Growing up my best friend was a jerk. I didn't really realize this because we met in second grade and were best friends through most of high school so for me it just "was what it was". My friend would do shitty things, make mean jokes, say hurtful things and then laugh like it was funny, and I never stopped to go "this isn't how friends behave" because I had known as far back as I had clear memories.
He practically lived at my house, there were months where he spent more time at my house than at his own, especially in the summer. He gave me my first cigarette and my first beer and my first joint.
One summer we didn't get to hang out much and it was... pretty great. At first it sucked but then I made some other friends and they weren't like him at all. No one called me names or put me down or mocked me or randomly threw things at my face. When I said I didn't want to do something they didn't belittle me for it, shit they didn't even leave me behind they offered other ideas until we all agreed on something. It was really nice.
So when it came time to start hanging out with "Jerk" again I wasn't really interested. I had gained some confidence and some new friends that were MY friends and not his friends that I also knew.
We grew apart really rapidly. One day I was talking to someone who had known us and she said she was glad I didn't hang around him any more, that he was a jerk. I just sort of agreed and let it go but she didn't. She started telling me things, lots of things. Like how when I was invited to a party after I left he had told people a bunch of shit about me, some of it true, most of it not. I started talking to some other mutual acquaintances and it turns out he did this a lot. There were a lot of people who thought things about me that weren't true.
I had spent a long time, most of my life, thinking I was a weirdo, a freak, an outcast. I wasn't sure WHY I was those things though. I liked science fiction and read a lot and I just decided those things made me a "nerd" and people didn't like nerds. Turns out people treated me weird because my best friend was telling them I was a freak. I don't really want to go into what he said, some of it was borderline perverted or disgusting and some of it was just weird. Basically none of it was true (ok yes, I went to some Star Trek conventions, fine that part was true).
Anyway, my entire social experience for my formative years was completely fucked up by the one person I probably trusted most in the world.
He got in touch about 5 years later and apologized, but it was sort of false. He apologized very carefully, you could tell he was unsure how much I knew and didn't want to give away anything I didn't already know about. I kind of understood that, I mean he was trying to reconnect not make it worse, but it made things feel disingenuous. I tried to be his friend but it turns out he had become a really serious addict. Mostly alcohol but not exclusively. He was in bad shape and was just as unreliable and dickish as he had always been but I was a very different person and was vulnerable to that kind of shit any more so it didn't bother me much.
I thought maybe I could help him and I tried for a while but he just... You can't help some people, even if they seem to want you to they just can't get their demons under control. I eventually had to break off contact again, he was too toxic.
He died in a car wreck about two years ago, about a year after we stopped talking, driving drunk the wrong direction on the highway. Hurt some other people in the process.
Life is complicated, and short.
Man I need some sleep.