I took 4 days off work to spend my 21st with my best at the time, who lives in another state. As soon as I get there I tell her I’m so excited and saved up for months for the trip. She then tells me she saved “about a thousand dollars.” Keep this in mind for later ☝🏾

So, the morning I get there we go downtown (she pays for the uber; only mentioning it bc it is also relevant later) and then buys me lunch. She asks me to pay for the uber back and I do ofc that’s fair! The next day we go shopping; she asks me to pay for our ride because “she doesn’t have a lot of money” and in my head I’m like 🤔 bc that’s not what she said yesterday. but oh well! I expected to spend a lot on rides since I flew in and didn’t have my car. We’re window shopping for a few hours and tldr she casually makes more comments about not having any money (🤔🤔) and my phone is dying. I panic and make us leave early because APPARENTLY I’m the only one paying for rides now and I need my phone Alive to do that.

The next day we planned on going to the beach but 1) I’m not paying for two hour-long uber rides lmfaoooooo 2) the weather was abysmal. I brought my switch, and she has a wii + games we used to play when we were kids, so I expect us to just chill and hang out. She opens her laptop and starts browsing apartments ? 😶 in the mean time I’m suggesting things we can do together. She says yeah in a minute. Then she starts playing the sims. And again I suggest things we do together. She says yeah in a minute. I suggest we watch a movie at least while she’s doing that and she says her tv is broken. And then she plays the sims for eight hours. I am not joking or exaggerating. I was watching that clock like a hawk. EIGHT HOURS. A whole sims shift. she was sitting there taking dozens upon dozens of selfies from various angles to reference while making her sim self. and then she did the same with her cat ??? HOURS of taking selfies and pictures of her cat! I brought Mario Odyssey for us to play together but I just sat there playing by myself all that time. Anyway! After those 8 hours she’s ready to watch a movie, so her tv suddenly works now! Isn’t that interesting! 🤔

On the day of my actual birthday I am pissed off but trying to grin and bear it because we’ve been friends for so long and I’m coping HARD. We go shopping again and I buy myself a lil pillow from this cute Japanese shop (also only mentioning this because it comes up later.) she gives me my birthday present (roller skates that she got custom made in my fav colors) and I’m like !!! very cool !!! I did ask her if she’d be able to mail them to me because I had a lot of luggage already, and I’d rather pay her back for mailing them to me rather than paying the airport to check it as extra baggage (☝🏾) Anyway! we didn’t plan anything wild that night bc I’m p introverted and she told me she couldn’t drink because of health issues (☝🏾) so we just go out to dinner. We didn’t have anywhere planned, she suggested some bar/restaurant and I said it wasn’t my vibe, so she suggested a Japanese restaurant instead. We get there and she is DEAD silent. It was actually so odd bc she was sitting there smiling at me but would give me like one word answers to anything I said or asked her l, even though she isn’t usually like that. It was so uncomfortable and I felt so lonely and disconnected from her, my best friend of 12 years at the time!! My 21st birthday was supposed to be my last “”special”” birthday until like 30 and this is how I’m spending it!! I straight up go into the bathroom and cry, then we go back to her house and my mom calls me to wish me a happy birthday and I’m sitting in the dark on her kitchen floor quietly crying to her some more!! Bc wtf is happening !!

The next day is my last day there/I was flying home that evening. We planned on baking while I was there (because she explicitly asked me to teach her how to bake!) before my trip I suggested making pumpkin pie bc it’s a fall classic ofc. and I wish I had the fucking screenshot bc she says in all caps YES !! to that suggestion. Anyway we walk to the store (three hours later than we planned because she turned off her alarm and went back to sleep and would slap me away when I tried to wake her up?) and she’s still being super quiet and standoffish and lowkey passive aggressive. I fr don’t even want to bake with her but in my head I’m digging my heels in like NO we’re not going to just sit so she can play the sims for another 8 hours lmfao. we are making this fucking pie no matter what ‼️ We buy our ingredients (splitting the cost) and as soon as we get back to her house I’m getting everything set up and she immediately starts taking shots(?) idk don’t ask me idk !!! I had to be like pspspspspspspspspspsps come make the pieeeeeeeee pspspspspspsp! The pie gets made aaaaaaaaand I’m stupid and didn’t realize pumpkin pie had to set for several hours before eating. That’s my fault, sorry 😭! so the pie won’t be set until it’s time for me to leave (but also it would have been set if she had gotten up on time.) anyway I apologize for that and Im thinking at least her family will get to eat it. When it’s time for me to leave, her dad drives me (not to the airport bc I had somewhere to go beforehand but!) and I thank them both for letting me stay at their house/thank him for the ride.

Two weeks goes by and I’ve been like mentally preparing myself to have A Talk abt wtf happened and why she was Like That throughout my trip. She texts me first and tells me we needed to have a conversation about ME and MY BEHAVIOR??? We call and she tells me her grievances are:

1) She spent too much money when “I knew she didn’t have money right now” / “she told me she didn’t have money” which!! She told me that after telling me she saved $1k for my visit specifically. So which was I supposed to listen to?? 1-2 ~$30 uber rides, the lunch she bought me, and the split cost of the pie ingredients and my birthday dinner definitely did not add up to over 1k so where tf did allat go? She also said that she felt like I was pressuring her to buy me the pillow I bought as a birthday present. I have no idea why she thinks this. I expected to buy it for myself and I literally did buy it myself. I asked her multiple times what I did to make her feel pressured and she said she didn’t know she just felt like it ??? 😀

2) she says she made reservations at that bar/restaurant and paid for like a birthday cake for me, and had to pay a cancellation fee and shit because we didn’t go. At no point did she communicate this to me. She says she “hinted” at it, and if I’m being generous I’ll say I didn’t pick up on the hints, and if I’m being mean I’ll say “wanna go here?” Is not an hint at all so wtf am I supposed to pick up on? Like if she told me she had reservations or was like “ooooh Sydney I think there’s something special here 👀” I would have gone, but she acted like I knew she made reservations and just didn’t care, which I did not???? I had to be the one to suggest we go out to dinner so what fucking time was that reservation even 😭 < this is where I started to feel literally CRAZY

3) said I “hated” her gift so she had to return them. I never said I hated them!! I just asked her to mail them to me so that I wouldn’t have to carry a big heavy box around the airport!! I would have paid her back for the cost of mailing them!! AHHHHH (she also said this was particularly egregious because “most people don’t buy their friends birthday gifts, but we’ve been friends for so long I did something special” which???)

4) Said I never thanked her for letting her stay at her house, which I literally did I thank her and her fucking father lmfao ???

5) She was mad we made the pie because neither she nor anyone in her family likes pumpkin pie so they just threw it away. Why tf did she say yes to baking it then? 😀 I literally just threw it out there as a suggestion. She could have said no!! and we talked abt what we wanted to do back in August of that year. So she had from August until October to be like “heyyyyyyy can we make something else?” LIKE WTF WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO??

6) she said she was “concerned about the way I was treating her cats.” Which???? I pet one of her cats and he apparently didn’t like his tummy touched so he nipped me and so I left him alone??? She acted like I was mad at him but I was laughing abt it what am I supposed to be mad at an animal for? He would still come up to me and snuggle me so I’d pet him on his head/back when he let me just not his tummy. That’s legit only thing I can think of bc wtf did I do to her cats i literally don’t know I barely interacted with them bc they spent most of their time in other rooms. and she wouldn’t elaborate?? 😭😭 I’m sorry for tummy crimes??????