Ending a friendship is hard.

Ending a best friendship is even harder.

Jen has been my best friend since we were 12 years old. That's eight years now. I've always known that she has problems. She's always had a very manipulative personality, a very strong personality, and in our middle school days she would turn every person I knew against me if I so much as looked at her the wrong way. And so, in a way, the first few years of our friendship, I sort of...had to be friends with her. Because I was afraid of being alone. I wasn't allowed to have other friends, I wasn't allowed to be happy if she wasn't. I had to always be there for her. Be her sidekick.

In middle school she was already showing signs of sex addiction, and she was smoking pot and drinking when we were just 12 years old. I held out for a couple years, and finally when I was 14 I tried drinking and smoking. I didn't do it again for a while, and never did it often, but she was a different story. She had absolutely no self control and she would have sex with anybody she wanted, do whatever drug she wanted, drink whatever and whenever she wanted. There was no parental guidance whatsoever, and this made her miserable. It made her feel alone and uncared for.

Through the years, into high school, I started to see the person underneath it all. I wanted to fix her. I had seen my mother taking on co-dependent people like this all my life, and I felt that if I didn't stand by her until she was better, I was a failure. I blamed myself for her problems, believing that if I were a better friend, she could pull herself out of all of it and become a normal member of society, sans drugs and alcohol. I've blamed myself for her problems for a long time, and she has, as a result of my standing by her through it all, always being there in her time of need, become extremely co-dependent on me.

She moved away the summer of my Junior year of High School. It may have been the best thing that ever happened to me. I started dating the Student Body President of my high school, I got extremely involved in extracurricular activities, stopped drinking, stopped smoking pot, (I hadn't had sex yet), I picked my grades up so that I was in the top 10% of my class. I was going places, I was doing things, I wasn't being dragged down anymore. Except for the occasional phone call from her, to tell me how miserable she still was. In a lot of ways though, I cut her out of my life...for me. Because it made me happier.

Over the years, she seemed to turn into a different person. She seemed more emotionally stable than she had before. The sex addiction was getting bad, she didn't have a male friend that she hadn't slept with, and she was cheating on her boyfriend of two years with a guy for a whole year. On top of that, sleeping with random men, and having flirtations with others. It didn't bother her, she felt nothing. She would drink moderately, and dabble in drugs. But she seemed more emotionally mature.

I was feeling very lonely here my first year of college, and she had always talked about moving back. And her love life got completely screwed up, everything went bad, men found out about each other, left her, she was 'heartbroken' over one of them and in an attempt to run away, came back to Nevada (which she later blamed me for).

She came back and immediately there were problems. I wasn't spending enough time with her, I wasn't giving her enough attention, I was talking to my boyfriend too much (mind you, I was working 25 hours a week and going to school full time, as well as trying to maintain a long distance relationship with DF, which especially with the military, can be very hard). Things came to a head about a month ago, when she and her boyfriend in Washington, a 45 year old man, broke up for about the 30th time (not an exaggeration), and she blamed me for everything. She blamed me for her being here at all, accusing me of making her come here for my own selfish reasons. She felt like 'a puppy i had brought home from the pound, but when i realized it was going to be work, i didn't want it anymore'.

In the past, I would have backed down. And apologized. I wouldn't have wanted to be left alone. But being older, and somewhat wiser I'd like to think, I knew that she was trying to put all of her hurt feelings over her failed relationship on me. She wanted me to be miserable. I knew that she had come here of her own accord, and it wasn't my fault. I stood up for myself. I told her to reevaluate what she believed a friend was. A friend is not your therapist, a friend is not your mother, and a friend is not somebody that bails you out time after time after time after time. That is a doormat, and I was tired of being one.

She seemed a little...shocked into submission. She didn't expect me to stand up for myself, she backed down and backed off. She stopped wanting to be with me every second of the day. She stopped demanding my attention. She seemed like she was really going to turn things around.

She and her boyfriend got back together, again. She seemed to even out a bit. She still wasn't looking very hard for a job, and expecting him to send her money when she needed it, claiming to be "so happy that she was supporting herself" and that she was finally gaining independence.

A few days ago I told her that I didn't want to move to Portland with her as we had planned. I realized that, while I have money saved up, and I'm working 35 hours a week in order to save more, and I'm looking at possible job prospects in Portland, she hasn't looked for another job other than to turn in a couple applications that she won't follow up on, and when Robert sends her money, instead of saving to pay off the $1400 debt she incurred by backing into somebody's car, or paying her rent, or paying me back for buying her groceries, she bought a $150 longboard. In other words, she has proven herself to be nothing but irresponsible with money, and in every other aspect. And I am not going to take care of her when we move. It doesn't make me happy, it stresses me out and makes me angry and hurt. And while I'm going to have about $1500 saved up, she will have nothing. So who is going to end up paying the rent? The deposit? For groceries, gas? Everything? Me. It doesn't make any sense. Why would I want to be a single mother to a twenty something, when I'm just a twenty something myself, trying to make it on my own? I can support myself, but I can't support us both.

So I told her I didn't want to move with her and she told me she wasn't upset, and that she understood, and that she was going to try harder to look for a job the next day. The next day came and she was out all day. And I thought, wow, maybe she really is trying to turn things around. She called me at 5:45 in the evening. I knew she had to be at her job (that she gets about 14 hours a week at) at 6:00. Apparently she was sitting in the parkinglot...drunk. She had put in three applications at places around town, and then gone over to a drug addicts house and gotten drunk, then she had driven across town to work. (After already being in a car accident, sober). This was the final straw for me when it came to the moving issue. I decided that I was absolutely not moving with her. She was completely irresponsible and she would do nothing but drag me down. She wouldn't look for a job in Portland, she would just find friends just like the friends she had here, and bring them over to the apartment to drink and do drugs. I don't want that in my life. It's not what I need.

I decided to move in with Austin in Tillamook. He's the most responsible person I've ever met, and I love him very much, and he loves me enough to never put me through anything like this. He's like my rock. And I love him for it.

Last night I got home from Carson and went to bed. At 3 in the morning she came stumbling drunkenly into my room asking me if she could eat my cheese and my tortillas and that she would buy me more tomorrow if she and her friends could. And I asked who was over, and it was three guys and one girl, all druggies. And all drunk. Lord knows who drove them to our apartment. Glad to know people like them are on the roads at night.

I wasn't happy, at all. And I made it pretty clear. She came in an hour later asking if I had any extra blankets for them. She didn't ask if it was alright if four drunk people, that I didn't know, and that she doesn't know that well either, crashed at our apartment. I was not happy at all. I told her this. She shrugged and walked away.

This morning, I wake up to all of them in my bathroom. I brushed my teeth and they all left, leaving Jen and I alone. She didn't say anything for a minute then asked, Do you work today? I said no, she said nothing, spritzed on her perfumed, and they all left. They were gone all day, I had a wonderful day to myself at the apartment, cleaned the kitchen (save for her dishes, which I am not doing, because I think I do enough for her).

Austin was finally able to talk to me at 10:00. We got on skype and at 10:45 I got a text from Jen. She was high on ecstacy, they had taken her keys and her debit card, and she was upset and needed me to bail her out. I drove ten minutes away to go get her, they finally gave her keys and debit card back (lord knows if there's any money left in her account), and she went to her car to make sure it was locked. And her female druggie friend was in the car. Jen tried to explain to her that we were leaving, the druggette was clearly very high, started giving Jen crap for needing to leave, trying to make her feel bad. I made it very clear that I wanted to leave, I was freezing, I was not in the mood for this girl child's nonsense.

We left, and on the way home Jen can't stop talking because she's high, and everything is "woe is me, me, me me...memememememememememe." And I got a "sorry". but no thank yous. Never a thank you from Jen. Never. I didn't say much. I didn't have much to say. When we got home we walked upstairs, I unlocked the door for her, and I walked straight to my room and locked the door.

Tonight I reached a breaking point. She has no regard for anybody but herself. And I'm doing being there for somebody that treats me like shit. I'm cutting her off. I will not help her anymore. If she calls and needs me to bail her out, I'm going to tell her to call somebody else. I am not helping her anymore. If it takes me turning my phone off every night at 10 pm for me to get the resolve to do it, then that's what I'll do. I need to stay strong and really do this. I'm done. I'm completely fed up with her shit. I can't help her anymore.

I'm emotionally exhausted from tonight.
I'm going to bed.