Hey heya Reddit! I would like to preface everything by saying this situation has been a done deal for a couple months now, and I'm just now posting because I'm still finding myself stuck and questioning my actions so I would like to hear some outside opinions. I've also changed up names for privacy purposes! This post may be pretty long, and I apologize!

Some even more context before we start - I only had one serious friendship prior to this person at age 12 to 13, and that friendship was incredibly toxic. Back in those days I always found myself depressed, exhausted, and even contemplating suicide to escape the constant loop. It wasn't until a drastic intervention I was able to leave that friendship, but I still carried some paranoia with me about other people. I was unable to make many connections growing up due to other life circumstances, and my first friend (previously mentioned) did a number on how I treated possible friends after. I kept my distance from a lot of people until this person this post is about, which for me makes things amplified in severity.

Anyways enter Cheese (a person, not the food). Cheese and I met when I was freshly 14, and they were 19. I recently turned 17 as of writing (16 when all this went down), and they are now around 22. We met online through a game by chance, and pretty immediately became friends through the game. After a month or so of chatting we added each other on outside socials, and became best friends. I shared a lot of my life with Cheese, and opened up about a lot of topics and past issues. They were my confidante, and we did almost everything together online - we watched shows, gossiped, played almost every game together, you get the gist. We were very very good friends, and they were the first I opened up to after my first friendship crashed and burned as lively as it did.

Throughout our relationship, they would make comments on my maturity, saying they regularly forgot my younger age. Because of this we would chat pretty regularly about various topics, not too uncommonly including darker more "adult" topics such as sex, crime, drugs, you name it. I would like to highlight none of these conversations ever became inappropriate about me or them - both of us are AroAce and had absolutely zero interest in each other. One thing we both bonded over was art. We were both artists, and in the earlier friendship Cheese inspired me to start creating OCs and supported me as I developed my wonky beginner art style. One thing we unanimously agreed on was "you shouldn't ever criticize art unprovoked".

Skip forward a few years - we've entangled our digital lives almost completely. Almost every platform I posted on was somehow linked to Cheese. We've spent years chatting hourly, rarely a disagreement. We had formed our friendship on honesty and maturity. Or, that's how I saw it.

Then the issues began. One thing to note is I like to help people, especially for formatting writing and documents. I simply enjoy writing, but OC lore was not my strong suit. After years of inspiration, I finally set out to create my very first OC world lore! I compiled notes on culture building, world function, character design, symbolism, writing structure, etc. I even began studying professional character design more closely so I could bring myself closer to my vision for my world. Cheese also had a world in the making, one with a drastically different writing style than mine. I prefer dark fantasy, with mythological inspiration, and they preferred nostalgic, simple, and pure writing. And that was totally okay! I adored some of their characters, and would hype them up when they would brainstorm some lore ideas. I even helped them figure out a few designs, and would often compile research on various mechanics within their lore. I would sometimes spend hours answering questions they had about specific things, often while I was juggling schoolwork or errands.

Because of our different styles, when I would ask for help brainstorming the conversations would often fall flat. I would sometimes be left unanswered, simply glossed over for some other topic. After a while, I simply stopped helping them for their Ocs. I felt I was being used, as if I was some generative prompt for their amusement, as they would often ask me for inspiration comparable to my own darker writing but would deny anything I sent them. I told myself I was simply frustrated, and decided I would no longer aid their writing if I never got the same energy back. I didn't make a big stink over it, I simply started making excuses when they would ask for help. I often chalked things up to brain fog or exhaustion, both of which were partially true as I have some health issues contributing to both, and would reserve my writings for my world alone.

This lasted for a couple months, where I then noticed a general shift in demeanor. They would be more irritable over (what I considered) simple matters, often ranting for hours. At this time, I had a fairly unstable home life, and thought if they would listen to my troubles at home, I could listen to them complain about the dishes. As my home life grew substantially worse, often bordering into dangerous, I would isolate myself and stay fairly quiet about my issues. I would update Cheese occasionally, but I never explained in full detail out of both exhaustion and consideration of my family. Despite my vagueness, I made it abundantly clear to Cheese things were Bad, and I was not okay. Despite this, they made a trend of glossing over my issues with short texts, often not even a word, before switching topics to their latest ailment. It was apples to oranges for us. I would be distraught over a fatal medical condition, one possibly destroying my family, and they would brush over it to say they had a headache from their glasses. This response to me quite frankly made me sick to my stomach.

I began avoiding topics with them all-together, bringing up my issues less and less. I would respond to their complaints as minimally as they had to me. I found myself dreading talking to them over holidays, important events, or days I was feeling good. I found myself dreading picking up my phone - what if they messaged another 4 hour rant? As these feelings persisted, we began to fight more. Over little things, things neither of us cared about less than a year ago. We would agree to rules in a friendly game, and they would complain when they weren't allowed to break them.

At one point, I made them chibi gift art of a character, which they had me re-edit 7-8 times to change details on the character, some which were impossible to fully add due to the small size of the chibi. They would then be frustrated with me for not adding details to the character that weren't even in the ref sheet Cheese gave me. I never said anything critical or dogged on the character or ref sheet despite my frustration, simply pointing out the details didn't exist in the ref sheet. In response, they essentially blocked me from viewing all of their characters they owned, which I only found out after I had gifted the art and months later during holidays when I planned to surprise them with another gift.

After every fight, Cheese would go from messaging me hourly to refusing to speak at all for a day or more. I told them how their silence bothered me after a fight - I wanted us to talk things out, not gloss over our issues, and silence after fighting was an issue that in previous friendships often meant my friend was self-harming. I would find myself apologizing just to get my best friend back after these fights, but would often be ignored until Cheese felt like interrupting the tension with a tiktok. They never apologized to me after these fights, even when I said they hurt my feelings.

Now for the two straws that finally broke the camel's back so to say. The first incident is mild, but it's still stuck with me and began my spiraling doubts over the friendship. As I mentioned earlier, I was studying professional design for my OCs. This meant art practice and experimentation. It was a wonky time for sure! One of my OCs, designed much earlier, had a prominent nose. In my style at the time, I drew this nose more akin to a cat button nose, with a little heart shape. This is important, I promise! During these studies, I tried experimenting with more realistic facial proportions and features. I created a rather simplistic doodle, nothing more than a brief headshot of my character. I mainly focused on the facial bone structure, and Not the facial features. Because of this, I simply drew the character with the same heart shaped nose. I showed my sketch to Cheese, mentioning I didn't recognize the character because I have face blindness (while I presented this as a joke, I am also genuinely face blind and it was not uncommon for me to not recognize OCs in different styles)

Cheese responded: "Either way that nose is horrific", then tripled down when I replied with ":(" and then genuinely began arguing with me over defending my own doodle. This is the same person that claimed for years they would NEVER criticize art unprovoked, and claimed it was rude as hell for other people to do it ever to anyone.

I stopped sharing my art and writing with them. I essentially blocked them from viewing my characters, as they had done to me. I stopped mentioning any topics I liked, as they had insulted previous things I enjoy prior to this.

The second straw is more intense - for reasons I won't go into, my family was tumultuous and aggressive at times, fights lasting days or weeks with me and my sister caught in the crossfires. At times, we wondered if my parents would divorce or even kill each other, both threats seeming very real. During one of these fights, in a moment of quiet, I checked my messages. I had told Cheese hours prior I was in a bad mental state, and had been busy and anxiety-fueled for hours. Cheese at some point had texted me scraps of vague lore ideas, nothing really substantial enough I could make a full reply to it. In their message was a minor joke somewhere where they laughed, and I replied laughing as well. I was interrupted by screaming and crashing, and simply left my phone to deal with the very intense reality I was in. I didn't think my short reply would be such an issue.

A few hours later, when things had somewhat calmed down, I checked my phone again to see Cheese had deleted their original messages. I asked why, and they claimed I was demeaning them and condescendingly laughing at them so they deleted the messages since I was so unwelcoming and uncaring. I simply could not bring myself to deal with them any longer.

They didn't talk to me for close to two days. Again, we usually spoke hourly, if not by the minute. I asked my family and one other friend for advice, and everyone said I should leave this friendship.

This may be where I was an asshole - it was nearing Christmas, and I was dreading the holidays. Cheese had ruined my holidays before, often times ranting the entire day and ruining my own mood as well. I didn't want to feel afraid of talking to my best friend on a holiday, especially ones centered around my loved ones. So I drafted up a message to send, debating through my nervousness if I should simply let the issue go and apologize.

I figured Cheese would retaliate with an extreme, as they often avoided any criticism at all and I knew ending things likely wouldn't be taken amicably. Cheese had shown me texts of an earlier friendship, one they blew up at. They went so far as to make caricatures of their old friends in their Oc world (painting the friends as the "bad guys") 5+ years later, and brazenly showed messages of their old friends posting about wanting to self-harm, forgetting to crop out Cheese's response of "So cute!" (and further argument defending their behavior to the friend who posted originally). Those texts left me sick, and I seriously doubted why I ever trusted someone so cruel to their own ex-friends, without an ounce of remorse for their behavior.

My sister was the one to finally convince me to drop ties with Cheese entirely, so I sent them this:

"There's no easy way to say this, but after a bit of consideration I think it would be best if we go our separate ways. I cherished our friendship and will continue to appreciate the memories together, but I feel it would be best to grow independently. Maybe some day we'll rekindle, maybe we won't, but for now I feel we don't align in ways we used to and that's okay!

I wish you the best and happy holidays :)"

Note, I didn't even consider blocking them and stayed in our mutual chat until they could respond. I didn't want to ditch them without even so much as letting them reply, as I felt they deserved more dignity than that. We had been friends for almost 3 years. Cheese simply responded:

"Yeah I expected this. Best wishes and thank you for everything you've done for me, I'll be disabling this server then, happy holidays"

I responded with: "I loved being your friend while it lasted, and I wish you the happiness and success you deserve!"

Cheese then almost immediately blocked me on every platform. I was still uneasy about the end of a friendship, but I went to bed after a long time of doubt, consideration, and grief. Cheese's friend, Cake (25-26) sent me a very, very long message overnight.

Summarizing it, Cake claimed I didn't give Cheese enough time to respond (I never left until Cheese themself closed the chat), called me cold and disrespectful for my message written above, and claimed I manipulated Cheese into believing we were close friends. I grew apart from Cheese after the many behaviors listed above, but they just simply didn't notice. Cake went on to say Cheese was bright, funny, and passionate, and claimed I never respected them or appreciated them over the 3 years we knew each other. They ended by saying my message was one of the "most uncaring dick moves I've (Cake) seen in years". I barely knew Cake. Cheese sent a stranger to talk for them about their own friendship breakup. I was blocked by Cake on every platform before I was even able to respond.

Thus concludes the long, long post! My apologies for the short novel. I'm much happier outside of the friendship, but I'd like to know if my last message was truly so atrocious. I know I can read as too formal and perhaps uncaring, but I genuinely thought the friendship could end amicably and fully read my words as gentle. I know now I was sorely mistaken, but nonetheless I would love to hear extra thoughts on the matter! Thank you so much for reading if you've made it this far!