I suppose I should start somewhere.
I was moved to the Pacific Northwest United States in my sophomore year of high school. The three years of my life prior to this disruption had been spent in the midwest US growing very close with my previous friend group, so when I laid eyes on the landscape of western Oregon they were tear stained and resentful of all they beheld through the sun shower soaked car windows.
My new territory was beautiful.
It was an impressionist landscape masterpiece courtesy of the intermittent rains, streaks of searing golden sunshine interlaced with every conceivable shade of green to form a cheerful and refreshing world reflecting a bounty of life.
I hated all of it. It seemed harsh and mocking to me, as I internally reflected upon the fresh social ashes of my latest old life that I had loved fiercely and left against my will.
Since I was an artsy bookish dork I immediately fell in with the other artsy bookish dorks, which made me the seventh member of a group of girl friends. Another two girls, Debbie and Becky - were introduced shortly after I joined via my friend Brittany. Brittany had been friends with Debbie since grade school. Shortly after being added to the group Debbie and Becky became a couple and since they seemed like such a good match we were all really happy for them. Since they went to a different school than the rest of us, contact with them was sparse at times but we all shared enthusiasm for art, anime, culture and the world at large.
This friend group introduced me to more anime & manga than I had ever conceived of existing, as well as absurd foods I had never heard of let alone tried before such as bubble tea & Pocky. They became my new space, the place I belonged, and my refuge from my family home.
Things were good for what seemed like a long time.
Then - at some point - Debbie decided she didn’t want to be a girl anymore. When we went to anime conventions with her and Becky, chest binders and how they could be fitted under costumes was suddenly a major topic of discussion. Such a major topic of discussion in fact that it seemed to be all Debbie wanted to talk about, ever.
Eventually all group time that wasn’t spent discussing binders became devoted to Debbie complaining incessantly in detail about how ALL of the doctors trying to help her with her new respiratory ills were unhelpful & harmful idiots.
Unwilling to be a constant sympathetic ear to a now perpetually ill-tempered person in what seemed to me to be a problem of her own making, I eventually unfriended & removed Debbie from my social media feeds to reduce my exposure to the perpetual fountain of acrid feedback she now seemed to have become regarding life in general.
I wish that had been the end of it.