So, last year I was friends with some pretty mean people. The kind of people that would pretend to be my friend so I’d write their assignments for them and cook for them, etc (I know, I’m a pushover). They kind of grew to hate me for answering questions in lectures and soon enough I started getting anonymous text messages telling me to kill myself again and how my dead dad was ashamed to have a daughter like me…yeah it wasn’t pretty. I became really depressed and stopped hanging out with them, except their harassment never quite stopped, in fact I ended up being unable to socialize with most people because when I did, the bullies would go and ‘hang out’ with those people. I’ve moved out of dorms now and live with some pretty cool people, none of which are in my course. Except this one guy, who I really cared about. He was like a cross between a puppy and a little brother, I completely trusted him as a friend, having him over practically every friday till saturday evening, cooking meals for us to eat together, watching movies until like 6am, you know. But the thing is, he hangs out with the people that harassed me. I’d told him before that I felt really uncomfortable by it, and he insisted it was just because of a study group. I even showed him all the messages and evidence I had, but I found it wasn’t his fault they were in the same uni activities, so didn’t say anything. Fast forward to today, when I go to his facebook wall to post a funny picture, I notice there are pictures of him…at a party with the very people that have been making my life hell for over a year now! I called him out on it, and all he basically said was that he didn’t think he was in the wrong and that he wasn’t going to take anyone’s sides. That he liked me just as much as he liked those guys, and then he went on to question the veracity of everything I’d told him. ‘Why would they do that?’ ‘I don’t think they’re the kind of people to treat anyone like that’, he said stuff like that, maintaining his innocence throughout….
Is it really that wrong for me to feel really hurt and betrayed by him? I’m so scared of these bullies, I haven’t gone to lectures in a month now and am back to my antidepressants, things that he knows perfectly well. I don’t even want him to confront those people, some of my other friends who don’t hang out with me as much as my ‘best friend’ wanted to teach the bullies a lesson, but confrontations scare me, so I told them repeatedly that all I wanted was to pretend the bullies dont exist and get on with things. Even when one of the people sat next to me and punched me under the table until I was bruised, I still just dealt with it by ignoring it.