I never wanted to lose a fifteen year friendship. God knows I did everything in my power to fix things. I can only grovel so many times before I start to lose respect for myself. Every time we argued in the past I would beg and crawl back on my knees to apologize regardless of who was in the wrong. All that ever mattered was preserving the friendship, but this time...

Before I really talk about the final straw, I have to say I did everything for this girl. Once she was having a panic attack in the middle of West Virginia. She called me crying saying her parents wouldn't go get her and she had no way to get home. I dropped everything and drove 4 hours to pick her up and then 4 hours home. I never asked for gas money or anything or even really expected it. Another time she was living with a boyfriend down near Williamsburg Va and they broke up. I drove 3 hours to get her and her stuff and bring her home. She's lived in my house for free, I've bought her more meals than I can possibly count, given her the best birthday gifts, lent her books, and whenever she liked a shirt or fun socks that I didn't really wear anymore I'd just give it to her. Never asked for anything in return, never expected anything in return other than friendship and support.

Last semester I was supposed to give a presentation in my folklore class about some aspect of a culture I though would be interesting. She's Jewish and at the time she was living with me so I figured it would be easy to just quietly watch her Shabbat service and then ask her questions afterwards. I asked her a month prior to the due date and she agreed so I didn't even think about it until the week of. I let her know that I needed to get the project done and thats when everything blew up.

"Oh, my rabbi said she wasn't okay with it so you can't watch."

"What?! What the hell am I supposed to do?! This project is due in a few days and it's worth a huge chunk of my grade!"

"Excuse me? Don't curse at me. You're being really anti Semitic right now."

That wasn't the first time she had basically called me a racist for no reason. My boyfriend was in the army and stationed near DC during the beginning of BLM. When riots were taking place I was terrified he would be sent in to mitigate the violence and that he would be in danger or get hurt somehow. She told me it was racist that I was more concerned about his safety than the state of our country. I told her that she would be panicked the same way if it was her brother or father being sent into those riots. She didn't respond to that.

Anyways, after she called me an anti semite we didn't talk for a while. Usually I'd go crawling back and apologize for getting upset, but I just couldn't. Eventually I told her that she could do one of 3 things. One, come talk to me when she had time and try to work things out to where we could consider each other friends again. Two, start paying rent to my mom since she was living in our house for free and we wouldn't have allowed that if she wasn't my friend. Three, she could leave. After telling me it was disgusting and manipulative of me to think I had any business in an agreement made between her and my mom, she packed up her things and left. About a month later I reached out to see if she wanted to talk things out.

"If you're looking to fix things, you could start by apologizing."

I couldn't believe it, but I took the high road and replied "fine. I'm sorry for getting so upset"

"Well that was a shitty apology. I just need time."

And something inside of me just knew that it was time to let this friendship go. I told her that I couldn't do our usual routine. I wouldn't grovel and beg for forgiveness when I wasn't the only one in the wrong. I told her that I hoped she'd have a nice life and that she wouldn't have to hear from me again.

She responded "have fun finding anyone else to put up with your abuse."

I then spent a week grieving the loss of a friend and my life has been so much easier ever since.