As you go through your life, encountering people from different circles, one thing becomes abundantly clear. Regardless of culture or upbringing, language or religious beliefs, personality or interests, the majority of people are good and mean well. It doesn’t mean that you’re fast friends with everyone, but certainly you understand that they’re just trying to live their best lives and mean you no harm.

At the same time though, regardless of all of those factors, some people are simply toxic. Whether that means that they mean others actual harm, or simply act in rude, thoughtless, and downright vindictive ways to simply further their own interests, these are absolutely not the people that you want to be around. Because not only can they make you feel a lot worse about yourself, they can also inflict damage on your life in plenty of ways – sometimes without you even noticing. And that is the situation that the young woman in this story has found herself in.

The easy thing to do? Keep things as they are, and try to look the other way. The difficult thing? Cut her out entirely. And lucky for her own mental health, she has done exactly that.

Read on to find out what happened between them.

I ghosted my best friend of five years, and I have never been happier

I am a 22-year-old woman, and I met my former best friend (also 22, female) in high school when we were sixteen. I did not have many friends during high school so when I met her, I was extremely happy.

About four months later, she started acting extremely strange. She would rant about ‘someone’ on her Snapchat stories. After the fourth time, I asked her what was wrong and who was she ranting about.

After detecting it was me, she said ‘she didn’t want to talk about it.’

The problems continued. She would start spreading rumours, she effectively turned all my friends against me, she would give me death stares and many of her friends would as well.

Let’s see what excuse the girl eventually gave for this nasty behaviour.

We talked and she told me she was upset that I didn’t say ‘how are you’ enough, that I teased her about a boy that liked her (she did this to me first, and I did it back since I thought she would find it funny as well) and that I’d had a gathering and was low-key annoyed she did not come.

I tried squashing it down, telling her that I did not realise I was not saying ‘how are you’ enough, that I didn’t mean to be controlling or to upset her.

I thought we moved on but it kept going for a few weeks, until I had a mental breakdown at school.

She effectively turned my ENTIRE friend group against me. I’ve never felt so alone in my life. It was the first and only time I was considering unaliving myself, and I wanted to change schools.

Even after this, they still tried to maintain something of a friendship.

We somehow ended up patching things up, but the other people in the friend group were still acting strange.

To be completely honest, I did not want to be friends with her. I hated her. The only reason I continued to be her friend was because I was afraid of what she could do to me. So I remained in that group.

My mental health spiraled after this. I temporarily left the friendship group for a year until it was our senior year in high school.

By our senior year, I loved her and I felt I could trust her. She was very sweet, and bubbly and the side remarks stopped. So I joined the friendship group again. This time, I joined because I truly thought she changed, not because she scared me.

And there were other reasons she wanted to fix their friendship.

I had problems with another friend of mine who wasn’t in the friendship group (long story short: she physically abused me and took advantage of my kindness). So I went to my best friend for comfort. She listened and acted very understanding.

But on the same day, I was leaving school and I saw that my best friend and former friend were laughing together and they were hugging. After this, they became inseparable.

This affected me so much, because they were not friendly prior to this. I also have to mention she constantly made nasty comments about my weight (despite that I have an average weight). She would point out my belly sticking out in tight dresses and start laughing.

She also would pat my belly and say “Don’t worry, looks aren’t everything” under her breath. These comments still stick with me to this very day and I have not had a very good relationship with food ever since.

Yikes. The worst thing is that this odd behaviour didn’t stop there.

She also would get very weird whenever guys liked me or I liked them. In our senior year, a guy from our school liked me. She was dating someone at that point and yet, she would wink at him and try to talk to him. This was VERY weird considering I did not like the guy back and her boyfriend was ******.

She would also brag about the boys that liked her in school all the time to me. I showed her a photo of a very attractive guy that I hooked up with at a club, and she got very quiet.

Then, Covid happened. We still texted and then we met up when the restrictions were lifted. She tearfully came to me because she was harassed by a waiter at a cafe, and the manager did nothing to help her.

I was pretty enraged and I posted about her experience with her permission so the manager could take action. They ended up investigating and firing the guy. My best friend said I was a very good friend.

But the turbulence in their ‘friendship’ still continued.

Three weeks later, I made things official with my then boyfriend, and I made some plans so we could all hang out and because that week was my birthday. Of course, she was trying to dictate at what place she wanted my gathering to be at.

I didn’t take any of her **** and I told her I was going to have my birthday gathering anywhere I wanted. I chose a shopping mall that was very close to where everyone lived, while she wanted to have the gathering at the city which was one hour away.

I was very angry because we had many gatherings at the mall and she never complained ONCE. I told her she didn’t have to come and that when her birthday came, she could do her celebration anywhere she wanted.

She ended up going out to the city at the same place and time as my gathering and she took one of my friends with her. She posted this all over social media as well. I was very upset because I went above and beyond for her when she was harassed and she did not even seem to remember this.

Let’s see how she responded to her friend’s actions.

We did not talk for a month. Shortly after, my boyfriend and I broke up and we both deleted our photos on our social media accounts together – and she messaged me a subtle comment about mine and my ex’s relationship.

It is worth to mentioning that whenever I liked a guy, my best friend would show me photos of them with a new girlfriend. I liked a guy four years ago, and she would show me photos of them together, even this year. I told her many times to not do this, but she did anyway.

I was heartbroken about my breakup and I 1000000% knew that she would show me photos of my ex with a new girlfriend in the future. I blocked her in every single social media account. She tried reaching out to my ex, but he really disliked her so he also shut her down.

I understand that she was blindsided by my decision to cut off the friendship like that. But you know what? I have never been happier. I have completed half of my bucket list, travelled, got into my dream college, and have a better circle of friends that I adore.

Ever since I ghosted her, I have never ever let any toxic person step into my life ever again and I have a healthy relationship with everyone in my life. So, no. I don’t regret it at all.

Yikes. This friendship was toxic to say the least.

Sometimes in life we have to go through horrible things with horrible people to learn some important lessons.

But the way that this woman’s friend treated her was totally indefensible, no lesson is worth that.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a student who was accused to using too many sources, so he decided the next time to use none at all.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person shared similar experiences.

While others congratulated her on taking that big step.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought that she’d done the best thing for herself.

Listen, it’s never easy to cut someone out of your life. Because they were there for a reason, and that might not have been a good reason, but they were still a part of your life. And when we disentangle ourselves from people whose actions or energy are not serving us, it can feel difficult at first – and quite messy. You might run in the same social circles, and others might start to ask questions. And the truth is, that if the person was unsavory in their behavior towards you and others, they might try to turn the people you care about against you too.

But if that person is truly having a negative effect on your life, it’s important that you put your own mental health and wellbeing first. It’s absolutely clear that this ‘friend’ was deliberately tormenting the woman in this story, even driving her to a point at which she considered ending her own life. Nobody deserves to have people like that in their lives, and to cut them out is the best solution for everyone involved.