Two people: one, one of my best friends through high school and college, and the other, someone I got to know online. I don't make a lot of friends--always been reserved--so the people I did get close with, I really got attached to.
My HS best friend (there were two)--they were my everything, my foundation, my world, and the feeling was mutual. Except for the person I'm talking about: on their end, things got muddled with the kind of feelings that could mess up a friendship. And I developed feelings for Online Friend (who did not return them; he was already involved with someone in a complicated thing--but I loved Online Friend so much as a friend, still, through this), and HS Friend got resentful. I introduced them, so they had a passing acquaintance. Meanwhile, I got curious, and things almost happened with HS Friend, but I kind of nipped them in the bud because I realized our friendship was more important than curiosity. Things seemed okay.
Around this time, too, communication with Online Friend fizzled, mostly because I felt my unrequited feelings just messed things up. My HS Friend's constant digs about it also factored in significantly. I just slowly stopped talking with Online Friend. I knew it hurt them, but it just got to be too much for me.
Then I met someone else, and HS Friend blew up on me when I told them about it (we were in college at this point, and inseparable as friends) and told me some very hurtful things for which I didn't get an apology until much, much later, and I had to be the one to bring it up. That's when I found out their feelings were more serious than I'd thought. Things weren't the same after that, and we drifted apart, just full of mutual resentment.
Months (was it more than a year?) pass. We all reconnect through an online game. I find out these two had gotten closer and got to having a thing for each other. This didn't last, but they stayed intimate friends. I felt so incredibly betrayed by their "thing" because HS Friend had resented me for having feelings for Online Friend, and Online Friend had known that I had feelings for them, and here these two were cozying up to each other while talking about "missing me."
I tried to hold on for a few months... these were my friends. Through this I would email my HS friend about all these complicated emotions. I was just desperate to have a handle on this. But I couldn't let go of the anger and it was just poison. I was becoming more and more toxic, and just ended up dumping on Online Friend more and more. I hated the person I was becoming.
So one day I just cut them off. Off of that game, off of other social media. Pretty much just ghosted them. We all had a fault in this, rooted on a sense of "ownership" of the others' friendships or emotions. Too many unresolved complicated feelings.
It's been years and I still think of them a lot, and it's never stopped hurting. There was a lot of love in there. I don't know if they're still talking. I don't know how their lives are going now, and I'm sometimes tempted to check them out on Facebook or Google them, but I tell myself it won't do me any good. I have to be extra careful when I'm drunk because I get sappy and it's a real risk that I might send them drunk "I loved you" emails, lol. They are probably doing all right, which is the one good thing out of all this.
Unlikely they'd see this, and maybe that's why I'm spilling this all out. But if they do--and they'd know me by my ID--well... hey.