They were right about my “best friend”.

I was 15 at the time, and my best friend (let’s call her Judy) was 15 barely turned 16.

Judy was someone I always looked up to, and always envied.

Judy was such a beautiful, fashionable, skinny, healthy and cool girl. She had a lot of male attention, and her parents were pretty well off on money.

I, on the other hand, was almost the exact opposite.

I was overweight, less attractive, and my parents were struggling a lot more.

Me and Judy were very close, we did everything together. To tell you how close we were—we changed in front of each other, and had absolutely no problem being butt naked, and even groping each other playfully.

We had sleepovers a lot, I’m talking 3 nights in a row, and we’d always usually go to the mall together.

Me and Judy were very open with each other, with our mental health, and our problems. We’d always have deep conversations, and tell each other our biggest secrets.

She’d tell me whenever her mom would bad mouth me and fat shame me. It hurt a lot to know that her mother compared me to Judy just to make her feel better. Often using remarks such as, “Why are you always complaining about being thin? What would you prefer instead, to be like MaryJane?” When she told me that, it hurt a lot. I had always struggled with my weight, growing up as a chunkier girl. I played it off though, and told my mom, whom later confronted her mom about it, to which Judy’s mom denied ever saying that.

My mom and dad would often warn me about Judy, they didn’t like the example she was setting on me, and they also didn’t like her mom, because her mom is pretty toxic. Back then, I didn’t see what they were talking about. I didn’t think that Judy’s personality was rubbing off on me (that is until we finally stopped being on speaking terms).

One day, she just found new friends and ditched me. Never replying to my texts anymore, and if she did, extremely minimally. She would always post her new best friend on her Instagram story, and she would post her on her feed. She never did that for me.

I would later come to find out from my mom, apparently Judy accused me of copying her style behind my back. Instead of just coming to me directly to sort the misunderstanding out, she let it ruin our friendship. Apparently this happened because I decided to buy shoes she had when I got a job, but I was always planning to buy them as I saw them on tiktok and Pinterest everywhere, she just gave me the brand name. It was strange to say the very least, because I had always dressed very similarly to her, even before we really became friends again. We only had similar styles since back then, I didn’t really have enough money to buy what I wanted, and my mom refused to buy me things I wanted since she didn’t like my aesthetic.

Hearing all of that mad me breakdown, I bawled for around 10-20 minutes. I wasn’t particularly hurt by what she said, I was more angry, if anything. I was hurt by the precious time and energy I wasted on this girl. I was angry at myself for being so stupid, so gullible. This girl has shown a lot of red flags I missed.

I wasn’t the first girl Judy accused of stealing her style, she had accused a few other girls of doing that, but I completely believed her. She had also exclaimed about how she had always lost friends and it was always their faults.

Y’know what else is ironic? I always got gate keeper vibes from her, which is why I never really listened to her music on Instagram. She questioned me about it one day, but I just said I usually looked at the pictures more. She told me, and I quote: “Don’t worry, I’m not a gatekeeper, I’m the type of person where if I like something, you have to be into it too.” (So much for that).

What hurt the most, is that when I started to become disabled from my hands, and got diagnosed with rhumetoid arthritis, Judy was never there for me. I was always here for her whenever she needed me too. I posted it on my Instagram story, to my close friends list (where she was on ofc), but she saw it and never reached out.

I feel like there’s honestly a lot more to this story than what I’ve been told. I can only assume things for now, but I also feel like my erotic obsession with anime boys had something to do with it (I’m out of that phase now, don’t worry). Sometimes, I wonder what If there was something else that led her to this decision, but I’m not sure.

Ever since that situation, I’m a lot more sweet to people, a lot more cautious, been working out a lot and lost weight, and I’ve been focusing a lot more on my mental health. Even though I don’t like Judy, I have to thank her for this. It was my final push to motivate myself to finally do something instead of just feel sorry for myself.

Of course, I’m a lot worst from my hands now more than ever, but I’m working on it. I just recently fell into depression again, but I’m fighting as best as I can right now. These moments with my family have become very charitable for me, and I’ve realized that everything I need or want is right in front of me. I’m very happy I got the privilege of knowing that; not many people get that opportunity.

I’m still working on losing more weight, and getting better in my hands, but everyday has become increasingly difficult, especially since I was just diagnosed on my feet too.

I often cry, and get scared of what lies for me in the future, because this is one of the most scary phases in my life, where I finally have a pretty horrible problem I must overcome, which can lead to me even having to be on a wheelchair or anything else later on.

I feel like everything thus far has been a lesson for me though, a lesson of what real life problems are like, and to be kind but not too nice, to pick friends carefully and most importantly, to always listen to your parents. Believe it or not, your parents know best, and they often downplay our current issues because they’ve been through a lot worst. It’s not that they don’t understand, they just want you to start seeing things more positively, even though they can word things wrong a lot of the times.

Although this has all been hard, in a sense, I’m quite grateful for everything. It’s given me a new perspective of life, and it gave me wisdom beyond my years. I finally know what pain is really like, and trust me, it’s a horrible sensation.

Please, enjoy your life, enjoy your health, because in one quick second, something can happen to change that. And when you see someone do something as simple as clap perfectly, or being able to run around, it depresses you knowing you’ll never be able to do those things again, at least now how you were able to before.

Sorry for the very long story, it’s just something I’ve been needing to get off my chest for a while now.