Tuesday 22nd September 2026
Therapy Day.
Last week’s therapy was all about just how much, how deeply, the fallout with my friendship circle truly affected me. To this day. It seems to me, absolutely ludicrous to say that at the age of 42, I fell out with most of my long-term friends. Feels like the playground. Feels like I’m telling the grown-ups. Feels like no one believes me. Like the guy who does all our will stuff for us when we had to keep going back to him to change the legal guardianship for our children, again and again and again. He even said (and I knew this was coming) ‘God, you fall out with a lot of people, don’t you!’ I cringed so hard when he said it. I see how it looks. I see how it makes me look. Like there’s something wrong with me. Believe me, I’ve asked myself that plenty of times over the last four years since it all kicked off. I explained to my therapist that everyone knew each other in some way via my work as an EFL teacher. We were four couples. My (now ex) best friend and his wife, my (now ex) very good friend and her husband, and a much younger girl and her husband, who I got to know much later down line around 7 years ago. Everyone’s friends with everyone else, to some extent. My (ex) best friend really was like family to me. The big brother I had never had. The same sense of humour. The many nights spent out together with other friends. Both of us being really good at what we did at work (only he was favoured a lot more than I was and simply couldn’t do any wrong, as I discovered over the last year). I won’t go into details because I have plenty of times before and some of you will be bored to death of hearing it for the millionth time, plus, it’s also really quite confusing. My therapist struggled to keep up with who did what and when. But it was his wife who eventually attacked me on the school run, absolutely blinded with a rage that totally baffled me as I hadn’t had any contact with her for the 18 months prior to that day. I hadn’t even seen her on the school run up until that very day. I also didn’t go around slating her. I just stayed silent. Kept myself to myself because my peace is so very important to me in order to stay balanced and keep on top of my mental health. But over the last couple of years, it has become clear to me that she never really liked me. I was ok for 3 years’ worth of free childcare. That was about it. I was never mega close to her, after all, it was her husband who was my best friend. But she told me a number of years ago that she was initially quite jealous of him having female friends when she came along and didn’t understand the need for it. She in particular, didn’t like me and one other girl from our workplace. He was never allowed to go to places if she was going to be there. They often said they would come to larger gatherings, then they would bail and I often suspected it was because she either didn’t want to go or because she didn’t want him to. Now, to put some context into this, they were a fairly religious couple as were the younger couple in our friendship group. So, you really wouldn’t expect such a Christian woman who goes to church fairly often and prays so openly with her friends at her place, to randomly attack someone who had just dropped off two of her children on the school run and was walking part of her fundraiser for the Refuge charity with her then 8 month old baby. It was an event in my life that deeply wounded me, not only physically, either. Following it, there was no apology from her or from her husband. Ever. Not one person in our friendship group ever believed me or took me seriously. ‘He doesn’t have a bad bone in his body’, I would hear over and over from our other friend over our many playdates. There was such an utter lack of respect over what was done to me. No one checked in on me. Everyone expected me to just get on with it and I was left to feel that everyone felt I must have, in some way, brought it on myself. I must have done something to provoke her. It wouldn’t just have come out of nowhere. Victim shaming at its finest. Month by month between Oct 23 to March 24, I realised more and more that they were all acting and banding together, treating me like I was really weird, that I must be the bad egg. Enough was enough. I culled the remaining friendships because I reached a point where I felt I deserved better. I’d sooner have fewer or no friends, than be treated like absolute dog shite by people, some of whom had been in my life for over 14 years so were around when my dad was murdered. I’ve never been scared to be on my own. I grew up mostly on my own. I never had many friends growing up because I was the loner, the weird one, the one who looked different. There was power in that decision, absolutely. I could leave and I could hold my head up high knowing that I did nothing wrong. But it didn’t quite work like that. I had never been prepared for the amount of grief I would feel for the loss of three separate friendships. The absence of my own family had meant I leant heavily on my closest of friends, because to me, they replaced what I didn’t have. Despite this though, I rarely went running to them with my problems (like developments in my dad’s case). I mostly kept trauma to myself. Mostly because I was busy pretending it wasn’t happening anyway.
I came to the realisation that I couldn’t return to work, even if I wanted to, because the (ex) best friend had been promoted to a very senior HR position that overlooked the entire school. Then there was the fact that my other very good friend was very senior in the only other big school in the area. I felt that, whilst I was maybe 80% sure I wouldn’t return to teaching, this made it feel impossible to. It was hard enough staying at the school during that last year and working under an ex who had suddenly reappeared, who then promised me the school would pay for me to do my DELTA. He then disappeared at the start of a huge project of mine (co-writing curriculum books for Young Learners). Just poof. Gone. Along with that promise of his. I was so pissed off at that time because I could see he was the same idiot he always had been, only as always, no one else could see it. When he came back to work at the school initially in 2018, I seriously contemplated ending my career because I didn’t think I could hack it and not tear him apart for what he did to me back in 2012 when I was fresh out of refuge. But I managed. I was the bigger person. Even emailed him to say I wanted to draw a line in the sand, so that we could both do our jobs to our best ability and I just generally tried to stay out of his way.
Then earlier in the year, might have been around March time, a work group chat I’m in, started trying to organise leaving drinks for the (ex) best friend. Now he wasn’t in this group chat, nor were any of the others I had fallen out with, but a solid 20 people or so were. I contemplated whether to add anything to what was being said. I was fully aware of what people already thought of me. So I simply said..
‘Thanks for the invite, but I’ll pass as it would be too uncomfortable after his wife attacked me last year, and was given a community order by the police. Hope that doesn’t come across as rude, but need to keep myself safe. Xx’
That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? I mean, that is exactly what I said, word for word. And I watched as they all just continued debating between them who was going and who couldn’t come. I watched this chat in sheer disbelief. Not one fucker, not one, asked if I was ok, not in the chat and not in a separate message, either. We are talking a lot of people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and a few in their 70s. One person said a simple ‘Sorry to hear that’, but no one asked if I was ok. What got to me most of all though, was that I watched my Young Learner boss message that she would definitely be coming, AFTER I had said what I said. No message from her, either. No acknowledgement of anything. She of all people, whose husband I had cried over at his funeral the year before, I expected better from. It was never about anyone not attending the event, I wouldn’t have wanted that. That’s playground level behaviour. But it would have been nice for someone, ANYONE, to show they cared by sending just a single message. And yet, we live in a world where people keep raising suicide awareness/prevention and how checking in on friends (really checking in), can help save a life. In my own experience, it rarely happens. When I left my ex over Domestic Abuse, what I mostly got was ‘But you both looked SO HAPPY together!’ Photos can tell a thousand lies. It’s not hard to fake a smile. But even back then, I remember how gutted I had felt after having just lost my dad to murder, and barely any of the many people I invited to the wedding came. 2 people from Bournemouth came (I had some lovely friends in the Midlands who came, which was lovely), but the people who had known me the longest, they stayed silent. And just to highlight the time difference, my dad was murdered in December 2009, I got married in September 2010. So, everything was still extremely fresh, incredibly raw. But no friends from down here to support me. If more people in my life would have tried to stay in touch or reply to my messages, then the Domestic Abuse/marriage situation might have been very different. I might have felt safe enough to tell someone that I didn’t think I should go through with it. That I was spending my life feeling scared.
The good thing was that I took something positive away from that experience. I learnt the people who I thought had been there for me, who I was always there for whether personally or on a work level, absolutely weren’t. They couldn’t give two flying fucks about me. It was an eye opener, but it did take me most of the last year to work through it and figure it all out (trauma has made me a bit slow, what can I say). And it’s okay. Because I firmly believe in ‘better late than never’. Better I find out now what they were like, than not at all. But it is very much a work in progress. I’m so much more guarded now. I find it hard to believe people genuinely want to see me for me, because they like me, because they want to. I have developed this belief that no one deep down, wants to hang out with me, for whatever reason, and with this, I have been trying to be okay with it mostly just being me. I’m a mum, most of my friends are. Life is busy. I’m busy. There isn’t always the time or energy to do fun things and I totally get that. It isn’t about going out in the evenings or drinking. It’s just about good company and a cuppa (ok..maybe one drink). It’s about having someone to moan to and laugh with and maybe have a slice of cake with (or in my case a banging brownie) or maybe even a lunch or dinner. Sometimes I meet new people and they say something that instantly shoots the potential friendship down before it even has a chance to begin. Two mums who I was getting to know separately recently have both said to me ‘oh, but it’s okay for you, your son isn’t that bad!’ ‘Oh, it’s okay for you, your son speaks! My friend’s son doesn’t even speak.’ And honestly, if a person is going to invalidate my feelings, concerns and experiences over my son’s condition, then I can’t let those people in. Because when things go a bit tits up at home and there is a screaming meltdown after meltdown, when I have been kicked and punched and had things thrown at me, I don’t need someone telling me ‘it’s not that bad’. I need to hear ‘I’ll get the kettle on’ or ‘I’ll pour us a glass’ or I just need to know that someone is on the other end of a message to listen to me break down about how awful a parent I feel and how hard this shit can be. I don’t need fresh judgement; I have had and still have plenty of that. I just need support. I read and hear quite often about how women need other women in their lives to keep them going, lift them up, for the understanding and the laughs, and this always tugs at me a little because I don’t have that. I’m not sure if I ever have. I have, however, been that woman for others. I was there for last minute baby sitting, cars breaking down, problematic relationships, mental break downs, work ideas, but I was never the person other women in my life wanted to spend fun times with. I would find that they would always talk of fun things we should do, but it was always others that they did those things with. And there is nothing wrong with that, to a point. But you do get fed up of getting excited, thinking you’re going to do something with someone, and it isn’t even that they cancel, because that would be understandable, it’s that they say these things over and over again with no actual intention of following through. I’m not a small talk sort of person. I’m a real talk sort of person. You tell me you want to go for a drink and a catch up? I will be secretly doing a dance inside. But don’t say it in passing as one of those things to say to pass the time or top pacify me. I’m a big girl and if people don’t want to spend time with me, I’ll be okay with that, but I don’t want to get my hopes up, don’t want to get excited about things that never happen. Tell me you want to do these things with me because you actually want to, you intend to, not because you’ve just seen me and need something to fill the chat with. The lack of intention from some of those in my life has contributed towards me feeling like I’m just someone who people just don’t want to spend their time with. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel sad about that, I’m ok, but I feel conflicted sometimes. Maybe I would be happier if I had better female company in my life and more of it, but you can’t force that, can you? Time will tell, if it is something that was ever meant for me, or whether I’m just meant to walk this path alone. I just know that I no longer want to be that person that keeps chasing after every one else. I want someone to care about me and care about the things I’m going through.
I’m still trying to work out everything these past few years have thrown at me. I’m not currently my strongest self. I have a lot of anxiety, more than I have ever had before. I’m in my own head so much. I have mini panic attacks every day. I haven’t had a decent night of sleep since mid-July. But what I can say is that I’m bloody proud that I’m still here and still trying. That I didn’t let what others did to me, completely destroy me. I’m proud that when the shit hits the fan, I recognise it, I own it, and I deal with it (i.e. therapy). I’m proud that I looked after myself and prioritised my own peace and mental health when the younger couple wanted me to go to their baby shower and I turned it down due to my (ex) best friend’s wife attending, and what’s more, I’m proud I didn’t just lie my way out of it. If people, no matter how much I may love them and hold them dear, can’t understand I need to do what’s best to protect myself and understand that there are truly no hard feelings over such a thing, then I know they don’t deserve a seat at my table. It doesn’t make it any less painful, but I can hold my head up high knowing that the six of them can continue gossiping to each other about what happened between us, I never did a single thing to any one of them. Shame on them for adding more trauma to an already heavily traumatised survivor.
