My Best Friend Dumped Me

“We need to talk.”

My best friend, Tina, looked up from her phone, a frown knitting her brows. No, that’s not her real name.

“Okaaay. What’s wrong?”

I had decided to fess up about what I’d done. I took a breath and sat down at our breakfast table, the one we’d bought and assembled together only a month before. Tina had just moved in with me for the umpteenth time. She couldn’t afford to pay New York City’s insane rent prices, and I was giving her three months rent-free at my place. Trying to help her out.

I had a one-bedroom apartment, so we slept in my bed together. I shared everything with her. That’s what best friends do for each other.

I didn’t know what I would say exactly, and when I started talking, my voice was flat, monotone, cracked around the edges. It sounded as small as I felt.

“I woke up in the middle of the night…couldn’t sleep. Had this terrible feeling. And then I saw your phone was unlocked on the table…so I read your texts. So. I know what you’ve been saying about me, and I know you’ve been planning to move out before paying rent. I just have two questions. When were you planning on moving, and when were you planning on telling me?”

With that, the nuclear explosion that destroyed our friendship was detonated. Hours later, she was gone, and I haven’t seen or heard from her since.

. . .

I had a best friend for twelve years.

It still feels weird to put that in the past tense. She was my world, my heart, my everything. We called each other “soulmate,” “life partner,” “ride-or-die.” I saw us outlasting every one of each other’s romantic partnerships and growing into gray-haired old ladies together, still cackling wildly at jokes no one else thinks are funny, long after the men in our lives have all drifted away.

I had actually developed my own relationship hierarchy around Tina, deciding for myself that I would never try for the unrealistic ideal of a lifelong romantic partner. I didn’t need or want one. I had her.

I had a best friend. I don’t anymore.

At some point along the way, the perfection of our bond had begun to fray and decay, but she was always so good at showing people what they wanted to see. I had no idea that she was pulling away until it was far too late.

. . .

I met Tina in the summer of 2007, at a prestigious summer stock theater. I was ecstatic to have been cast that season. It was the beginning of my professional theater career, and

I was working with Broadway stars. Everything about it felt sparkly and destined, including meeting Tina.

She was a dancer with a gorgeous alto voice and a killer sense of humor. She was also a social genius. She had this magical ability to make everyone feel like she was their best friend. Her smile made you feel seen.

She was a firecracker that exploded across my sky. I knew right away that I wanted to be her friend.

I also knew right away that she wasn’t always sincere. Everyone thought she was their best friend, but if she felt she could trust you, you’d discover that she was very picky about the people she actually cared for. Tina could talk some mad shit about people who five seconds earlier were hugging her and calling her “bestie.”

At the time, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. It wasn’t that she was two-faced or manipulative, I told myself. She just felt entitled to her own private opinions of people, a quality I admired. I always felt obligated to try to like everyone all the time, and here was this girl who could make people think she liked them, when, in reality, she thought they were dipshits. And they would never know - she was that good at making everyone who interacted with her feel fantastic about themselves, no matter what she really thought of them.

I thought that was a spectacular quality, and I wanted to emulate it. I had always been so bad with people. I’d never been popular. I’d never been cool like her.

It also made the fact that she took an interest in me feel even more special, like when the rebellious bad boy falls in love with you. Sure, he might treat other people like shit, but you’re special. You’re different.

Tina made me feel special and different. She told me secrets right off the bat. She trusted me with her real opinions of people. She told me I was one of the most interesting people she’d ever met. I soaked up her attention like an eager flower stretching toward the sun.

By the end of that contract, I was platonically in love.

. . .

The following spring, I moved to New York City. I had been in the city only a few weeks when I met up with a friend I knew from the summer stock contract, a baritenor named Jason.

When we greeted each other, he flashed a wily smile and said he had a surprise for me. He glanced over his shoulder, and Tina emerged from behind a column! She’d surprised me. It was the best thing ever.

She would be in New York for a couple of months to audition and hopefully book some work. She needed a place to stay, and I said she could obviously stay with me in my tiny studio apartment. For free. For two months.

That’s what friends do for each other.

Right?

. . .

Two years later, Tina moved to New York for real. She’d been hemming and hawing over the decision, frightened she wouldn’t be able to make ends meet. The development that finally got her to take the leap? I convinced the band I sang back-up in to hire her, the alto to my soprano. She would have instant income.

Of course, I also invited her to live with me for her first month in the city.

For free.

Thus began a steady upward progression for Tina. She’s a phenomenal performer, but in those early days, she thought she belonged in the back, never the front. I knew she was tragically underestimating herself, and I told her so every chance I got.

“You were born to be in the front, girl,” I would say. “You’re not a back-up baby. You’re a frontbaby!” It was true.

Within a few years, and with my constant encouragement, she was fronting a band. A few years after that, she started her own original music project, co-writing really cool pop-soul songs that were constantly getting stuck in my head.

It felt incredible to watch her rise, especially knowing how many obstacles were placed in her path. Her family was fractured. They never had money. Her dad was a drunk; her mom was a fanatical, evangelical Christian who home-schooled her kids to keep them safe from the sinful, secular world. She had very little family support, either emotionally or financially.

It was so unfair, and she deserved better. I wanted her to rise above all that. She was so special, so ferociously talented.

I helped her out with money too many times to count. I felt like it was the least I could do. I had a safety net; I had parents who supported me when things got really rough. She didn’t.

Whenever she would express that she didn’t feel right about leaning on me financially, I’d laugh and joke that she was my smartest investment. I knew that when her star rose, she’d return the favor if I ever needed it. I was sure of that.

Tina’s slow, steady rise led her to an international tour of a high profile circus production, and culminated in a moderately successful run on a popular television talent contest. It was so exciting - like holy shit, it’s finally happening! Everything she’d worked for! Everything we’d hoped for! Everything I knew she was capable of doing, she was doing it!
Looking back, that’s probably when the lines of our friendship began to deteriorate.

. . .

The television show didn’t lead to instant money and fame, but it did give her some leverage in booking higher profile gigs and attracting media attention. She was hustling for her life.

While all this was happening, something started to feel off in our interactions. She seemed impatient with me when I was dealing with emotional struggles. She seemed unenthusiastic about spending time together. Once, while I was out of town on an extended contract, I couldn’t get her to return a phone call for two solid months, and her responses to my texts were short and infrequent.

Something was clearly wrong, but I stayed firmly in denial until the night I read her texts.

. . .

A couple of weeks before the end of our friendship, I sang back-up in her band for two gigs. The shows themselves went great, but she reprimanded me the day after the second gig. We were hanging out in the town we’d played the night before, sight-seeing. I was happy and excited, and I was joking and laughing and singing little songs that felt apropos to the moment.

She kept telling me to be quiet. She said I wasn’t representing her brand. Her brand was cool and laidback. I was being too loud, drawing too much attention from people nearby who might know who she was.

Really?

The handful of people who were nearby showed no signs of knowing who she was, or noticing anything I was doing, for that matter.

“Tina, I’m confused. I thought your brand was authenticity. I’m your authentic best friend being my authentic self. It’s our day off.”

“When you’re touring with me, there are no days off. And my brand is authenticity, but that means authentic to me.”

What the actual fuck? Where was my best friend? Who was this wholly inauthentic, image-obsessed stranger?

After a huge fight and a few days apart - I think she crashed on someone’s couch - I swallowed my pride and agreed to be whatever she needed me to be while representing her brand on tour.

She thanked me - and then suggested we have a code word for any time I was doing anything that she didn’t think was cool.

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Huh.

We kinda-sorta made up. I kinda-sorta thought things might be okay. Like I said, Tina is very good at making you believe what she wants you to believe.

. . .

Why did I read her texts?

I’m not one to hack into people’s phones. I’d only done something like that once before, when I was 21 and I thought my boyfriend was cheating on me. He was.

Actually, I didn’t hack into Tina’s phone. It was just lying there, unlocked, when I awoke at 4am racked with anxiety. In hindsight, it feels like the universe was protecting me. I never would’ve believed the truth if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

Why did I read her texts?

I could tell something was wrong. I could feel it. Things were different. For the first time, I could see her faking our friendship the way I’d seen her fake a million others.

Still, I wasn’t prepared for what I found.

. . .

In half a dozen text threads, all with people I know personally, I saw my best friend of 12 years trashing me with a viciousness I didn’t know she possessed.

She trashed my singing voice, called me the devil, called our friendship a charade. She was furious at me for not giving her a paying gig that was offered to me, even though I was struggling to pay the rent that month and really needed the money. She told a close mutual friend that she was going to move out before ever helping me with the rent, something she knew I was depending on to make it through the end of the year comfortably.

And maybe worst of all, she implied that I was trying to take credit for her success, that I wanted to keep her behind me.

All I’d ever done for the entire length of our friendship was push her to the front.

Her image of me had become so warped, so divorced from the reality of who I know myself to be.

Two things were clear:

Tina didn’t love me anymore.

And she wasn’t my friend.

. . .

I was planning on giving her 30 days to move out, as per New York City’s tenants’ rights laws, but as soon as I told her I’d looked through her phone, she played the victim and started packing and attacking, accusing me of kicking her out, saying every hostile thing she could think of to hurt me. She had no desire to talk or work things out, as I’d (naïvely) expected.

That’s when I realized something incredibly painful…but also empowering.

I had spent my entire friendship with Tina thinking that she was cooler than me. She was the gorgeous, popular, funny girl who could make everyone feel like she was their best friend. I had told myself for years that I was lucky that she saw something in me that was worth loving.
But she was never cooler than me. By my own values, I was always the cool one. I was the one who was sincere, honest, and heartfelt. I was the one who helped support my friends, instead of constantly taking advantage of them. I was the one with a real career and real income. I was the one with the hustle, talent, and intelligence to make ends meet no matter what.

I would never have talked about any of my friends the way she talked about me.

I had always known she was duplicitous. I had walked right into this. This was, in a way, all my fault.

I had sold myself short in myriad ways, and in so doing, I made it extremely easy for someone with a knack for manipulation to use me up until she didn’t think she needed me anymore.

When she finally left my apartment for good, I felt a heaviness that I’d been unaware of lift from my heart. I hadn’t even realized how her hidden disdain for me had been suffocating my soul. I could breathe again. I could feel good about myself.

I felt free.

. . .

I had a best friend, and now she’s gone.

I grieved for a while, but it was easier than I thought it would be to let her go. I’m grateful and fortunate that this happened in my mid-30s, when I had gotten closer to a place of consistently loving and liking myself. It was clear to me that I deserved better treatment. It forced me to face a limiting belief I’ve had since childhood, this idea that I wasn’t “cool” and if someone who was “cool” wanted to be my friend, I should be blindly grateful, regardless of how they treated me.

But what is “cool,” anyway? Whose definition of “cool” was I swallowing whole?

My value system says it’s not fucking cool to mislead people about your feelings for them to get them to give you things you want. It’s not cool to pretend you are someone’s close friend and then trash them privately to everyone else. It’s zero percent cool to care more about your brand than your best friend.

What is cool? Authenticity. Generosity. Empathy. Compassion. Loyalty. Sincerity. Warmheartedness. A willingness to communicate. I’ve worked my whole life to enhance these qualities in myself, but haven’t ever required them of the people closest to me - until my best friend of 12 years dumped me.

In many ways, it was one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

I’ll never make it easy for someone to use me again. From now on, my closest relationships will be with people who don’t need me to be their safety net, and who don’t lie to those who have done the most to help them. My inner circle is now populated with people I admire, who stand confidently on their own two feet, who tell the truth, and who don’t maintain artificial “friendships” with people they secretly despise.

I hope that Tina finds the success she seeks. I still think she’s a dazzling performer with a striking natural charm. I hope she realizes that there’s a better way to build relationships. I hope she finds real love one day. I wish her the best possible outcomes in her life, and a part of me will always care about her.

But I’m so happy she’s gone.

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This post was previously published on “Hello, Love” a Medium publication.

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