Have you ever ditched a friend?

I got an email saying that all my emails would be deleted unread. Totaly devistated me.

I’ve decided that certain people weren’t worth the pain it caused to see them: a friend I loved from afar in high school whom I learned was completely aware and mocked me for it to my friends, another friend who descended too deeply into his own psychosis for me to help. These are the only two I felt like I’d decided to not be friends with.

There are many people I once called friends whom I have not spoken to in years. I have no reasons other than the trials of life, the disconnect of distance, and the fear of breaking their illusions of memory with the unimpressive reality of me.

I ditched a bunch since heroin. I caught my friend stealing my shit. And he lived with me at the time. I see you crawling out the window with my PlayStation. Sorry dude. I got off work early.

And the inverse. I was ditched from my best friend in High School. We spent a freakish amount of time in high school together. 5 plus hours a day skateboarding together after school and he pretty much lived at my apartment. He lived about a hour away from our high school so he crashed at our place. And his mom was my sisters boss at Symantec. His mom was stoked he had a place to crash if he was drinking.

So we finished up high school. Shaun’s dad owned a firefighting company out in eastern Oregon. So he was off fighting wildfires and his GF was getting loaded and had sex with a rando while 10 people were like (WTF, don’t fuck on the couch).

So when he got back I told him. He did not believe me and I have no idea what his thought process was. I’m not sure why he would think I would lie. But I haven’t talked to the dude in 20 years.

In real life, I usually don’t break up friendships, I’ll just distance myself from the person. We’ll still be friends, we’ll just not see each other that often and we’ll use text or email or FB.

On FB, there have been a few people I unfriended because they seemed to like to argue over the stupidest crap. I don’t have time for drama and arguing, especially over something really stupid. Maybe it was important to them, which is ok, it just tells me we have different priorities and they should concentrate on friends whose priorities are in line with theirs.

I’ve ditched 3 friends.

One was a big drama queen back in high school. She constantly told me that she wanted to help me become a better person, a “perfect girl” that everyone in my class would love. Don’t know how that actually worked. All I could see was that I found myself changing like a chameleon based on what she dictated and I constantly had to watch out for her mood swing. I just couldn’t form any bond with her, but at that time she was the only hope for a “friend” in class. I was convinced that I was really the horrible person she said I was and I just had to keep changing myself and things would work itself out. It never worked out. I ended up feeling drained around her. Then I started college. There was more opportunity for friends, so I just tried to ignore her and let the friendship die. I didn’t leave any explanation because I knew she was a master of word bending any everything I said could easily be turned against me. At one point she started to spread rumors about me and make herself a victim. Too bad that the one who bought into them had already hated me and the people I love had never given a shit about her in the first place.

Another one was once a great friend. She was also a friend I made in high school, though she wasn’t in the same class. She always said uplifting things about me, even calling me her hero. She boosted my self-esteem to some degree, which was something I desperately needed as an extremely unpopular school girl. Then she went to college, and went to a big city. She could only come back in summer break and I waited for her return. Then she returned for the first time. I could sense something different in her, something unpleasant that got under my skin, although there was no apparent sign. I tried to dismiss my feeling as irrational and carried on, until a quarrel proved that I was right after all. She had indeed changed, from a loving friend to a whiny, callous attention seeker. I decided that the only way to go was to cut tie.

The last one was a friend for 7 years. I became her friend because I liked that she was smart and strong, coupled with her poor background. At high school she was forced to work part-time to support het family and her study. That was when things went downhill. She became needy, manipulative and self-indulgent. She had no goal in life and just waited for others to satisfy her emotional need. I tried everything to bring her back to track, from lending her money to pay for her school to offering advice for saving money. She threw every help of mine to the waste bin by dropping out of college and indulging in expensive luxuries despite her obvious financial difficulty. When she became too emotional draining I called it quit. There was a violent quarrel between us. Some time later she invited me to her wedding like nothing had happened. I didn’t reply and that was the last time I heard from her.

Yes, quite a few over the years, 4–5 come to mind, for various reasons ranging from manipulative behavior, jealousy towards things going well for me, being overbearing and pushy, and other behaviors I simply don’t accept and deal with. People change and relationships change and not all friendships and relationships are meant to last forever.

Not really, I just never liked saying goodbye to people I like or get close too. When I retired, I heard there were some folks who were mad because I didn’t tell them bye, but I don’t like all the hoopla. Don’t mean I don’t like ya. And when I went back to visit, everything was good, picked up right where we left off. No big whoop, and no need to take shit personal.

@Coloma Some do, some don’t. I’m still on friendly terms with a woman I kind of grew up with, she told me a while back that the day we moved away, she cried all day. I told her I figured she was happy to be rid of my ass. She told me, shut up, asshole. LOL. Ah yes, childhood friendships. But I was shocked, shocked, I tell ya!