This is going to be long.

In summer 2024 I had a friend stay with me from out of town, we can call them Liz. We were up drinking with my roommates one night and I went to bed earlier than the rest since I’m not really a drinker. I left Liz with my roommates, Clover (F20s), May (F20s), and May’s boyfriend. I had lived with them for several years at that point and would have trusted them with my life. The next day, Liz is acting incredibly off the entire day. Eventually they tell me, May raped them the previous night while they were all very drunk.

Liz flies home the next day and I’ve updated all my roommates on what happened by then and we decide we need to talk to May. I end up having to talk to May alone, about a week later. She immediately denies the claim, says Liz is mentally ill, manipulative, and I should not trust them. She spends the next couple of weeks talking shit about me to Clover, who remains neutral in the situation. Clover and I end up talking, she tells me her version of events, and they do not align with Liz. For a while I believe this and am stuck in this middle ground of thinking, both Liz and May must have been so drunk that Liz could not consent and May thought there was consent. I didn’t really know what to do with this and sat with the discomfort for a while.

Several months go by, Liz is mentally struggling still after the events of that night and May continues to deny the claim and refuse to talk to Liz about it. One day, May gets a message from one of Liz’s friends calling her a rapist. She screenshots the message and sends it to me, I don’t respond. Now I know I could’ve said SOMETHING but I really just did not know how to respond to that. If I was in May’s position I’d be horrified and trying to apologize and work things out with Liz. I couldn’t understand why all she could do is deny. A week goes by and May texts me angry I didn’t respond. She says this is “all my fault” because I invited “my friend” to stay with us and they “made everything up”. Clearly this doesn’t end well.

The weekend after this argument May and I are not talking. Some added context: Clover and I have been friends since we were teens and lived together for quite a long time, May was a more recent addition to our friend group but close to all of us nonetheless. Clover precedes to again play middleman, calling May a “jobless loser” in front of me and then drinking and hanging out with May every night.

My friend from highschool visits, Gem, and Clover has filled Gem in on the household drama by this time. Gem and Clover spend the day telling me how sorry they are May is treating me this way and how much of an asshole she is. That night we’re watching a movie, May comes in the room, and everyone starts a conversation with her, eventually inviting her to hang out with us. I’m uncomfortable by this and end up going to bed. Gem, Clover, and May end up hanging out until 6 or 7am.

The next day, I talk to my other roommate, Trina, about how it made me uncomfortable to have had May invited to hang out after the way she treated Liz and me. Trina is apologetic, says she just wasn’t thinking, and asks what we can do together to help this issue. I bring this up because Trina is a light in this story of horrible communicators. I then go talk to Clover and Gem.

Clover and I precede to have an argument where she says, AND I QUOTE, “I don’t believe in holding people accountable.” I text Clover that night and say “I don’t know how our friendship is going to work with such different moral values.” Her and Gem lock themselves in Clover’s room for the night. Clover and I argue over text for a while until eventually we quit speaking. The last text I send her says “I’ll wait for you to come to me when you’re ready, just let me know.” This lasts for almost more than a month.

One night, I’m planning to have a friend over for dinner when clover walks in the room. My friend is going to be over soon so I ask Clover “can we talk soon? I don’t have much time right now bc a friend is coming but we can talk later.” She looks at me and says “I’m waiting.” So I precede to apologize for not communicating as well as I’d like to and want to work it out. Clover then points at me and says I am a manipulator, a narcissist, I need professional help and treat everyone around me like shit. The argument kinda ends here, my friend comes over, that’s the end of it.

While having dinner, I get a text from Clover saying it was fucked up of me to ask her to have such a heavy talk with such little time, and why did I wait so long to try talking to her. This is after I had repeated more than once that I had a friend coming over soon. We get into ANOTHER text argument, she says I’m a bully and she hopes I die thinking about all the people I’ve lost. I’m not the kindest in return, mostly just arguing asking for examples of what she’s talking about.

A long while before this conversation, she admitted to me that I made her feel bad abt not being PC in front of others. So during this text argument, she repeatedly references me “belittling her” in front of others. I ask for examples bc genuinely, if I had hurt somebody, I want to know how so I can avoid making the same mistake. Her only example ever is this instance of me saying she was not PC. She then claims I’m changing the subject to make her look bad and it isn’t about politics, but she still can’t give me an example of anything I’ve done to support her claims. This blows up, she tells me to never speak to her again.

I end up writing a letter to her where I expressed feeling like we were arguing the same thing and I’m sure we will work it out in time. Maybe 45 mins later, I go to use our shared bathroom right after she showered. I find the note in the toilet and pissed on.

Months go by, we’re all still in a lease together and Clover moves out. Before she leaves, we discuss that she owes me several hundred dollars in unpaid utility bills. She promises to pay me by the weekend. I end up leaving a note in one of her boxes where I apologize for my poor communication and wish her well on this move. It’s sweet and to the point, and I held back on all my anger towards her.

So the weekend comes and goes, Clover has not paid me. The bills are racking up late fees. She won’t respond to messages from me or our roommates and she’s moved so I can’t go speak to her in person. I end up texting her mom, who I know very well. Her mom says “that’s weird, I gave Clover the money to pay you last week?” And shortly after, Clover pays me. I send a receipt to clover just to tie loose ends and she responds. She says “do not ever ever contact me; that was inappropriate to text my mom given we had roommates who could have; if i ever hear from you again I will file a restraining order”.

After this i send her a lengthy, angry message where I do not hold back on how upset I am for the way she has treated me throughout this situation. I can’t say I was kind, it was admittedly harsh, but I wasn’t dishonest. I’m now getting texts from various mutual friends (contextually all white queer southerners who infamously don’t hold eachother accountable) berating me.

Im moving soon and I’m ready to put this behind me. In the months since we’ve stopped talking, the amount of drama I’ve had to endure is slim to none. I’m glad to move forward from this friendship and my community has been supportive of me throughout this. Despite it all, the texts coming from childhood friends quoting my negligence as a teenager is getting in my head a bit. I’m trying to be a better person than I was then, and I’m sure I am, considering it’s been YEARS since I was a high schooler. I guess I just wanna know, Reddit, AITAH???