#damn the breakup is way worse than i thought. wayyy way worse. here i was thinking oh this isnt that bad

[justabunchofdragons]

"we aren't friends, house. i'm not sure we ever were"

[sathtrash]

I just watched the second part of Markiplier’s ‘Emily is Away Too’ playthrough (in which he gets the Evelyn-Bad End I guess) and the interactions leading up to the ending with Emily, followed by the ending argument with Evelyn (in which she basically forces the player character to end their relationship) reminded me wayyy too much of fights with my emotionally abusive ex-best friend and it’s got me Fucked Up. Like I’ve been doing well withdealing with that for awhile now (I stopped talking to her last year in late March, and it took me forever to deal with that and move on), but watching those interactions, Emily getting mad at Mark’s character for not immediately replying to her when she was Drunk and Demanding, and then her telling Evelyn about his differing answers about wanting a family (Mark told Emily he wasn’t sure he wanted one yet, and told Evelyn he wanted one eventually) when she was mad at him and was purposefully trying to sabotage their relationship, it all reminded me way too much of that ‘friendship’ I had once. 

She would get upset with me on skype calls if I didn’t immediately ask her about her day, she would pick fights with me if I was late getting home without telling her (she lives in a different time zone than me, her in Europe, me on the East cost of North America), and she would get upset with me if I ever went out somewhere with friends for more than a couple hours, and basically didn’t let me stay over at anyone else’s house unless I had my laptop so we could talk since I didn’t have a phone at the time (and god damn am I glad I didn’t get a phone until after we stopped talking because if she’d been able to text me I would have had to change numbers to get her to stop harassing me), she even got mad at me once because I didn’t always look her directly in the eyes when we talked, I’m not good with eye contact for prolonged periods, it makes me feel restless and studied and really uncomfortable and she knew that. She would ask me for advice (like Emily asks the player character) and then get mad at me if I didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear (like at one time just before we stopped talking she was seeing this guy and I told her that he was an asshole and she deserved better because all he wanted to do when she was around was make out and smoke weed, and she didn’t like the weed bit, and because I didn’t ‘support her decision to be with him’ I was a bad friend). I’ve had to block her and her sister on all possible social media because she was harassing me, and when she was blocked and couldn’t get to me she sent her sister after me. And basically after watching that Evelyn-Bad End situation play out all I can fucking think about is the way I was treated and how I KNOW what it’s like to be in the player characters shoes (if he were real) and it feels like shit, being in that position sucks and there’s fuck all you can do about it, and in the end even if you were in the right, or did nothing wrong, manipulators and narcissists (like Emily in that game-line) will try their very best to make you feel like garbage about it for the rest of your life. It’s been over a year since I last spoke to her and I still wonder sometimes like ‘What if I had just apologized, I know I didn’t do anything but what if?’ or ‘What if I had agreed with her about X-thing? Would things have still gone this way?’ and for a long time the Skype notification sound made my heart race with anxiety because I was always walking on eggshells with her, even after I ended things the Skype sound still scared me for a long time, and sometimes if it’s quiet and I’m not doing anything and not expecting it I still jump and my heart races and I have a moment of ‘What is the fight today?’ even though she’s been blocked on Skype for over a year. That kind of thing messes a person up, and I don’t know if that’s what the guy that made Emily is Away Too meant to do or not, but when I started watching Mark’s playthrough I didn’t expect to feel like this about it, it’s just brought back to the surface all those doubts and trust issues and insecurities for me that came from being in an emotionally abusive friendship. I’ve been able to deal with them, but I still have a hard time trusting new people in my life with deep shit even months into a friendship, and even when I’m super comfortable being the Mom and letting those friends vent to me about personal stuff I’m still hesitant to go beyond a ‘Oh I’m just feeling off/anxious/sad today if they ask what’s wrong, because that ex-best friend taught me that her needs came first, and that her issues were more important, and that mine were nothing because I was in high school and she was an Adult, what could I POSSIBLY have to deal with and stress about because I haven’t even TASTED adulthood yet. And I still struggle with that, I’m happy to play therapist for my friends and let them yell and vent and cry it out, but I can’t do that. There are three people who I feel fully safe to vent about EVERYTHING to, my best friend of nearly a decade (I’ve talked about her a lot on here, I often refer to her as my Wife for reference), another close friend called Laurie, and my mom, and like tonight, when it’s really late (for me) and they’re not available because they’re asleep I end up writing these long emotional Read More posts because I just need to GET IT OUT of my system and I know most of you don’t read my personal stuff anyways so it feels safe to yell here too because I can always delete it later when I get embarrassed about being whingey at 2:30 in the morning over something that seems so minor in the grad-scheme of like abuse? Because I can acknowledge that it did a number on me, but so many people experience way worse stuff and I always feel like I have no right to talk about it because my brain tells me It Wasn’t So Bad Compared to Others because she was just manipulative and passive aggressive, but it really fucked me up, and just watching the way that particular ending of a fucking video game went has brought it all back to the surface and I wish I could just forget about all of it and move on but I still can’t somehow and it makes me feel like garbage because all I want is to be a normal young adult who doesn’t have issues trusting new friends, and who isn’t wary of possible partners manipulating me because I (I guess in my opinion?) am a kind person. All I want is to go back to 14 year old Kat in 9th grade who joined a group on Chatzy for Marauders RP, and tell her to just back out, because while getting to RP as a sassy teen Remus Lupin was fun it wasn’t going to be worth the next three years of consistent passive aggression, monthly (or even weekly) fights, started by her without me having done anything wrong, all the trust issues, the tears shed, the sleepless, anxious nights knowing she was angry at me but not knowing why or what I had done, all the mornings where I’d get up at six am for school on four hours of sleep because I had been too upset to sleep because she had started Something the night before a few hours before she went to bed. None of that was worth what I got out of it, a fairweather best friend who, instead of comforting me during my first breakup, said ‘I told you so’, who belittled my relationship with my first partner, and made threats on fb messenger to my second partner. I gave her everything I could and tried to be the best friend I could possibly be for her, I gave her so much I was even scared to call other people I considered best friends a best friend, even if I wasn’t around her, because I thought it’d upset her if I had multiple best friends, everything I did for three years was to try and be a good friend for her, and all I get in return is trust issues, relationship anxiety that is at 100% capacity at all times, a vague distrust of the Skype notification sound on desktop, and brutalized self-esteem when it comes to thinking my friends actually like me, because of the way she treated me I have genuine trouble believing that my friends are really my friends sometimes, and I get triggered into feeling this way, sad and confused and upset, by a fucking video game that simulates an AOL chat with some girls the player character knows. 

All because of one person. And no matter what I do I can’t escape it, it just keeps coming back to me, and I know that’s how she would want me to feel, trapped and upset and alone, and it feels like even though I ended the friendship, I got out, that she still won. And I hate it. Because all I wanted to do was be a good friend to her, and I feel like she destroyed me, and I can’t get back up again after, it’s been over a year and I still feel like I’m picking up the pieces from what she did to me. I’m lucky to have the friends I do, and my mom, because they’re ones who know about the situation with that ex-friend and they get it and they’ve helped as much as they can, but sometimes it’s all I can do to try and keep moving and not think about her, because I can never get back the girl I was before I met her, and I can never feel like a whole person again because she wrecked me. And no matter what she still won, I might have gotten out, but she still won. And I hate that a fucking video game someone ELSE PLAYED is bringing all of this up for me again.