Should I (F18) still be friends with my (F18) best friend of 4 years?

Warning : long text ahead.

For context, we met in middle school. At the time, I was hanging with my (14m at the time, let's call him Andrew) former best friend's friend group who were mainly boys. I wasn't really close to any of them and had no interest in what they were discussing, stuff like animes, light novels or borderline political opinions. I was just literally standing next to them, barely interacting at all. One thing that might be worth knowing is that two of my closest friends changed schools in 7th and 8th grade. We promised to keep in touch but we never met again, and that deeply affected me and struggled to form new connections ever since. Andrew was the only one remaining of our friend group.

Then in 10th grade she arrived as a new student. Let's call her Paula. I wasn't really paying attention to the people around me, I was used to them ignoring me, but she stood out by her looks alone. Tall and imposing. I had no intention of talking to her, she's the one who came first. She already had created a little group with a girl I vaguely knew, let's call her Jane with some other people. And that's how our friendship begun basically. She included my in the friend group and it felt ideal, we quickly got close and opened up about our lives. She was matching my energy, and even if I wasn't sure where this was going (I had very low self-esteem, still do to that day) I genuinely thought I was alright on my own and didn't need to commit to a new friendship.

Fast forward to present time, I am absolutely exhausted of this friendship and I can't tell if it's because all her actions towards me became hurtful or if it's just my brain fucking with me. I have been keeping track of all the incidents that struck me over the years, as well as what I believe I've done wrong to her. I am aware this list is biased as I cannot know for sure everything I've done wrong to her but I know there's probably more and that what I deem as hurtful might've not have been done on purpose, but all the events stacked together makes me believe the contrary and kinda led me to despise her. I am sick of this situation and my mind has been in a bad place for a very long time, so excuse me in advance for not redacting the following list.

What she did :

1 - Wipe her hands on my clothes (twice)

2 - Stole me things (Charger cable, USB key, my phone) --> Never admitted anything and talked me down into believing I should have seen it was my USB key before, keeps denying there were files on it

3 - Saying hurtful things as jokes (like saying I'm dumb, retarded...) and refusing to talk about it when I confronted her

4 - Keeps looking down at me as if she was smarter than me because of her culture and can't bear when I'm actually good at something like Spanish and keeps mocking my accent saying I exaggerate it.

5 - Knows I'm bad at explaining things and so she will always try to have the final word

6 - Makes me feel worthless when we're in a group of people

7 - Makes me feel guilty of having nothing interesting to say

8 - Whispers insults / snarky remarks when we're sitting next to each other in class when she's sure I'll hear it. Things like "you stink" or "shut up", "you fucking bitch" (the night of her birthday) and then telling me she didn't say anything when I mention it.

9 - stole the cushion we were sharing during a sleep over (leaving me with folded towels as cushions)

10 - Ignoring my feelings when I tried to express my concerns about her remarks I found hurtful.

11 - We were playing an mobile game and I wanted to do Scrabble because I like that but she left the game (because it was becoming boring she didn't place a word) and sent me "Nothing ever lasts forever 🖕" and we don't usually use that kind of emojis.

12 - I made the mistake of beginning a thought about me liking her more than a friend but didn't had the courage to say it, she pressured me all day into telling me which I didn't do then tell me she wouldn't be friends with her if I didn't tell her by midnight. So I sent her a text to which she never replied and never talked about.

13 - Force me to say things when I start talking but actually nevermind it even if she does the same and don't say what she would've said all the time

14 - Never paid her part in a collective gift (it was 5 or 10)

15 - Fucking laugh about nothing (when I mentioned my tiny apartment to say it wouldn't be ideal to go there). I compared her to a clown that laugh over nothing. She fucking ignored me and flipped me off (don't remember if it was before or after this whole thing and turned bad everything I said to her. She literally just screamed at me saying I just laughed at a crippled person and said she didn't mean it when I confronted her about that later (she isn't disabled for as far as I know\\\*\\\*\\\*)

16- Downplaying my cultural references like "Truman show" because she could've referred to it as well.

17 - Living for the cameras, taking too much videos, pictures

18 - Tried to record me naked by letting her phone recording and while we were discussing as well, even if she turned it off for this I had to turn it off myself before undressing

19 - She masturbated in front of me years ago (done it 3 times or so)

20 - Kind of "forced" me to tell her my phone code because she told me hers

21 - Peeking over my shoulder when composing my credit card code

22 - Flipping me off for no reason to make me uncomfortable and shut my mouth

23 - Pushing me and not apologising (sometimes, even if most of the time she did)

24 - Literally holding a whole speech to tell me how much of a crutch I am to her to do stuff because "she is too scared to do things alone"

25 - Never liked her mother because she gave me the impression of subtly mocking me as well (Called me over to show me a salad spinner as if I didn't know what it was)

26 - Took compromising pictures of me and refused to delete them

27 - Tried to convince me to live in a colloc with her and some of her family members, pretty sure she just wants that low rent.

28 - Casually talked about my biggest trauma in front of another friend as if it was nothing so that I had to bring it up (said friend obviously did not so subtly remind us of her own trauma and how she had it worse)

29 - Comments my way of clothing myself, saying I look boyish, unkept... She actually nicked me for not wearing a dress / skirt at new year's eve and not having makeup, that it made me look like a lesbian.

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What I did :

1 - Not inviting her to my house / not coming to her house often

2 - Asking for her revision's deck she made herself

3 - Forgetting to give her back the money she lent me even if she said it was okay

4 - Expressing my future wish to live alone

5 - Talking about death a lot

6 - Goshing her / cancelling plans last minute (Flaking the coffee shop)

7 - Saying things like "I can't believe you thought I was dumb enough to not know this / think that" as a sick joke when she's serious

8 - Not celebrating / not gifting her anything on her birthday for two years in a row now.

9 - Getting drunk and throwing up on the ground of her room

10 - Pinching her nose because she was snoring

11 - Not putting much efforts to plan hang-outs / not texting her often.

12 - Ate like a pig and left crumbs on the floor.

Some of this things might just be my imagination, but recently we went out and talked about stuff. The conversation quickly drifted to us, she said hurtful things like that she just came to me to avoid being alone and knew just by observing me that I wouldn't say no. Explicitly said I looked too miserable to deny any kind of interaction. And yeah she is right, I've been craving this attention Paula gave me and I knew it already but she made it sound like I should be ashamed as if she wasn't the one who started this friendship. Why didn't she go talk to other people then? Truth is I'm probably emotionally unavailable and immature to keep the flow in the relation going. She's like my only friend I still see sometime and yet losing her would just feel like a relief to me. She also said that if I wanted to step down from "best friends" to just "friends" she wouldn't have an issue with it. But why couldn't she just straight up tell me that's what she wants?? Instead of just letting me say the difficult stuff. Paula is bad at decision making but hell, she is the master of jibberish yapping. She could keep taking forever just to prove her point. But mostly all she says is bullshit anyway and I really feel like it's aimed to overwhelm my processing capacities as she knows I won't cut her off (since I hate being cut off as well) but she, on the other hand won't let me finish my sentence if I dare stutter or pause in the middle of it. Having a serious, real conversation with her feels impossible and I don't want her to dismiss my feelings again. She said many times that she never regretted anything she's done and somehow always twists the convo to make it like she's right. I've talked about it to my mother, she said I'm overreacting. We've never had an argument before and I genuinely want to believe she still appreciates me, even if I can feel that she hates me, I can't even find a reason why this is wrong, she has no reason to like me as of now and my brain is too fried to do anything. I wanna change, I wanna be worth it but I don't know how.

\\\*\\\*\\\* She actually has a condition that causes her to gain weight more easily and could potentially prevents her from having kids, while this obviously takes a toll on her, I don't think it explains everything. I don't know. I already feel like an asshole because I know I'm a shitty friend, given the context and the events that occurred and me taking my distances is justified (not to mention she wants to plan a trip with me)

TD;LR : We bonded over the years while sum shit happened and now I need to know if Paula is still my friend and if I'm in the right for taking my distances for now and how I could salvage our friendship.

Posted Jul 11, 2026, 8:53 PM UTC

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