Am I The Red Flag?

I’ve always thought of myself as a relatively good person, but lately I have been wondering, am I the problem? All my life, I have had relationships disappointment whether it be with my brothers, friendships, or boyfriends. I used to owe it to the fact that I’m far too trusting or that I try to see the good in others. But perhaps that isn’t the case. Perhaps I am the red flag. Or perhaps I see problems where there are none. Either way, I am going to share a few intimate stories. I want opinions on if I am the problem. If I am how do I change? If I’m not, then what do I do from here?

I’ll start with the simplest of relationships. I have two older brothers. I am the youngest and only girl. So, when we were younger, my brothers and I did get along. But that was probably because we were young and there was little that they could do with me outside of small child games. But as we got older and I started to go through puberty, my brothers started to treat me differently. Even as adults, we aren’t close. There are events from childhood that I have never truly forgiven them for, and they never truly took responsibility for the psychological damage done. It has made for a tenuous relationship in our older years. I know siblings don’t always get along, but am I wrong for not trying harder to be a better sister?

As for friendships, well…let’s start back in elementary school. I had two best friends, one boy and one girl. For the sake of the story, we will call them Jon and Kellie. When we would play outside for recess, we used to pretend we were the characters from the tv show ‘Lizzie McGuire’. Jon was always “Gordo”, I was always “Lizzie” and Kellie always wanted to be “Kate”. She volunteered for that character! Why would she want to be the bully of the show? It should have been a red flag, and yet I never thought about it. Especially when we got to middle school and she insisted that everyone including certain teachers had a crush on her! It ended when we parted to go to two different high schools.

There, Jon and my new male best friend Rob both ended up ditching me an abandoning me because of their girlfriends. Jon’s little brother Ben told me that the summer between 8th and 9th grade, Rob, Jon, their respective girlfriends, Rob’s twin sister, and someone else all apparently wrote a full musical about how much they hated me. Whether or not that was the truth or a lie, it hurt to know that they didn’t seem to really care about me. That I was suffering, and they became so self-absorbed with own lives and didn’t care to be friends with me anymore. It’s why I wanted to go to a college out of state. I thought a fresh start would be good for me.

There I had a friend from the different comic and anime conventions I attended who became my best friend. Her name for this story is Jenna. She and I got very close, and we would hang out all the time, making sure to have a girl’s day at least once a month. I also made some new friends as well who we will call Jacob and Bob. Bob had a huge crush on me but as I had just gotten out of a bad romantic relationship, and I knew Jenna was looking for a boyfriend, so I set the two of them up. I already had some good feelings about them since I already knew they had similar interests and if nothing else, I knew they’d be friends. Well turns out my plan to set them up worked so well that there was a betting pool on when they would first sleep together. I won that one and I knew I won because they came to me for the….protection. Fast forward a few months. The three of us are supposed to go to an anime convention during valentine’s day weekend. They’re my ride and I got them space in the room I was staying in. The weekend before the convention, I ask Jenna for a girl’s night. It had been so long since I hung out with just her. She said something about going to Bob’s for the weekend. Fine, no big deal, right? So Monday rolls around and I know she works Monday and I want to hang out with MY FRIEND Bob who let me remind you had a CRUSH ON ME before I set him up with Jenna. So I asked him to hang out so that we both could have something to do while she worked.

We hang out and he is telling me how much he loves her and how grateful he is that I set them up. They had only been together a few months and he even goes, as far as telling me that he wants to marry this girl. We’re all in college. We’re adults, so I think this is sweet and romantic. I don’t think I did anything wrong my hanging out with my friend and yet I find out that Jenna is upset that I didn’t invite her to hang out with Bob and me. Now I would have had NO PROBLEMS ABOLOGOZING had she told me this herself, but instead, I get a text message about it from Bob. This upset me so much. I told Bob that I will apologize if Jenna told me she was upset. I even asked him to tell her this because I did feel bad I hurt her feelings, but I wanted her to tell me how she felt LIKE AN ADULT! The response I got was ‘If you were really Jenna’s friend then you would just apologize’. Now I’m infuriated. I really didn’t think I did anything wrong. I just wanted my friend to communicate with me. When I said I wouldn’t apologize until Jenna told me she was upset with me and why. The responses I got were I was being a terrible friend and I was ruining their first valentine’s day together and that they weren’t going to the convention now.

Eventually we all got to the convention, and I wasn’t happy. I was having panic attacks all weekend, and when my convention friends asked me why, I told them not to take sides and then gave them my side of the story. In retrospect, I probably should not have told as many people about the situation as I did, but I was hurting and upset. I was only 18 and already had a history of bad friendships. It seemed so stupid. To sum up a long story, the entire situation ended up with me losing several friends, serious cyberbullying, deletion of my myspace and Facebook pages, and a changing of my cell phone number.

After that girl, my next best friend whom will refer to as Amy, The whole fiasco with Bob and Jenna helped to foster the relationship with her. She and I became best friends so quickly. We would spend many adventures together, going to her one Halloween weekend, staying her boyfriend’s place during Hurricane Irene, Florida for spring break two years in a row, one trip included going to Disney World. She motivated me to apply for the resident advisor position, was by my side when I got hit by a car in a marked crosswalk, and when my grandfather passed. She often said and did things that made me angry like comparing the lose of her dog to the loss of my grandfather or the fact that we couldn’t even have a night in without her first having a drink in her hand.

What really was the beginning of the end of our friendship though started during my junior year of college. Amy was a few years older than me. When we met, we were both undergrads but now she was a graduate student. She had less free time than before, and I accepted that and so branched out to make more friends so I wouldn’t be lonely. Now before I continue this story, I will be the first to admit I’m terrible with confrontation. I sometimes hold things in and try to ignore how I feel just to avoid fights. So as we enter my junior year of undergrad and her first year of graduate school, I wanted to make sure our adventures and friendship were preserved. So for her birthday, I made her this stunning scrap book of our friendship, using her favorite colors, animals, et cetera to decorate the book. She LOVED it. Fast forward to Christmas, I knew she was moving in with her boyfriend so I bough them some new towels in Amy’s favorite color and then I also bought her a owl necklace with a Celtic knot for her Irish heritage. She gave me a dollar store shot class with a handmade penguin that she gave everyone. I was so hurt because she gave that same gift to about ten other people. I held in feelings about it and used the holiday break to get over my hurt. But when my birthday came around, I made sure to have no plans so that we could spend my birthday together like we had done the past few years. She goes and tells me that is busy with an assignment and can’t spend time with me. So, I let some of my other friends know we can hang and I still ended up with a nice birthday. I found out though that Amy made plans to spend MY BIRTHDAY with someone else because it was their birthday too. I wouldn’t have cared sharing my birthday with him! I just wanted to see the girl who claimed to be my best friend! When I finally do see her to “celebrate” my birthday, she says she was going to get me a bottle of wine (which by the way would have been an insensitive gift considering I lived in an underclassman dorm where alcohol is prohibited, and I could have lost my job had I gotten caught with. She didn’t even get me a card.

I kept my anger bottled about a month when I finally called her out. Granted it was all on text because I couldn’t say it to her face, but she never apologized! All she said is “it’s not about how much you spend, it’s the thought that counts”. She couldn’t even go to the dollar store to get me a card! It ended our friendship.

Finally, we get to my last best friend, who we’ll call Chrissy. We had no problems at all until ‘Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker’ was released. We spoke about it on the phone. I told her I enjoyed it but I liked the original extended universe written in the books which rumor has, was George Lucas’s original vision for the ‘Star Wars’ franchise. She didn’t grow up on the books, and thus loved the sequel trilogy. She quite literally told me that she had to hang up on me because I made her feel like her opinion was invalid. By doing that she invalidated my opinion. I didn’t think anything of it because it was something so stupid to care about. Fast forward to the pandemic when ‘Hamilton’ was released on Disney+. I posted my opinion on the production on Facebook. She told me that she couldn’t talk to me for several days because my opinion made her so angry. But the straw that broke the camel’s back, was what happened a year later. I had surgery and it was an outpatient procedure, so I was in and out the same day. I texted Chrissy that I was home, a little tired, but all seemed to go all right. Two days later she texts me some meme. Then I don’t hear from her for another few days after that when she sends me another meme. Now I had it with her! I was pissed! Why wouldn’t you ask if I was, okay?! I had surgery for crying out loud! Yes, I was in and out in a day, but still I had surgery! I asked her why she didn’t once ask how I was. She responded with if something was wrong, I would have told her. I had surgery in a semi-post pandemic world and thus if something had happened, I wouldn’t have been able to tell her. That ended the friendship.

Next up is the dating life or lack thereof. I had the middle school boyfriends. You know the ones you say you’re “dating” and you go out on “group dates” with. One of them was Rob, as mentioned before. Then there was Timothy, Carl, back to Rob and then onto high school with Alex. My long distance relationship with Darien, then my last long distance relationship with Chris. I dumbed Chris shortly after entering college because he spent the last two months of our relationship trying to have sex with me, knowing I wasn’t ready. I had lots of crushes, went out on dates with guys who were really nice, but I had no chemistry with, went out with guys who LITERALLY had only one thing on their mind, and now as an adult, I’m still trying to date, but it seems the “men” who want to date me are ones who either only care about how I look or want to control ever aspect of my life. All red flags. There’s not much to say on that front just because well I feel like all I ask in dating me is someone I’m attracted to, someone who doesn’t smoke, takes care of himself physically, is educated, and respects me! But apparently that’s too much to ask.

Anyway, am I the red flag? Am I the problem? Am I lonely by choice or because I have major trust issues? I want friends, family, relationship, all of it. Yet, here I am…worried that I’m the one at fault. Am I?