✨Life✨

tea on the ex-best friend

Ok so y'all wanted the tea, you'll get the tea. Warning, there is talk about self harm and mentions of suicide here.

Alright so I met Eli (that's right kiddos, I put his real name) at the end of sixth grade through my friend Kiterrius (Kit Kat if you're somehow seeing this I miss you buddy). At the beginning if seventh grade we starter talking a but more, and I got a friend crush on him. Like a crush where you don't want to date them, you just wanna be their friend really bad.

This is around the time I was falling pretty hard into self harm, and I had started to become suicidal. I wasn't extremely serious about it, but I did have a pre-written note that I hid I case I did decide to commit.

So around Halloween we had our band party and Eli and I talked more. We became friends and exchanged numbers. Later that night he texted me and we talked for a bit before he asked if he could tell me a secret. I said yes, and he told me that he tried to kill himself that summer.

This made me trust him, so I told him that I had been cutting myself. He was the first I told, and I trusted him to help me. Long story short, we texted a lot that night, teard were shed, and I went to sleep. Because he was the only one I felt understood me, I latched onto him and got a really bad crush.

The next day we texted back and forth about random things until he asked me who I liked. I said no one, and he said he liked me. My mom wasn't letting me date (don't date in middle school kids it's dumb), so I told him that. He tried to get me to lie to my parents, but I said no and that I wanted to stay friends.

At school on Monday, he completely ignored me, avoiding me the whole day. I was really upset about it, considering the mental state I was in. He barely talked to me anymore which made it worse.

The night I told him about my self harm he told me to text or call him whenever I needed help, so I did, multiple times. Each time I got no response, and when I asked him about it at school he said he got a new number.

So a few months later my friend Dani (my real ride or die) saw my cuts when I was changing in the locker room (which I was usually pretty good at hiding), and confronted me about it. I told her, and she said she went through the same thing. She would call or text me to check up on me if I wasn't looking my best, or to just make sure I was doing ok.

Looking back on it now, I realize just how different their reactions were. Eli ignored me and left me to suffer at my worst, but I still idolized him and desperately wanted him to be my friend again. He came back in my life after I had gotten better, whereas Dani was there through it all. Eli ignored my texts begging him to distract me during my urges, while Dani would take it upon herself to check up on me everyday out of the blue.

Anyway, it's the end of the school year and I'm going on our TAG field trip to Six Flags. Kiterrius and Eli were also in TAG, so we were going together. I have an anxiety disorder, so I told both of them beforehand that if we got seperated I would have a panic attack.

Flash forward a bit when Eli wants to ride a roller coaster I didn't like. He convinces me to go do something else and to meet up with him at a specific spot (I can't remember where) when we finish. I accept, and go do the water raft ride.

After the ride is over, I go to our spot and wait for Eli. After ten minutes I call him and then text him once he didn't answer. Fast forward 6 calls and 10 texts later, it had been 30 minuted and he still wasn't there. I panicked and started looking around the park for him. One of Eli's friends, a girl I didn't know very well, sees me and asks if I would ride something with her (i love her so much, she was so nice). I accept and we stick together for a while.

About an hour later, I see Eli wandering around. I yell at him, asking where he was, and he said he'd been looking for me (lie). I told him how much I had called and texted him and he said (surprise surprise) he changed his number again.

So now I'm in eighth grade and we're best friends, talking and texting all the time. I find out that my really good friend Ben likes me and Eli pressures me into dating him, saying I owe Ben that and I'll break his heart if I don't. I start dating Ben (but I don't count him as my first boyfriend because our relationship was practically nothing lol) and then quarantine happens (which is when I start to slowly realize he's toxic)

My Nana moved in with us at Easter because she wasn't ok living on her own, and Eli knew this. In late April, we find out that Nana has stage four cancer everywhere. It was apparently really fast growing, because the doctors didn't notice until she had about a month to live.

Since Nana had early stage dementia, she forgot she had cancer, which was probably for the best. Eli knows about all of this. In May she passes away, and I call Eli crying an hour after it happened.

Okay real quick backstory on me, my aunt died suddenly when I was 11 the day before Christmas Eve, then my Grandpa (who was my best friend) passed away from Alzheimer's (he forgot me and that was the trigger for the self harm), and then my uncle suddenly died of a heart condition. This all happened within about a year and a half, and it was devastating for our family (I could go off on a whole other tangent about the drama from that but I gotta stay focused).

When Nana died, I was scared it was gonna make me relapse again (I was about four months clean). I called Eli and told him what happened and he said he was sorry. Not even a few minutes later, I say something about how grief never gets easier and his exact response was, and I quote, "Oh you think that's bad? Someone in my family dies every two weeks."

I said I was sorry to hear that, even though I wanted to scream at him. My grandmother, my last living family that live near me, just died an hour ago and you think it's a good idea to say oh you think that's bad???

So a monh later I'm still "dating" Ben and Eli texts me. We talk for a bit and he says that he's liked me since sixth grade (obvious lie). I tell him ok, I don't really like you back, sorry. At this point I had a "boyfriend," so for him to come in an say he likes me is such homewrecker behavior.

Anyway, I say something like I don't really want to date until junior or senior year (true) and that I want to focus on my friends and school. He says "you're such a nerd, you gotta live a little."

This made my blood boil because one, I don't need a boyfriend to live, and two, even if I did want one, I certainly wouldn't want you.

Some not-so-honorable mentions of other things he's done:

-say he's bi but only dated girls (i'm talking about 60 in two years)
-agree with Trump when he tweeted about rape in the military saying "well what did these idiots think was gonna happen when they put men and women together"
-make a lot of comments on my body
-make fun of me a lot, like really low blows (which I would think about when I self harmed)
-support the cops instead of BLM
-supports Trump (even though he's mexican??? make it make sense???)
-pressured Dani into sending nudes
-pressured dani into kissing when she didn't want to while they were dating
-Use the n, f, and r slur despite not being gay, black or neurodivergent