I had a gay best friend for a few years, he was always a bit high maintenance and fancied himself as a bit of a socialite, if there wasn’t an event/possible Instagram opportunity he wasn’t interested and he always likes to be the centre of a attention.
we spoke every single day and bounced off each other all the time, we’d have a ball when we went out but the start of this year he started to turn a bit toxic in sense that he became quite argumentative with people and he was always falling out with people. He forgot my birthday two years in a row and when I reminded him on the day I got a rude response back and basically took it out on me that he forgot - but when it was his birthday it was a month long event and you didn’t hear the last of it.
Anyway fast forward a couple of months when we’re about to go into lockdown and I’m at home, alone with Covid. He works in a pub and was watching Rishi’s speech about the furlough scheme and we were just messaging small talk and he asked how I was. He suggested some remedies that may help me (which certainly help flu symptoms but Covid was a different league) I said oh they may not help but thank you I’ll probably just sleep more instead and that was it, he completely flipped and started gaslighting me saying that I was being rude to him and asking me why, and that he is under intense pressure because he could be out of a job etc etc.
I was crying and had a panic attack because I was trying to reason with him and tell him I wasn’t I was being polite I was trying to call him but he wouldnt pick up. He said he would call back after he finished work but I said it’s okay I just wanted to apologise if it looked like I was being rude I really wasn’t which led him to gaslight me further and told me to stop going on about it. When I tried to reason with him again he sent me a
emoji.
I didn’t message him back. He didn’t unfollow me but still to this day doesn’t view my Instagram stories (petty) so he’s obviously muted me or something.
I was very angry about it during lockdown, July came when the pubs were allowed to reopen and I thought I’d be the bigger person and send him a message basically to wish him luck for his first shift back, but the conversation was so forced and well mannered there wasn’t much of a vibe, so I stopped messaging.
At times I do feel very sad towards the situation and other times it’s a “how dare he treat me like that” - we probably won’t ever be friends again.
(sorry for the essay!)