For context, I’m thinking of 2 individuals who were gratuitously unkind to me during vulnerable periods of my life yet have gone on to live very charmed lives. First is a mean girl from my HS who is getting married later this month. Despite her bullying and nastiness my mother wanted me to kiss her ass and give her way more chances that she deserved. On paper this person seemed like my platonic soulmate since we grew up 15 minutes apart yet only crossed paths at an international school for the last 2 years of HS. Ironically, less than 2 months before this person got engaged my mom asked if she’d gotten married as she tends to do with former acquaintances of mine. I blocked said mean girl since she was being super obnoxious and smug about her “bridal era” on social media. I’m shocked she found someone (on Hinge nonetheless) since she isn’t conventionally attractive, kind, or charming.
Fast forward to college, my helicopter mom forced me to pick an all-girls dorm thinking it would be safer with no “naked men running around”. This ended up being the only thing I had in common with my roommate from hell. I ended up going home every single weekend (I was forbidden from going far for college) since I was getting 4 hours of sleep thanks to her raucous phone calls in the wee hours of the morning plus the fact that she refused to adapt to US time zone. Her controlling fiance needed to know her whereabouts at all times so he’d message me whenever they fought. I blocked on FB since his commenting on my feed was too much. She demanded I bend over backwards for her because “this is your country and your culture”. She was pissed at me for “snitching” when we had a meeting with our unhelpful RA. During said meeting, she lied and said I forbade her from talking to said fiance when all I was asking was no loud noise on weeknights from midnight to seven. The RA had some sort of a soft spot for her and took her side even after she violated our roommate contract. At least she ended up getting her karma since last year she was arrested in Japan for drugs. Needless to say the RA wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed let alone a good judge of character.
I spent college in survival mode and threw in the towel on making friends after never clicking with anyone from the dorms or first club I tried. Even after getting a single my second year with documentation about how harmful my roommate’s deliberately inconsiderate behavior was detrimental to my grades and mental health. After a rough first semester, I worried giving extracurriculars another chance would further fuck up my grades since I’ve never been good at time management.
This roommate ended up being a club head and praised for her “leadership” activities. Unfortunately we ended up in a class together sophomore year but that should not have surprised me since we went to a very small school. It bothers me how everyone thought she was so sweet, innocent, and altruistic when with me she was such an entitled, self-centered, manipulative twat. Even when I went to housing to request a single and the person said “she’s sweet”, I put my foot down saying “no she’s not. If she were so sweet I wouldn’t be desperate for a single. I also withdrew socially since I was worried she’d turned people against me. I’m baffled how people like that find friends, much less people willing to marry them. Years of therapy helped me realize avoidance was a maladaptive coping mechanism during a difficult time in my life. I am 27 and have overcome a lot academically (neurodivergent with a math learning disability) but still have lots of acquaintances and very few close friends. I am also chronically single.