For the past 7 years, I have had a friend. Through the past 4 years, I came to realise to Claudia wasn’t a very good one. For some time, I have struggled with anxiety, triggered by people copying me. I think it has something to do with identity, I’m not sure. Well, anyway, she was well aware of this but would proceed to copy everything I did, as well as take my ideas and use them as her own, copy my work in lessons and she would always one-up me. I ended up having several anxiety attacks due to her relentless annoyance. Then, I make a new friend. and she was unhappy. She was jealous and spiteful. This friend leaves school, and I make a new one, and they leave school, then I meet Morgen, and fall madly in love with her. But this obviously didn’t go down very well with Claudia. Her posessive nature was getting on my nerves, so I once again distanced myself. Then, I found out Morgen was leaving, but what upset me more was that it got back to me that Claudia had said that she couldn’t wait for Morgen to leave because then I wouldn’t be spending all my time with her. I was furious, but I felt bad if I wasn’t going to be her friend anymore. You see I neglected to mention that when I made my first friend, I cut her out. I didn’t want to be her friend anymore at that point, but my mum had essentially become her babysitter, so every day, we’d have to go home together. Also, because I just hated her so much, I would always put her down. That is uncalled for, and I regret that now, especially because I later found out that she’d go home crying because of me. That’s why I felt bad not being her friend. However, at this time, I had met a boy, and we had a really close bond. He is just like my brother, and I liked how sarcastic he was. I pestered him until we were friends and eventually introduced him to Claudia. You’ll never guess who was both jealous of my new friend and also wanted what I had. She asked him out and they got together. However, it wasn’t long before she had the nerve to accuse the two of us, despite her knowing how close we were. Right after Morgen left, he told me that she’d been threatening to break up with him because she couldn’t get her own way. I was furious. I ignored her for a week straight. I felt so bad, but it felt so good. Eventually, I thought it was unfair on her, an I thought I was being selfish, and I realised that I only had 2 years left of school to put up with her, so I decided to grin and bear it. But because I was giving her my everything, whenever I would so much as talk about other friends, like chatting to Morgen online, she’d get pissed off, so I’d stop. I stopped talking to the first person I ever loved to make her happy. A new girl joined the school, Jasmine, and I tried to be her friend, she had nobody, but Claudia wasn’t happy about it, I stopped talking to her and she left the school. I don’t know what happened to her. During this time, I was learning more and more about the way she was manipulating my best friend, and the stress he was going through. She wouldn’t let him spend any time with me. She once went on an art trip and texted him saying “I bet you were all over [me]” (avoiding using my name). She would make him do things he didn’t want to. But that had nothing to do with me, so I couldn’t do anything. I had a friend from the beginning of secondary school to today, and she started having some troubles. She began to hang around with us, and Claudia was not happy. I felt so bad for my friend, so I didn’t let Claudia get the better of me. The girl told me all she wanted was a friendship like mine and Claudia’s. I told the girl everything, from breakdowns to manipulation, and she told me I needed to end it. I told her I couldn’t because I needed to make up for pushing her out, but what she was saying eventually made sense. I decided to tell Claudia that for both of our sakes, we needed to end our friendship. I was going to tell her that we could still talk, but I needed to take a step back. So, I told her we needed to end it, and she said “okay” and turned around. I didn’t want to still talk to her after that, why would I? I let her manipulate me for months and she didn’t even care when I ended it. Unfortunately, it didn’t end there. I told my friend not to treat her any differently, as Claudia had not done anything to her, but Claudia has been chatting s*** to my whole year group. Today, I found out what’s been said. The friend showed me a snap from Claudia’s friend which said that the reason I didn’t want to be her friend was that I wanted the boyfriend all to myself “when he’s CLAUDIA’S boyfriend”. By stepping back, I don’t understand how I get him, I hardly ever see him. But I just needed somebody to read this and see my side of the story, because I’ve had enough. It feels like everybody looks at me differently now, and I hate that they’ll never see Claudia for who she is: a lying, manipulative, terrible human being, but that’s how everybody else sees me. The reason I put this on the guilt section is because I don’t know if everybody else is right or not, but I just couldn’t take it anymore.