn't have much of a reaction, although she did express sympathy, etc. We were still kind of girlfriends at that point. She told me that she had fallen in love with me [and to be honest, I had with her, as well. To a point.]
Then the hurtful comments started. Let's see...over a period of probably a year or so, she came out with these gems at various times:
"You can take back the engagement, but you can't take back the V-card."
"You can't be popped in the oven anymore."
"You're so cute when you're helpless."
"A friend will hug you, a best friend will rape you in the hallway."
And I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting. She also told me that I should hang out with guys more so that I would "get over my fear of them." Yes. Of course. Randomly hanging out with strange men will TOTALLY get rid of my fear. [By the way, that has considerably lessened, and I feel a lot better about it.]
I would talk to her about it, and she would say that she was sorry but also that she couldn't understand why I didn't get it was just a joke or whatever.
I ended up visiting her over winter break. Both I and my new wonderful bf [I broke up with T. in December 2008...thank Gawd] told Stephanie that nothing beyond snuggling and perhaps a kiss or two should happen. I was far too fragile and NOT in a good place at ALL for that to happen. She told BF that of course, she understood, she wouldn't initiate or do anything beyond those boundaries.
So that was a flat-out lie. She kept pushing to do stuff...more and more stuff [in the making out/touching range, not the OMG TEH SEXORS range, that is]. And when I'd say no, she would stop...but then a little while later, she'd start up again. So I just gave into a lot 'cause I was still confused and scared and hurt from T. and new memories of abuse in my childhood that had decided to come back.
Came back and told my bf all that had happened and he was furious. I hadn't known about her promise to him until he told me then, and I wasn't too happy with her. We ended up having a three-way conversation at some point during all this where we talked about a lot of the issues I'd had with her behavior both during the summer and up through winter break and all that. She apologized...but she wouldn't take responsibility, if that makes sense. She wouldn't really acknowledge that yes, she'd messed up. And that kind of bothered me, but I let it go. By this time, I'd fallen out of love with her. She also kept wanting to be with me and my bf, and for a time, we were entertaining the idea of adding her and becoming a real polyamorous relationship. But it became VERY clear VERY fast that she would only ever talk to my bf because she wanted to get closer to me. So...nix that!
I didn't talk to her for months. I'm a little blurry on timeline, but I think I really started talking to her again sometime this year. She had backed away, too, but I wasn't really thinking about why. She broke up with her jerk of a bf and had moved back to her home state. I was feeling a little closer to her friendship-wise.
Then this past summer, I finally got to meet my bf. While I was on the bus there...in fact, only a few hours away...she chose to tell me that the reason she'd backed away from the friendship was because she was still in love with me. Um...I don't wish to be mean or rude or anything, but who does that when the object of their affections is on their way to meet their SO for the first time? She knew what I was doing. She tried to say later that she didn't know if it was my first time or fiftieth time, but I mean...c'mon, she knew damn well I would have told her.
I meet my bf, everything is truly wonderful. Stephanie tells me to check out a youtube video she made for Caturday. Where she mentions me as someone important in her life who was with her when she got her rainbow lollipop keychain.
Well, what she DID was out me as bisexual AND say that I had been her girlfriend...and didn't make it very clear in the video that I was her ex girlfriend.
It just...bothered me so much. She knows that I'm not really OUT out. I mean, I'll say it on a forum, I'll be out with my LGBTSA group, but my family doesn't know [besides my sister] and I just do not like the idea of there being a video out there that says that, even if you can't know for certain that it's me she's talking about.
So that was it. Finally. After years of being friends with her, and years of putting up with toxic comments, I finally dumped Stephanie as a friend. I still miss her sometimes because she could be really sweet and funny. I don't think she did anything out of being malicious, but there comes a point when actions speak louder than words, you know? The effect was still the same.
So yeah. This was unbelievably long. But I still wanted to write it out. Kudos and cookies to anyone who read the whole thing!
But...yeah. This is about my toxic ex-friend/gf Stephanie.We met on a writing forum sometime in 2007. Summer 2007, maybe? I honestly can't remember why we started talking to each other, but it may have had to do with a mutual friend named Sarah [she had good taste in names
]. Sarah ended up breaking up with her bf, who was also on that site. Her ex was...he's the subject of a thread all on its own, if I ever want to torture myself some day. He was horrible. I am SO glad I finally grew a spine and told him to fuck off.But anyway. We grew to be very close friends [even though Sarah ended up vanishing ], and even started calling ourselves twins. Stephanie is also the girl who helped me realize I'm bisexual. My bf at the time started questioning my feelings towards her and was like, "You LIKE her like her, don't you." Little Eisa had grown up in a very repressed, conservative, uber religious household--until about high school, she didn't even know it was possible to love/like someone of the same sex.
So that was a bit of a scary realization!Bad stuff happened, and I ended up breaking up with the bf. In the process, I grew closer to Stephanie and we started looking at each other more like girlfriends than anything else, even though she also had a bf. He was supposedly fine with it [I actually found out MUCH later that he really wasn't, she just had never bothered to ask him! ]. He wanted to do a threesome with me and her, actually. Um...that might have worked out better if I had actually found him attractive. I still don't know how she did. Appearance-wise AND personality-wise, he just...wasn't.
Anyway. I met her at a "reunion" of some of our friends from the writing site. THAT was awesome.
I met some very wonderful people, one of whom I consider like another mother and another I consider the lovely gay brother I never had. Even though I hardly ever get to speak to him...*ahem*I ended up making plans to spend the summer of 2008 with her. She lived in another state halfway across the country. One that starts with I.
That was the first Greyhound bus ride I'd ever had and needless to say, I despised every second of it. Not really on topic of toxicity, but with the bus trip...my bus was late to Denver by several hours and I ended up having to spend the NIGHT there. Sleeping on the floor of a grungy bus station equals no fun. I also thought that Kansas was so flat, I ended up telling her that if there weren't some hills soon, I was gonna start looking down girls' shirts. That is also the bus ride where...[I was 20 at the time, by the way] an 11-year-old and 13-year-old thought I was cute. One wanted to ask me out. I found out that both they AND a woman behind me...thought I was 12.
I know I look kind of young, but THAT young?!Ok, so I got there and everything was peachy for a while. In fact, she's the one who gave me my first kiss.
But she told me that she'd "leave the rest of the firsts to T." T. by the way is my ex. I refuse to write out his name, on the grounds that it tends to make me want to T. and I became technically engaged [long story]. He ended up coming up from his state [he lived in yet another state...that begins with T and is rather large] to Stephanie's state.
There began six weeks of pure hell. Which I shall not go over now, but suffice to say, I should have gone to the police the very first night and maybe some of it could have been avoided. Or maybe not, I have no way of knowing. But I still wish I'd gone to the police.
I tried to tell Stephanie while this was going on that something wasn't right. I wasn't actually sure, you see. I'd never been in a proper physical relationship before, so I was starting to think that everything was "normal." I mean...there was one time that we were watching Moulin Rouge and he kept, well, trying to put his hand down my pants. And I kept struggling away and saying "no..." while she just sat there and kind of watched us. Like it was a joke.
Then her bf [who I think is a complete asshole] got his mother to kick us out because he didn't like T. If he'd had the balls to do it himself, it was only supposed to be T. who was kicked out. NOT me. I was supposed to stay until the middle of August.
But no. His mommy comes and has to do it...and says that we have to be out the SAME DAY. Stephanie was leaving on a retreat that day, and so she apparently couldn't do anything. I don't know, I personally think she could have done SOMETHING, like maybe told her bf's mom to fuck off, or even made it so I could stay...something. Anything. But no. She didn't. I guess it's hard to blame her because her bf's mom was a very...aggressive, bitchy kind of woman. It would be hard to stand up to that.
So we're out. That is the first [and I hope only] night I have ever had to spend sleeping on a park bench by the train station. The next day was misery and hell as we got to the bus station to get down to that state that begins with T. I wish at that point, too, that I'd done something like figure out how to get the fuck back to ID. Hindsight is ever 20/20, right?
More hell and misery down in T-state. Finally get back for school to start.
Now here's where it gets interesting. I told Stephanie what T. did to me. My ex-bf [who later became my bf again and is my bf now...he's the nice, lovely, wonderful one
] helped me realize that hey, what T. did was unbelievably wrong. Stephanie didn't have much of a reaction, although she did express sympathy, etc. We were still kind of girlfriends at that point. She told me that she had fallen in love with me [and to be honest, I had with her, as well. To a point.]Then the hurtful comments started. Let's see...over a period of probably a year or so, she came out with these gems at various times:
"You can take back the engagement, but you can't take back the V-card."
"You can't be popped in the oven anymore."
"You're so cute when you're helpless."
"A friend will hug you, a best friend will rape you in the hallway."
And I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting. She also told me that I should hang out with guys more so that I would "get over my fear of them." Yes. Of course. Randomly hanging out with strange men will TOTALLY get rid of my fear. [By the way, that has considerably lessened, and I feel a lot better about it.]
I would talk to her about it, and she would say that she was sorry but also that she couldn't understand why I didn't get it was just a joke or whatever.
I ended up visiting her over winter break. Both I and my new wonderful bf [I broke up with T. in December 2008...thank Gawd] told Stephanie that nothing beyond snuggling and perhaps a kiss or two should happen. I was far too fragile and NOT in a good place at ALL for that to happen. She told BF that of course, she understood, she wouldn't initiate or do anything beyond those boundaries.
So that was a flat-out lie. She kept pushing to do stuff...more and more stuff [in the making out/touching range, not the OMG TEH SEXORS range, that is]. And when I'd say no, she would stop...but then a little while later, she'd start up again. So I just gave into a lot 'cause I was still confused and scared and hurt from T. and new memories of abuse in my childhood that had decided to come back.
Came back and told my bf all that had happened and he was furious. I hadn't known about her promise to him until he told me then, and I wasn't too happy with her. We ended up having a three-way conversation at some point during all this where we talked about a lot of the issues I'd had with her behavior both during the summer and up through winter break and all that. She apologized...but she wouldn't take responsibility, if that makes sense. She wouldn't really acknowledge that yes, she'd messed up. And that kind of bothered me, but I let it go. By this time, I'd fallen out of love with her. She also kept wanting to be with me and my bf, and for a time, we were entertaining the idea of adding her and becoming a real polyamorous relationship. But it became VERY clear VERY fast that she would only ever talk to my bf because she wanted to get closer to me. So...nix that!
I didn't talk to her for months. I'm a little blurry on timeline, but I think I really started talking to her again sometime this year. She had backed away, too, but I wasn't really thinking about why. She broke up with her jerk of a bf and had moved back to her home state. I was feeling a little closer to her friendship-wise.
Then this past summer, I finally got to meet my bf.
While I was on the bus there...in fact, only a few hours away...she chose to tell me that the reason she'd backed away from the friendship was because she was still in love with me. Um...I don't wish to be mean or rude or anything, but who does that when the object of their affections is on their way to meet their SO for the first time? She knew what I was doing. She tried to say later that she didn't know if it was my first time or fiftieth time, but I mean...c'mon, she knew damn well I would have told her.I meet my bf, everything is truly wonderful. Stephanie tells me to check out a youtube video she made for Caturday. Where she mentions me as someone important in her life who was with her when she got her rainbow lollipop keychain.
Well, what she DID was out me as bisexual AND say that I had been her girlfriend...and didn't make it very clear in the video that I was her ex girlfriend.
It just...bothered me so much. She knows that I'm not really OUT out. I mean, I'll say it on a forum, I'll be out with my LGBTSA group, but my family doesn't know [besides my sister] and I just do not like the idea of there being a video out there that says that, even if you can't know for certain that it's me she's talking about.So that was it. Finally. After years of being friends with her, and years of putting up with toxic comments, I finally dumped Stephanie as a friend. I still miss her sometimes because she could be really sweet and funny. I don't think she did anything out of being malicious, but there comes a point when actions speak louder than words, you know? The effect was still the same.
So yeah. This was unbelievably long. But I still wanted to write it out. Kudos and cookies to anyone who read the whole thing!
Or, I mean...I don't know, I get that she could have said it in a joking mode and not gotten that it hurt/upset me, but when I told her that it bothered me, she really should have stepped up and been like, "I'm really sorry that I said something that hurt you, I understand why it would bother you" or even just ask me to explain why if she really didn't get it instead of saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, but I was JUST teasing..." Like, gee, thanks for not getting it. 
It was almost like I wanted to split her in half--the nice side and the bad side. 
It would be quite interesting. Yep, sucky people are sucky regardless of what demographic they fall in. Sadly.
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