Looking Over My Shoulder
We were the best of friends through high school – “The Three Musketeers”. We were going to be best friends for life. Sometime during senior year, they started changing. Drinking. Smoking. Having sex with anyone who looked their way.
That wasn’t for me. I chose not to party with them. They teased me about it, joking that I was the “good” one.
Not long after graduation, there was a situation where I chose my family over them. It all blew up, and the bullying and stalking began.
They prank-called me. They pitted our mutual friends against me with ridiculous lies. They showed up to my workplace and said they were going to kill me. They sat behind me in college classes and loudly whispered to others about how horrible I was. How I was an ugly, sad person. How they had just “pretended” to be my friend for all those years. They told all my secrets to anyone who would listen.
This continued for almost two years.
After the death threats at my workplace, I let them know that I would take out a restraining order if they ever contacted me again.
I blocked them on Facebook. I graduated from that college and went to another one in a different town. I changed my phone number.
Though I haven’t heard from them for years, I still feel sick when I think about them. They caused me incredible stress, self-doubt, and loneliness.
I don’t talk about it much, because I don’t want to give them the pleasure of knowing that they got under my skin. I left out many details of the story, and details about who I am, just in case they find this.
I’m now a happily married woman with a great career, an amazing husband, and a great group of true friends.
But I feel like I’ll always be looking over my shoulder, waiting for their next move.