Okay besties gather around because I need to unpack the emotional whiplash I experienced today in my literature class. Like I swear this wasn’t on my bingo card for 2025.

So I have this friend — let’s call her M — and we’re not best friends who braid each other’s hair and trauma dump in the school bathroom level, but we’re close-ish, you know? Like “we’ve known each other a few months, survive the same academic hell, occasionally share homework like two foxes stealing the same chicken” close. She’s cool. She’s kind. We trauma-bonded at least twice. The foundations of trust are THERE.

Anyway.

Today after class we go outside because she wants to smoke. I don’t smoke so I’m just standing there by the benches like a Victorian ghost girl sipping my Nutridrink to try to gain weight. The vibe was: she’s releasing nicotine, I’m drinking medical nutrition shakes, together we are unstoppable.

While she’s lighting her cigarette I ask her, “btw what’s your favorite show?” and we start talking. And I, in my innocence, mention Stranger Things because obviously. And she goes:

“Oh my gosh yeah I watched it! I’m not a huge fan but I enjoyed it!”

And I’m like PERFECT. Finally. A classmate with culture. A woman of taste. A companion with whom I can discuss the Upside Down and boys with trauma and 80s lighting aesthetics.

So I very politely, very casually, very normally ask,

“Who’s your favorite character?”

She says, “Oh, Steve. Obviously.”

Like okay yes, King Steve, I get it. Kind of basic but still a respectable, morally sound answer. The universe remained stable.

But THEN.

THEN.

She takes a drag of her cigarette, exhales like she’s about to deliver an Oscar-winning monologue, and says:

“But I hate Will. He’s so annoying.”

And besties I need you to understand something:

My soul left my body.

I astral projected.

I momentarily lost my will to live (no pun intended but wow).

I swear I heard glass shatter like in a telenovela. I looked at her like she had just told me she kicks puppies in her spare time. She said she hates WILL BYERS. WILL BYERS. My son. My sweet traumatized boy who deserved a childhood that wasn’t 80% supernatural and 20% crying. The character who has been possessed, kidnapped, gaslit by an entire town, and still manages to have the softest heart and best bowl cut on television.

How do you hate Will??

HOW?????

I wanted to do an Ariana Grande “we can’t be friends 💋” and immediately revoke our student-level friendship. But like… I couldn’t. Because that’s apparently “dramatic” and “socially unacceptable” over fictional children.

Meanwhile she’s standing there talking about “he’s just annoying” while I’m gripping my Nutridrink like it’s a stress ball and trying to process the emotional betrayal.

Like girl. GIRL.

Trauma responses aren’t “annoying.” They’re trauma responses. You of all people should get it. We bonded over trauma like two raccoons in therapy!! I thought we had something real!!

Anyway now I’m just walking around campus like a Victorian widow grieving the loss of my imaginary future best-friendship that was destroyed by one (1) incorrect Stranger Things opinion.

So yeah. That’s the story of how I realized friendship is fragile and the world is cold and you can like someone as a person but still absolutely judge their taste in fictional boys.