Ok, this one’s a little long so be weary. I hope she doesn’t find this but hey. It is what it is, ig)

My ex-best friend and I are both 18(f) and freshmen in college, but we go to school separately. She stayed home for community college and I left to one out of state. 

I initially met this girl (we can call her Nina ig) in elementary/middle school when we both went to an after school water polo academy. She joined a year before I did, but I never befriended her until we were around a year in and I had been placed in the beginner level with her after a few lessons. I became friends with her since we were the only 2 girls in there (along with her younger brother and 2 other boys) and we hit it off pretty quickly. 

An important piece to keep in mind is that I had liked Nina’s brother (he was only a year younger than us) since the day I had met him, which was a year before I had ever become friends with her, but nothing came from it since I kept it to myself that whole time (until I met her and told her about it, of course.) 

Over the years I was friends with her, she had told me she was a myriad of gay, bi, trans, all the things since she was figuring herself out yk? I didn't really care since she was still my best friend so it didn’t change anything between us (I'm starting to think otherwise, but we’ll get there) and Nina had already known I was in love with her brother for years so it should’ve been cut and dry. It started off normal, we would facetime after school all the time, and text throughout the day, since we didn’t go to the same school, all until we saw each other at water polo later at night. 

We were a friend group consisting of the intermediate level and our siblings and honestly, they’re still the best friend group I could ask for. So around 6 years in, we were 14-15 years old and I had started noticing some odd stuff that would make me kind of uncomfortable, but I just kept my mouth shut since I didn’t want to lose the closest friend I had ever made, yk? 

As I explain this, I want you to keep this in mind: Nina had no friends. I was the only one, all of her previous best friends had dropped her and left over the years before. At the time, I was so confused by that since she was such a “good” friend and we got along great. She would tell me that everyone blamed her for things she didn’t do or they would use her to talk to someone for a little while and tell all their secrets since she was oh so trustworthy and all that. I had fully believed her and I felt bad for her, so I continued to be her friend since she didn’t have anyone else so I thought I was obligated to be there for her.

I told my mom about all that and she was immediately put off by it since, to her, it just didn’t add up at all, so she kept an eye out on Nina’s behavior. I thought she was being too dramatic and looking too much into it but I guess I was blinded by my only close friendship and I was too afraid to be alone. The only thing I had kept from my mom was that over our nightly facetime calls, Nina would tell me things like “You kept me from *u can guess* in middle school” and “I don’t know what to do with myself since I didn’t think I would have made it this far”. Hearing that as an 8th grader kinda fucked with me honestly. I thought that if I had stopped being friends with her she would’ve ended it and it would have been my fault, so I just had to push through and stay her friend to keep her alive. 

I had to push through a bunch of really uncomfortable instances in the time that I was friends with her because of that thought before. She would try to hold my hands sometimes and I just didn’t rock with it since I didn’t want people thinking we were a couple, especially not her brother because I really really liked him and I was desperately trying to get closer to him. I had to ignore when she would pinch me too hard because her ADHD would cause her to tense up and she needed a stress thing and the first thing was my fuckin arm. She did that whenever we watched a scary movie or whenever she got excited or nervous, it happened often, but I didn’t tell her anything except the occasional, “damn that one hurt!” to try and get the message across to her that it was bothering me, but it never worked. Other times (Im a nail technician so I do my own) I would show her the new set I did on myself and she would try to hold my fingers and play with the builder gel I had on them which bothered me since she would always do that in front of her brother.

Over time, my reaction time got faster so I would move my hands fast enough that she couldn’t grab them or anything, so that was always a plus for me. This part’s kind of weird for anyone, so pls bear with me: sometimes she would send me unsolicited pictures of her brother around the house, like his arm when he was opening the car door or his shoes from when she’s standing behind him or whatever. Whenever she would do that, I would play it off like “Oh haha what are you guys up to?” so I didn’t have to acknowledge that it was weird, but as I’m saying that, I can only imagine how many pictures like that she has of ME on her phone. Along with that, she would tell me about these really explicit “dreams” she had involving her brother and me together that honestly just sounded like fanfiction she had written about us to show me. She did that maybe 7 or 8 times, and, to me, they just seemed too detailed to have been any real dreams.

Anyway, I had started to make my own friends in high school finally and I would spend less and less time with her, so I assume she was getting jealous or something, so whenever the group would hang out, she had essentially gatekept me from everyone: standing in front of me to block me from the rest of the group convo, pulling me aside to walk behind everyone at the mall, forcing me to sit next to her and no one else at restaurants, ya know, the whole 9 yards. She had used the fact that I liked her brother to control me, honestly. She would threaten to tell him sometimes as a joke, but other times she tried to put me and a few of our friends in the group against each other by convincing me that they ALSO liked him (even tho everyone knew I liked him so, why would they do that to me, yk?) so I would get pissed at whomever she claimed. Nina even tried to do that to me and my own sister, when I knew my sister would absolutely never do that to me. She had me crying knocking on my little sister’s door, begging her to tell me that it wasn’t true that she liked him too since he would “obviously” pick her over me (my sister’s absolutely gorgeous, but Nina had me so damn brainwashed thinking he would go after a 7th grader as a high school sophomore himself, it was fucking crazy). Since then, my sister and my mom both held a grudge against her since she was so clearly trying to isolate me from everyone else because she liked me. They’re convinced she’s living vicariously through her brother and the way I spoke about him and how he’s such an amazing person is how I spoke about her instead in her head, like psycho shit ig. 

I’m only now starting to agree with them because it was really random at the time that she would force me to sit with her in car rides instead of with him in the back row to try and get closer to him. She would send my sister to sit in the back with him instead, that's how she came up with the “your sister likes him” story in the first place, by twisting it into “oh no your sister’s the one who wants to sit there with him so you cant.” 

I’ve gotten so much closer to one of our other friends (I'll call her Bri) because of this and even she noticed all of it without me telling her anything initially. I was asking whether there was any way to get over this and ignore it while not causing a rift in the group and with her brother. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything that wouldn’t have been weird so I just kept sucking it up until our senior year of high school. That year I decided to man up and take my life back since I literally couldn’t do anything else without her guilt tripping me or whatever else. Over the course of my senior year, she had been trying to get me to go to prom with her and for me to take her to mine, but I had to continually turn her down over and over because I was determined to take her brother instead (i didn’t get to unfortunately, he had gotten a girlfriend before my prom season, but im happy that he’s happy, he deserves it)

Bri had told me after her boyfriend’s birthday party that Nina was complaining about this guy I was talking to (to distract myself from her brother to get over him) because he was “taking time away from her” since I was hanging out with him more and not talking to her enough. I thought that was an insane thing to say since we’re friends and I don’t owe her my time like that. Shouldn’t she be happy that I was finally getting over her brother since clearly nothing was coming out of that? He had his girlfriend and I was moving on after 11 years of liking this guy, it should’ve been more of a supportive thing, I think. Instead, she was jealous of him “taking me away” and talking about it to our friend, who really doesn’t have control over it herself. 

Since we were seniors, of course, college acceptance season came around. I made it into my current college, which is a state over, and she didn’t make it into anything but the community and local colleges, so she stayed home. Ever since I left, I was responding less and less and now, I’ve fully ghosted her since August 2024. I know myself, if I had stayed friends with her she would probably have gaslit and manipulated me into going back home so the best course of action for me to take was to just cut her off completely, so I did.

I genuinely feel bad that I did that because we’ve been there for each other for years but I also have to think about the bad, too. She isolated me and made me think all of our friends hated me and that she was the only one who cared for me which is absolutely not true. (Not even to mention that she loves to throw around white lies about anything and everything, so I'm convinced she is a pathological liar, but I don’t want to be dramatic)

Since I’ve been gone, she’s told Bri, my sister, and another friend of ours (who has since cut her off so they’re mutually not friends anymore) that she’d given up on our friendship, and I was so glad to hear that, but she was lying since that same day she texted me asking me about my day (to which I didn't answer again). Also, since Nina has no other friends, she has been guilt-tripping and driving my sister into a corner to force her to go out with her to a mall or something when she so obviously doesn’t want to or trying to facetime her at night, basically attempting to replace me with her. 

She texted me asking if we could talk last week and I still haven't answered because I don’t want to confront her about anything so that she can’t turn around and twist my words to her family. I love them, they’re like a second family to me, but I just know that she’s gonna make me the villain to them and they’re gonna hate me, just like they hate her other old friends that dropped her before me.

so am I the asshole for ghosting her and trying to just get over that part of my life and rebuild my self-esteem for a fresh start in college?

TLDR: My ex-best friend and I were close for years, but she became manipulative and controlling. She isolated me from other friends, used guilt-trips, and acted possessive over my feelings for her brother. She also made me uncomfortable with boundary-pushing behavior and was emotionally manipulative, often threatening *yk* to keep me around her. After high school, I distanced myself and eventually ghosted her after leaving for college, fearing her manipulation would continue. Now, she’s trying to guilt-trip others and contact me, but I’m unsure if I did the right thing by cutting her off. Am I wrong for ghosting her to protect my mental health?