It Happened to Me: I Became a Terrible Person to Try to Please My Fake-Ass Friends

I did anything they asked me to do, even though they clearly hated me.

In my junior year of college, I cried myself to sleep multiple times a week, because of my “friends.” I’d never realized how brutal making friends could be as an adult.

I grew up in Managua, Nicaragua, where I hung out with the same people all throughout middle and high school. Everyone sort of liked everyone else by default, because we knew one another so well.

When I first moved to the United States and went to college at Indiana University, the other students seemed to like me — enough, anyway. If my world were an island, people were visiting and enjoying the nice weather. Then junior year hit, and my island seemed like the last place people wanted to be. It got sad. Like sobbing-into-my-pillow sad.

For the first time ever, I doubted who I was and what I was doing. Everything I did seemed to be wrong. My friends would show up at my apartment, and I’d be excited — until they made it clear they were there for my roommate, not me. To see your friends go out without you can be as heartbreaking as a breakup, and it was for me.

Every time I would see my roommate head out the door, or hear her playing music while getting ready for something I was not invited to, I felt lonelier and wondered what was wrong with me. There was a part of me that needed to belong to this group of girls, who like me, were from different places in Latin America. Being an international student is not easy, and not fitting in with these people who were experiencing the same feelings as me was doubly isolating. I just wanted them to invite me along. But more often than not, they didn’t. I’d watch as they left.

I became a shape-shifter. “Where are you heading?” I’d ask whenever I’d see my fake friends. “To a movie,” they’d say. Or a coffee shop. Or to study. Or hiking. Or a bar. “Sounds fun,” I’d say, no matter how unfun it sounded. I turned into whoever they wanted me to be whenever they wanted me to be that. I would do anything and everything they asked, and all I asked for back was a faint “include me next time.”

I got so good at shape-shifting, I would rarely notice I was doing it. They’d ask me to host birthday parties at my place for people who weren’t my friends — and then not help me clean up the mess afterward. They’d ask to store their crap in my house, and I’d say yes. Then after they dropped it off, I’d hardly hear from them until they needed it back. I was so hungry for their acceptance, I settled for any crumbs they left for me, no matter how small.

They invited me to just enough things to make me think they really were my friends. But then it would turn toxic fast. I remember one time they were talking about the weight of another girl in our group. I