Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
First Impression: Ahh this is heartbreaking little story and I think the title you've come up with is genuinely one of the best ways to sum it up here, two rather flawed people in difficult situations that worked in moments but ultimately were a little too different.
Anyway let's get right to it,
I think if I was to guess, looking back on it, the first warning sign I had was how she treated angels.
To me, and everyone I was close to, angels had always been this presence, warm, kind, but inhuman, to be trusted, respected, to be an invisible friend, a superior friend. My mom has a name for her guardian angel. Angels are wise, and powerful, they know more, they can understand more than the fallen human mind can even begin to comprehend, they take up physical space, but are spirits. They are servants of God. When I was young, I loved reading the Wupsy stories, about an angel of a young African boy, Wupsy was very human, by the nature of a children’s story he had to be, but he wasn’t debase, he loved his human, and did everything he could to protect him, whether it was whispering in the priest’s ear to Baptize him when he got injured, or keeping insects from biting him as he slept, Wupsy was a guardian, and a loving one. I suppose in short, angels are sacred.
She had very different ideas. Her angels where people, they had ages, they where born, they could bleed, they weren’t protectors, or even very loving, they were people, and they could sin, they had bodies, or they stole someone else’s. They were people with wings, who so happened to come from Heaven. I think it came from this show Supernatural she liked to watch.
Hmm well this is an interesting start there, showing two rather common takes on the idea of angels as a species that really represents two rather extreme ends on that particular spectrum. It makes for a very interesting opening especially when following a line like that.
I always felt uneasy when she mentioned stuff like that. We both liked to make stories. She would draw comic strips, and I would write. When we where friends, we would always try and write together. I was very serious, and still am about writing. I like comedy, but it isn’t what I write, I want to make someone cry when they read my work. She was the opposite; I think in practice at least. She was always drawing these comic strips that didn’t make sense for the plot. I remember one time, she was very insistent that these two garden variety lab experiment children get sent to go shopping together, this made no sense plot wise, as one of them had no eyes, only empty eye sockets, and the other was a skeleton, no way would any kind of evil lab let them go shopping. Even if they where normal children, they where to young to go shopping together.
I realize that sounds like complaining, and it is, but also, I am trying to show the differences in our creative styles. I wanted to write a book, so I acted like we were writing a book. She wanted to have fun, to write characters and imagine them in different fun scenarios. We would slip each other notes with stories written on them. It makes sense why we clashed so much.
Hmm this is definitely bringing in some interesting thoughts there, I'm reminded of how I wrote with some of my friends who had wildly different preferences when it came to genre and style although this seems to be a particularly extreme case.
I have never been good at making friends. Even when I was little, and I should’ve been able to go up to my classmates and go “Lets play tag!” I never did, I felt like I couldn’t. My mom always told me to make friends with this one girl in my class, she had the same name as my sister, but a different nickname so it took me a while to realize. I don’t know why I just tried talking to her, because she liked listening to me talk, because I would say things nobody else would, and I’d do things that would embarrass other kids, It turned out I have ADHD, it makes sense why we got along, her family was almost entirely Neurodivergent, maybe she was used to it. Finally in 7th grade, we just… started talking again, and for half a year I had a best friend for the first time. I still talk to her sometimes, but it’s not the same, she moved away that year, she lives in another state now, she has other friends, and a job, and I am bad with messaging people. She probably has someone else to listen to now.
It was the first day of 8th grade that I met her. She was in 7th, and we instantly hit it off, I believed her to be an answer to my prayers that I would have a friend again this year, maybe she was, we were friends after all. I was too desperate, I didn’t understand. I’ve gotten better with people now; I learned that all I needed to have a friend was to call them one.
Well this had some wild ups and downs as far as the two of them being friends were concerned but it seems for the most part that one year they were in fact pretty good friends at least for that small period of time.
The boy I considered my rival in kindergarten until 6th grade taught me that in my 9th grade year. He just called me his friend, and suddenly, we were friends, I did have friends, just not close ones, and I never realized it, and it caused me to get left behind, now my friends all have friends they like better than me, and I don’t know how to connect to people. I guess I am close to one guy, but the problem is, he is boring, most of the conversations we have I want to pull my hair out. I still listen though, because he needs someone to listen to him, and because sometimes, he isn’t boring. But she was never boring.
I was determined to snatch her up, and make her my best friend before she could learn to like other people more than me. I was the friendly veteran, helping the new kid fit in on her first day, except, I didn’t feel like I really fit in. I don’t need to fit in now. I talk about things that nobody else is talking about, and people laugh. I had tried this strategy every year when a new kid came to school, it always took them a few days to start becoming friends with other people. I was too intense, too clingy. I wasn’t a good person to have as a friend, unless you where just like me.
Well that looks of a lot of time spent thinking and being very critical about oneself there, which is a stage we all go through, although it seems in this case this person really did never quite manage to settle in with someone until this point which does prove her point that someone must be like her to want to spend more time with her.
She had been bullied in the previous school. Her dad was in prison and might have been abusing her sister, she didn’t like to talk about it. Her mom said they just took her out of therapy, two or three families lived in this apartment. I’m not sure if her uncle lived somewhere else. She was white, her dad must’ve been white, but she was incredibly proud of her Mexican heritage, her cousins looked very Mexican, so did her mom, but you couldn’t tell by looking at her that she had an ouch of Mexican in her, when she spoke Spanish words, she would roll her letters and use the accents, I think she spoke Spanish, at least a little. My mom’s family is also from Mexico, her first language is Spanish, her grandma was actually Mexican I think, but we both look white, I more than her.
She would use her ADHD as an excuse for everything in the beginning. I actually forgot I had ADHD until she brought it up. I shut her down pretty quick, because I had it to, and I wasn’t having those problems. I think that was my second warning, but she stopped doing it eventually, at least around me.
This is going around in a few interesting circles here I think addressing both their past and the kind of things that said past led to including these little flaws that are slowly being pointed out there all discretely.
I think her family babied her because of her ADHD, which is a stark contrast to my mom, whose reaction to it was basically not to worry about it, because nothing could be wrong with her perfect little angel- that’s what she calls me angel- because this is how God made me. This is frustrating sometimes, because I like having ADHD, but I still struggle with the things all people with ADHD struggle with, and I know my mom only wants the best for me, that doesn’t make it any harder to explain though, even so I’d prefer doing nothing about it over being coddled everyday because my brain is disproportion to average size in the emotional and self-control centers. I’d rather be a perfect angel that a little baby, even if it means I’ll never be quite perfect enough for myself. But that’s ok.
I don’t actually know what her homelife was like. I know her dad is in prison for probably abuse, and I know how her mom talked to my mom, my mom called her mama bear, and that’s a good description. We went to the library together once, we were supposed to do our homework really fast then play Gacha life, mama bear went with us, I was doing my homework, then I went to read, because she wasn’t done yet, but she kept on bothering mama bear, and playing games instead, so we didn’t really have too much time to play. Mama bear seemed impressed with how well behaved I was I think, that was the first time it had ever happened. I don’t hang out with people outside of school very much.
Well it seems like quite the combination there, a family managing to have quite a bit of dysfunction to it but also ending up with one of the children getting a little spoilt although the way this is set up that does end up making a lot of sense.
She flunked 7th grade at the end of the first quarter. We weren’t as close after that, and one time we were playing with a bunch of kindergarteners near a giant broken tree branch. Sticks where magic and they were the life power of this evil witch (me) I eventually let them kill me after a big battle. When she came in. Claiming to be the witch’s evil’s cousin, the children quickly joined one more to fight the new threat. I eventually revived, now a good guy, to help win as well. She wouldn’t let the little kids win. She kept reviving herself, and being overpowered, it was annoying and it was starting to get to the kids that it was an unwinnable boss fight. I don’t remember when we decided this, but if we took her stick, then she lost her power and we won. We ended up getting the stick, but as soon as we did and proclaimed victory, she ripped a stick out of one of the kindergartener’s hand and ran away laughing saying that she hadn’t lost yet. The kid predictably started crying, and I went to go yell at her while another kid gave him his stick and they went to go beat the boss again, with renewed determination.
We got this stick as well, when she went to the branch and started trying to break off a big piece, which was a big no no, and all the kids got mad, yelling at her that she was making the game not fun. We ended up getting into a fight and i pushed her off the branch and the kids left to go do something else. I don’t remember what she said, but she doesn’t like it when people touch her. Or at least that’s what she said, maybe she used to but doesn’t care anymore, its probably nothing but it seems like she only cares when its me.
Well that does seem like quite the frustrating boss fight, that more than most of the other little bits we've seen upto now really showcase how she tended to think and act. I think that's quite nicely done there in that sense so we can really get a feel for this friendship and its may many ups and downs.
This made it hard to show affection, because I am a very touchy person, and my first best friend was as well, and I didn’t know what else to do really, other than pat someone on the back, or give them a hug. Eventually we got over it and it was like nothing happened. I’m not sure if it was the next year, or later the same one, but we became friends again.
It was fun to hang out with her though, I have this game I play with my brother sometimes. It’s called Mansions and Menaces, a blatant DND rip off made by someone who had never actually played DND, it has barely any rules, and its combat system is trash, but it is fun to play, even if we never really get too far into the campaigns. In my 9th grade year, she came over to my house, and we were bored for a while, trying to figure out what to do, when my brother invited her to play the game. It was genius, she took to it well, adding a sense of humor and levity that wasn’t there in my brother and I’s more on track storytelling, we had our moments, but she changed the game. I played a ranger, she was playing as an angel.
Hmm well that's slowly painting more and more pictures. I love the way it showcases these moments in these little pairs, showcasing how incredibly fun her friend made things but also how they would twist eventually into something bad, and now we have maybe the most fun starting here so I'm expecting some backlash at this point.
We started playing the game at school, eventually more people joined. We had a group of five at the highest. This was the best time I had had in my life so far. So many people, and I was the Mansion Master, they couldn’t play without me. I was necessary and they all listened to my every word. It was a magical time that I can’t seem to replicate, although, with online roleplay, I’ve gotten close, but I still feel a pang of longing when I see close knit groups of DND friends online dressing up and going to places like the Ren fair. I want to do that, but none of the people at my school except for her would do that. I only can make people laugh because I say things no one else will.
She always played as a male angel. I really disliked this, she was so disrespectful to angels, and even game wise, she kept acting like her character was so much more important than the others because she was an angel, she was trying to trade her feathers for things, because angel feathers! And she kept saying her blood was magical, no matter how many times I told her she couldn’t do that, she would give herself powers and abilities totally unportioned to her level, but there were no real rules in M&M, so instead I clipped her wings.
To get the group on track, I had an evil mage come to town and steal something from each of them, I took her wings, everyone else took it well, laughing, and making a plan to get them back, she was mad, I had to assure her that she could get them back. It was nearing thanksgiving.
Oooh this is an interesting move, on one hand you can see how she was making the game not as fun and doing that sort of classic spoilt person moments that we've been seeing up to now but that retaliation there feels like its gone just a little bit too far there. This is not looking like its going to end particularly well.
It all seemed too sudden when it happened. She was mad at me, but I didn’t know why. She stopped talking to me outside of the game, she ran away from me when I tried to ask her why she was mad at me. Once, she ran by me and called my name, but she was faster than me, so I couldn’t catch up, eventually she stopped running and hide behind her cousin, who is only a year older than my little brother, and her cousin told me to stop chasing her. When I told her that she had called my name, and I just wanted to know why, she lied. She said she called another girls name, whose name sounds nothing like mine. I have a nickname, it is short, to the point, and very harsh when you say it aloud, only one syllable. The other girl has a very flowy name, with four syllables and no nickname. Even if she meant to say her name, she said mine. She called out for me, and then abandoned me to hide behind someone younger than her, because her mom told her not to talk to me. Mama bear, who I was pretty sure thought that I was cool and mature, who thanked my mom and told her how grateful she was that her daughter had found someone like me to be her friend.
She stopped playing the game, it fizzled out. I wrote her a note. It wasn’t a kind note, but it was the best that she was going to get. I had written several other notes, and thrown them away for being too mean. The note, although I wrote it three years ago, and this is a much shorter version missing a lot of things I have forgotten that probably made the situation much worse, but it went something like:
Well looks like that went exactly as I predicted it would there, which isn't the most surprising moment. We'll see just how this note might have been taken. I have a feeling it probably did not help matters tremendously.
“Dear XXXXXX,
For most of my life I have been incredibly lonely, I was only not lonely when, in 7th grade, I finally made friends with the girl who I had been wanting to be friends with since kindergarten, but then she moved, and I was crushed, then you came, and I was so happy, because I had another friend.
I opened up to you, now please tell me what’s wrong, I don’t know why you are upset, I don’t hate you, why do you hate me?
Sincerely,
XXX”
I plopped it in her lunch box and started to eat at a different table, when, soon after, her cousin came and threw the note into my lunch box, I checked to see if she had written anything on it, she hadn’t. This upset me for reasons that might not be instantly apparent, but the main one was, that she didn’t even bother to return the note herself, she sent her lackey relative to do it for her. My note wasn’t eloquent, and I didn’t apologize for anything, but it at least showed how utterly confused I was about the situation.
Well yeah given what we've seen of her friend up to now, that note even though in terms of being confrontational, was really quite tame, would act as much more of a deterrent than getting the friend to actually respond. It looks as if that is in fact exactly what happened too.
I went from having a best friend, to going to the same school as someone who got mad if I made eye contact with her in a day.
I didn’t know what I had done wrong, but I had somehow ruined everything that had made my life better and I didn’t even have a clue what I had done. And now she didn’t even have the decency to tell me. I had thought she was mad that I took away her wings, but then it would’ve been a simple conversation, I would’ve apologized, we would’ve talked about how she can’t be super OP on level one, and I would’ve told her how to get them back, and lowered the difficulty so that she could. But she rejected the olive branch, even if it was wilted and yellowed, and she didn’t even bother to throw it in my face herself. I burst into tears, but softly, I didn’t want her to see me cry, so I went to the hall, where the highschoolers all ate, except for me, I had left that table so I could play the game and hang out with her, and when things went downhill, I felt strange going back.
I was crying, but it wasn’t obvious until I asked if I could sit with them. I felt like I had to ask these people I’d known for several years, some of them almost my entire life, if it was ok for me to pull up a chair, because I wasn’t sure. And I was crying, and I told them what happened, and then the boy who used to be my rival gave me some cake, and this girl who I didn’t really like too much because she drinks and smokes and probably has done drugs got really mad on my behalf, and everyone was under the opinion that she was being a loser. Then after I was done eating, I went to my classroom and cried under a table for thirty minutes until the bell rang.
Well looks like the school somewhat rallied around her although not exactly to actually make her feel better. That title is really ringing true here a far as the fact they're both flowed and not good for each other is coming through in this particular piece.
When I got home, I messaged her on discord, it wasn’t a prudent message, because I Was very upset, I have the whole conversation printed out and saved on my PC, but it starts like this
Me: Congratulations on making someone older than you cry under a table for 30 minutes
Her: would you like to have someone older than you make you cry?
I was mad, and rightfully so, but she was somehow more mad, this is when I learned that her family told her not to talk to me. I kept on trying to deflect, but she kept on threating me, saying that her family was going to beat me up in the school parking lot, and how her sister was going to drop kick me, and how I was a cry baby who was a wimp who had broken her spine (I only fractured it), and how her sister was going to break it again.
She blocked me before the end of the conversation right before I sent a message that would’ve made the situation much worse for me, so I suppose I must thank her for that.
Well it looks like there's something there that we don't know about here which means this is all coming up as a reason that even our main character isn't actually fully aware of, well at least does mean it wasn't about the angel wings which is what I suspected. Well that's a nice little twist.
I didn’t learn what I had done wrong until mama bear came up to my mom after school and said that I hit her kid in the face and that she needs to do something about it otherwise she is going to take it to the principle
It was a class party, everyone was very rowdy, the boys where play fighting each other, there was food, she and I at some point went outside and near the water fountain where shadow boxing each other, I was hyper she was hyper, we were trash talking each other, and depending on which on of us you ask this happened.
I suddenly slapped her in the face for no reason
We where shadow boxing and I gave her a tap on the cheek, (only three of my fingertips actually touched her face) then apologized later when I realized it upset her.
Oh dear well that would absolutely do it given what we know of her family, well it would probably have been more of a series of misunderstandings as opposed to just her overreacting to the slap but given what we know of the whole touching thing and her dad, and how much her mom spoils her, we are not looking at a winning combination for our protagonist.
Maybe I scratched her with my nails and didn’t notice (unlikely, I used to bite my nails really bad and had only stubs)
Maybe I hit her harder than I thought (also no, I was literally moving in slow motion, we where shadow boxing, she saw it coming)
She was abused by her dad and it triggered her (Possible, but I’m pretty sure she was a baby when her dad was put in prison)
This upsets me mostly because for a while after thanksgiving, she acted normally, I forgot this happened, because I apologized, and on thanksgiving, she and I started to hang out normally again by the end of the day. It wasn’t until sometime later that she began to act strangely, before she cut me off and started threating to have me crippled for life.
Well it looks like quite the series of events here although I suppose to be fair we have to take everything, even the protagonists view with a grain of salt and perhaps there was a tiny bit more to this than the conclusion she comes to here although our protagonist has been the most reliable up to now.
Could she have been internalizing something, yes, but it seems out of her character, considering the fights we’ve got into before this one, normally she reacts instantly, even on the thanksgiving, she sulked until I apologized a few times, then we continued as normal. We resolved the problem, then a week later, it resurfaced.
This is what I think happened.
She went home, and at some point told her mom or her cousin who then told her mom about The Slap (dun dun dunnnn), her mom, who formally had an abusive partner, freaked out and everyone in her family became worried that she was getting bullied again, and told her to avoid me. Meanwhile stirring up anger that she had been abused/bullied by me, (whether they meant to or not) because everyone in her family said so when she told them what happened.
Hmm that is a very likely conclusion there, knowing from my own experience, its quite incredible how far something small can go if the right people say the right things about it, and its not even anyone's fault in the end, just a series of really really horrible misunderstandings.
I shouldn’t have hit her, I know that, I was just hyper and not really thinking clearly, I’m not trying to defend me hitting someone, that was stupid and wrong, and I know that, which is why I apologized after I did it.
She began to tell everyone at school that I had basically attacked her, although, it didn’t really affect me as much as I’m sure she hoped, because I had previously broken down in hysterical tears in front of my entire class about this same issue, and I’ve noticed that tends to get people on your side.
She graduated 8th grade a couple days ago, I hope I never see her again.
Well there this goes towards its natural conclusion, all of that just stretching out towards hate where all of these things once they escalate far enough tend to end up at least for a little while until everyone cools down from the immediate rush of the situation.
I think I hated her at first, even though I’m not supposed to hate people. Because I really trusted her, and it was over something so stupid, and because I’d see other people in her class hit her playfully, like I did, and she’d laugh, and get over it, and, she still hated me, in music class if I glanced in her direction to much she’d get mad at me, I tried just talking to her, but she shut me down. I don’t want to be her friend, I want her to fall, I want her to be destroyed and to know its my fault, to know that I am the reason that she isn’t successful, and that her life is miserable, for her to have a sinking feeling that it is my fault, that I am an unassailable enemy who could’ve been her greatest ally, who although she knows for certain that I am the cause of her troubles she can’t do anything to prove it.
Every time I’d pass her at school I’d instantly be distracted by plots of revenge that I could watch from a distance, these tiny, easy achievable things that would slowly add up until it tears her down.
But I can’t do that
Because its wrong
And because I don’t think I really hate her
But I don’t want to be her friend
Well that seems to have reached its natural conclusion then. It doesn't seem like either party is necessary in a state where they could potentially reach out and repair all this damage and it feels like maybe neither is even ready to be receptive to such a thing either.
I talked to one of my teachers about it
He told me that it’s a shame when people lose friendships over
Little things that get blown out of
Proportion and that
One of you needs to be the bigger person
To make any progress so I wrote her
Another note, this time it was
Much nicer, because I think I might’ve lied
Even if I didn’t mean to
But I swallowed my pride, and told her
Exactly what she wanted to hear
Hmm well that's another extreme you do want to avoid there happening, as much as things are horrible, bending over backward and lying about what you feel also doesn't ultimately lead to the greatest of outcomes.
That im sorry
That I hurt her
That I should’ve said something sooner
That it was my fault
I said all the right things,
And she should’ve apologized back,
Then everything would’ve been ok I think
We never would’ve been friends,
But I wouldn’t want to destroy her bloodline
And that was what I wanted
But she gave me a note back
And it was worse than any note I sent her
Because all she did was agree with me
And say that I am a terrible person
And how she doesn’t want to be around me
For her own safety
But she doesn’t know
That I cut that part out of my
Note because I thought it was
Too mean.
Well that seems to about as well as that could end there. From the start they seemed to clash a little too much and now in a moment like this being apart is probably the best thing they can do for each other.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Overall a beautiful little tale heartbreaking as it is, I think you tell it incredibly well, really running through the gauntlet of the emotions as you slowly unfold everything that took place right from the small issues all the way to the messy end.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Kate
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