This is extremely long so I apologise and thank you in advance for taking the time to read this.

This isn't exactly anything juicy and honestly may even be kind of petty, but I have a habit of blowing things out of proportion or "making a mountain out of a molehill" as my mother would say, but that's why I'm here.

I (27f) have been friends with Emily (fake name) (28f) for about a year. We met on the game and we hit it off immediately. I don't really have any friends in real life so I truly value our friendship.

I'll start with a little background about myself, I feel it's important to understand where I'm coming from but you can skip ahead to where I'm having issues marked with a "*".

I have a hard time making/keeping friends, especially female friends for 4 reasons:

1. I have undiagnosed ADHD (awaiting assessment) and a lot of the symptoms I suffer with, can make me a difficult person to be around. I only realised I had ADHD about 3 years ago and as I've learned more about it, and as I've matured I've slowly been working on my flaws - but obviously I'm not perfect..

2. I am not really feminine AT ALL. I have 4 brothers and 2 step brothers. My mother has 4 brothers and 1 sister but the sister spent a lot of time in care, my dad had a sister who sadly passed away before I was born. I have spent all of my life around men or masculine women, so with that being said, my personality often makes me "one of the lads" and I'm very banterous.

3. I am embarrassingly desperate to fit in, so when I am around other women, especially catty women, I find myself being two faced and bitching about people I like - that is a side of myself I do not like but seem to have no control over, so I tend to avoid friendships with women.

4. In HS I was always the "weird girl", I was bullied alot and never really felt like I fit in. I was accepted by the trouble maker kids and they became my friends - well, when they wanted to be. One day they would be my friends, the next they'd jump me in the street and beat me up, they'd bully me for a bit and then decide they'd want to be my friend again. I was so lonely and desperate for companionship that I just put up with it.

Now about the game. It's quite a competitive game and I can be competitive when playing it, especially when I'm playing ranked leagues, this is something I have been working on and I feel like I have improved so much and honestly I'm quite proud of myself for how far I've come.

Like every gamer, this is a game I would like to become good at and hopefully maybe one day stream it full time, so I can take ranked leagues a little too seriously (again, something I'm working on).

This is something I made her aware of since basically day one and she's always accepted it, but I still wanted to make the effort to improve.

If I ever catch myself getting frustrated, I would always suggest we play pubs (less competitive) but she would always decline.

Also I'd like to note that my frustration would never be directed at her, but would just be in my tone of voice as an "attitude".

After some reflecting I would (90% of the time) pick up when I've been a bit of an a-hole and I would message her apologising.

We are friends outside of the game, but strictly online as there is some distance between us. She has been there for me during some tough times and vise versa. We have similar personalities and I consider her my best friend. We've never really fallen out before, we've had differences in opinions but have never really argued.

Emily and I both stopped playing the game for a while and have both recently picked it back up and honestly, we've been having so much fun with it. Lots of laughs and generally just vibing.

This is where the issues started

We have been looking for a consistent 3rd to join our team because honestly, randoms suck and they're so mean.

On Monday night Emily messaged me to say she may have a found a 3rd that we would get on with (we didn't, but that's not important) and that she had arranged to play with her the following day.

It's worth noting that I work 12 hour night shifts in a care home, I stay awake all night and since I have no dependents, I sleep through most of the day. I suffer with chronic insomnia and it takes me a long time to wind down since I often do some chores when I get home from work. I typically only get a maximum of 6 hours, interrupted sleep in between shifts.

I was working Monday and Tuesday night, so I told her that I MIGHT be able to join her and this girl for a couple of hours from 4pm (before work) if I get a good enough sleep. I am NOT a morning person (meaning I'm grumpy when I wake up, no matter the time) and I HATE being woken up without a good reason, these are all things Emily knows.

I wake up to a phone call from Emily, 15 minutes before my alarm is due to ring, she ends the call before I have the chance to answer. I message her saying "Please don't do that, I'm in the middle of two night shifts. I said I might wake up at 4" She blamed it on her son, which was plausible as he always had her phone and was always calling family members/his friends off of it, but he never called me.

I called bs and asked her "how did he call me if you have your phone?"

She responded saying "I'm messaging you off the iPad"

I didn't buy it, but I dropped it because I didn't want to fall out and as stated before, I'm trying to work on not being an a-hole 😅

I jumped on the game and after the 3rd teammate jumped off, Emily admitted to me that it was infact her who called, and that this new girl had told her to lie to me after she had noticed the call woke me up (new girl pressured her to wake me up).

I was pretty pissed, but again, I dropped it. Things went on as normal for a few days.

Fast forward to Friday night, I wake up early before work so I hop on the game with Emily for a couple of hours. Vibes are good, we're having fun.

The game where it all went to hell, we landed with another team, and they landed first on the good loot, which unfortunately meant all 3 of us (the 3rd was a random) had to loot the same building.

I was looting the top floor, while Emily and the 3rd were looting the bottom floor. Out of nowhere Emily said "this guy can go f*** himself, he just swiped the backpack from underneath me when I was clearly going to pick it up" she then left the area completely. The 3rd said "you were nowhere near it" (she definitely was) but that was the only words he said, with a few additional scoffs and chuckles.

I am giggling while she is raging, because I think it's funny, this is something we have both done (giggling) while the other is raging.

Myself and the 3rd followed her, as this is a team game and we have a better chance of winning if we're playing as a team.

The team that landed with us in the original area, have now pushed onto us, Emily is on the opposite side of the building to myself and the 3rd which makes her an easy target, so I'm communicating with her, telling her to come to us. She refuses and says "no, I'm not helping him he can 💀 for all I care" (in game). This annoyed me a bit because it's not just him that's going to lose the points, but I kept it light hearted. She got knocked first and then obviously the team annihilated me and the 3rd.

I (obviously jokingly, with a smile in my voice) said "okay, can we please not throw ranked games over a backpack"

To which point she started being aggressive to me, saying "you do it all the time" to which I responded "no I don't"

I didn't get a chance to finish my sentence, I do indeed rage when people take my stuff, but it's items that I have "dibsed" or if the 3rd follows my every single step and takes every single piece of loot from me, in this case we were all 3 inside one very small building, which no possibility to loot anywhere else without dying - so it's a different scenario.

She started arguing with me saying "yes you do, and that dude was so f***ing rude to me and you didn't defend me at all, you just laughed at me"

I explained "the dude wasn't rude to you, he just said you weren't near it, that's literally the only thing he said to you, and I wasn't laughing AT you, I was just laughing, like we both always do, because it was funny"

I start getting annoyed at this point so my memory of exactly what was said is it a bit meh. But she continued to be rude to me so I confronted her and said "look, Emily, I'm going to leave in a minute, there's no need for you to be talking to me like this, I didn't take your backpack" to which she responds something followed by "byeeeeee" (with a whoooole lot of sass) before leaving the game.

I messaged her saying "are you really going to end a friendship over a backpack?" Which my bf has since informed me that it sounded like I was ending the friendship, but that's not what I was trying to do.

There was a lot of back and forth arguing and she did apologise but immediately followed it by calling me "sad" for ending the friendship and saying that "clearly our friendship meant nothing to you" - so I didn't accept her backhanded apology. I told her that "if our friendship meant nothing to me, I would not be here arguing with you, I would have just deleted you but I do not have an issue with ending a friendship if they treat me like sh** on their shoe" - I said this because she is well aware of my history of being bullied by my friends.

She said that she was really upset and in bed crying etc but shortly after was streaming the game, laughing and happy while ignoring the last message I had sent her. It bugged me, but whatever, we all cope differently.

She messaged later that night apologising for her behaviour and that she realises she was out of order. I accepted her apology and told her I appreciated it, I also apologised for upsetting her.

Woohoo, we're friends again!

The following night (Saturday) I wake up early again and again, jump on the game with Emily. Things are normal, we're having fun.

One of Emily's friends, lets call him John, joins the party and the game (it was closed so she clearly invited him). I do not like John and I do not like playing with him, she is aware of this but I have always been civil and pleasant towards him. Since this was my last game I kind of just sucked it up and decided to play this one game with him.

Before we even go into a game, he leaves the lobby and party. We thought it was strange but we just loaded into a game.

Emily then informed me that he left because he didn't want to play with me after I had upset her the night before - apparently she had facetimed him crying, explaining the argument we were having. Emily told me that she'd informed him she was in the wrong and that we had squashed things and moved on.

I just let it slide because like I said, I don't like the dude so it's no skin off my back.

However, it got me thinking - what exactly did she say to him that has him despising me so much that he can't even be in a party with me?

(He also said some bs about how I deleted him as a friend - he has like 10 different accounts, the first one I ever met him on, is still in my friends list, I never even added the rest).

My bf thinks I should just outright ask Emily what she said to John but honestly I just think she'd lie to me, or it would start another argument.

Part of me wants to just drop it and move on but I can't help but feel like she has been telling a different version of events behind my back.

So would I be justified to end the friendship, or do you think I am letting my trauma take control?

Also, since I'm trying to make improvements on how I convey myself - do you guys think I did anything wrong leading up to and during the argument?