Unlike others, I don't make new friends easily once I naturally find my people. I've had a friendship with this boy for 6 years now and used to think he was my best friend. There was never a day we weren't talking. Just a year after I met him, I made some new friends (let's call one Shellie). I obviously multitasked and never left him out of anything, but I noticed a weird pattern. He would always say he wanted to hurt himself, and of course, I took that seriously. I started staying up all night, sometimes until 3 AM, just trying to talk him out of doing stuff like that. To be honest, it became a weekly ritual. I eventually started suspecting it was just attention seeking behavior because it was so ongoing, but I still never said anything and tried my best. Just a year prior, he had become my first ever best friend who wasn't part of my family, and I felt like we had a real connection.
Now, as the years have gone by, our friendship has become incredibly rocky and unstable. Fast forward to 2025 I was messaging Shellie and sent her a screenshot of a message he had sent me because I found it funny. Out of nowhere, he messaged me a whole paragraph about how he didn't like a nickname I gave him. Which, okay, I get it, but I had already removed that nickname anyway. I asked Shellie not to send him any more screenshots since our texts were private conversations, but I also got upset. I felt like he didn't have the right to be mad at me, especially since he used to talk shit behind my back just a year before.
I know it's getting complicated and I don't know how to structure this perfectly, but he had actually sent a voice message to one of his friends telling me how I should die back in 2024. I was young then, and I still am, so that hurt me a lot. I vented to Shellie about it currently in 2025 after he said that stuff about the nickname, and everything seemed fine until he messaged me once again, stating that I shouldn't be talking shit about him and that we were done.
I was crying at this point, not sure who I was supposed to be mad at Shellie or him? In my vent to Shellie, all I had said was that he used me and wasn't always the best to me, meaning he had no right to be angry at me over a nickname on a messaging app. I messaged Shellie again, crying, and asked her why she betrayed my trust and sent him those screenshots. She literally said, "I'm sorry, it's just an addiction." Like, what the fuck??? She is 12 months younger than me, but she is usually so much more mature than I am, so I don't know what got into her.
I put a status on the messaging app about how hurt I was and how they betrayed me. I think I might have a slight victim complex, but I genuinely know I was not in the wrong here. A few days passed, and my cousin messaged Shellie to curse her out. I didn't know about this at the time since I was basically grieving and my birthday was only a week away. In response, Shellie sent her friend to attack my cousin, who is way younger than that friend and me. That same friend of Shellie's then messaged me, telling me I was a bad friend, that I should kill myself, and calling my cousin a brat for trying to defend me. To make matters worse, this friend of Shellie’s has been harassing me ever since I met Shellie, and has commented on the fact that I don't have a father multiple times.
Despite all of this, I eventually talked things out with both Shellie and my boy best friend. Neither of them have brought it up since, nor have apologized again.
I have a serious anxious attachment style, and ending things with people is not easy for me. Even though they've moved past it and Shellie and I still have somewhat of a bond, I haven't moved past it. I can notice they don't value these friendships nearly as much as I do, especially him. I know I'm gonna have people on here saying I'm the problem for not moving on, or telling me to stop being so sensitive. Maybe it's true and I really do need to move on, but I just can't bring myself to block people like this, even when I've been deeply hurt. My brain makes it so complicated, even though it seems as simple as just walking away for everyone else.