Auntie SparkNotes: I’m Being Friend-Blackmailed!

Dear Auntie,

In writing this email, I have resigned myself to being a terrible (and overly dramatic) person. I have a friend situation. Two years ago, I went to a new school, and I became friends with a girl (let’s call her Brittany). She wasn’t a good friend of mine, but she started confiding in me, telling me that has depression, and that she has cheated and plagiarized in tests.

A little background on me, I’m a scholarship student, so I work really, really hard to get good grades, and it really upset me when she said she had been cheating pretty much the whole year, ever since her parents told her to get her grades up. But I didn’t know how to approach it, so I didn’t tell anyone.

Brittany started expecting more and more out of me. At this point in time, I’d made new friends who are great and support me, but Brittany wouldn’t let me go anywhere without her, and she refused to sit with them. I thought about it, and over the entire time I’ve known Brittany, all we’ve ever talked about is her. I kind of ‘broke it off’ with her, then she proceeded to tell anyone who would listen (including the counselors and my head of year) that I was discriminating because of her depression. I found this extremely offensive (and evil) for many reasons:

1. It was evil, and a blatant lie. I ended our friendship because I felt that whenever I talked to her, the conversation was entirely about her, and I was otherwise in a good place with people who support me. A lot of the time, I felt like she was sucking energy out of me.
2. I’m a scholarship student, so when Brittany brought the principal into this (as someone who actually pays to go there) I was terrified.
3. I am not discriminatory at all, especially around mental illness. I have anxiety disorder, and my older brother was depressed to the point of being suicidal a few years ago.

The principal gave me a warning, and Brittany gave me an ultimatum: be her friend, or she would go to the principal again. I understand that she is in a dark place at the moment, but I am not equipped or required to deal with the added stress of her, along with schoolwork. I have a chronic autoimmune disease, which I also deal with, even though I miss a lot of school. I know this is bad, but I don’t think I have the mental energy to deal with her, and I don’t know what to do now? I guess that what I’m asking is how do I make her go away?

Um. Find the escape hatch for the terrible 1980s movie reboot you’ve wandered into, and get the hell out of there before Brittany copies your haircut, kills your puppy, and murders your boyfriend with a shoe?

(Side note, if you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, GO HERE)

Because geez, Sparkler. This whole entire scenario is a straight up made-for-television nightmare. And even if your “friend” isn’t a puppy-killing, eye-gouging, identity-stealing psychopath (which, okay, she probably isn’t… probably), her behavior is still deeply disturbing. Emotionally healthy people don’t want to be friends with someone who doesn’t want to be friends with them, let alone blackmail the unwilling friend into continuing the relationship. That’s so [bleep]ed up I can’t [bleep]ing believe it.

All of which is to say, I don’t think you’re going to have any success in “making” Brittany do anything, because Brittany is a lunatic—in a way that has nothing to do with depression, and everything to do with being manipulative, boundary-challenged, and totally unrestrained by the basic limits of human decency. This isn’t a matter of distancing yourself; it’s a matter of protecting yourself.

Unfortunately, you’ve got an uphill battle ahead of you on that front, since Brittany is already out in front of this situation peddling her baloney sob story about being discriminated against. (I also cannot believe we live in a world where school administrators are issuing official warnings to individual kids for the crime of not liking someone, but that’s a rant for another time.) So, here’s the deal: First, find someone to confide in—a counselor, a teacher, your parents, or all of the above—so that your version of events is on the record somewhere. And second, if you have any evidence of Brittany’s bad behavior, from the blackmail to the plagiarism, pile it up and bring it with you to your own meeting with the principal—a meeting you should attend with your parents or another trustworthy adult who believes you and will advocate for you. (If you don’t have evidence, see if you can get her to go on the record, i.e., in a written message, with the be-my-friend-or-else stuff.) I know this isn’t easy—it may even feel profoundly petty and overdramatic—but when this girl is already pushing the narrative that you’re some kind of ableist bigot, you’ve gotta push back. If nothing else, you’ll be glad to have your story already circulating if and when she decides to accuse you of “discrimination” again.

And let’s be honest, she probably will. Because despite her ultimatum, you’re not going to let this girl blackmail you into wading around in the toxic mire of a “friendship” you don’t want. You were and are perfectly entitled to end this relationship. Not only that, you’re perfectly entitled to end any relationship, anytime, for any reason, including reasons that make people think you’re a jerk. This might be the craziest thing about this entire scenario: that even if you did distance yourself from Brittany because of “discrimination”, i.e., because you had a gross dislike of depressed people, it doesn’t freaking matter. You’d still be completely within your rights to not associate with her.

The good news is, you can be perfectly, unimpeachably civil to Brittany without being her friend. If she says hi, say hi. If she asks how you are, say fine, how are you. And if she asks you to sit with her, spend time with her, help her with homework, or otherwise engage in anything more than a surface-level acquaintanceship, say, “No, thank you, I’m [otherwise engaged/sitting with other friends/not interested/not comfortable with that]”, and politely excuse yourself. It might feel weird at first, but the more you kindly but firmly hold that boundary, the easier it’ll get. You can do it. And while Brittany may try to leverage your boundary-setting into another accusation, you’ll be giving her so little to work with on that front that she might also just give up, and leave you in peace.

That, or she’ll show up to school having cut and dyed her hair to look exactly like yours, in which case you should run like hell.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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