Sticky Fingers

Romantic relationships aren't the only type of relationships I have that fail miserably.  I mean crash and burn, dumpster fire, stuck in a pool with piranhas kind of miserable.  This is the story of an ex-friend, we'll call her Sticky Fingers.

Sticky Fingers and I met during 2020.  It is so fitting that this budding friendship started during chaos.  We lived in the same apartment building and met through a mutual friend.  We bonded quickly, leaned on each other through dating drama, spent many weekend mornings on her couch watching TV and making breakfast, and we talked all day everyday.  I truly loved her and saw her like a sister.

I first learned it was a toxic friendship when I found out she was messaging a guy I dated, we'll call him Minnesota, on Instagram.  She knew him as well, he also lived in our building, but she went out of her way to try to get close to this guy.  It never sat right with me.  It is one thing to be friendly and cordial but it's completely different to actually go out of your way to invite someone to events and invite them to your house for drinks.  I told her how much it bothered me and her response was to say that I'm too much.  It made me second guess how I felt and think about whether or not sticking to my guns would be worth the friendship.  I decided to let it go but it only got worse.  There was a time we were all hanging out at a neighbor's house and she was drunk as she usually is and smelling Minnesota's armpits.  It was beyond weird but she said she liked the smell of his detergent.  Sticky was unhinged.  The final straw in this situation with Minnesota was when her and I met up for happy hour with some mutual friends and she asked if I had spoken to Minnesota.  I had not but I asked her why.  She told me that she had invited him to her apartment for drinks right before meeting up with me for happy hour and I lost it.  This girl clearly did not care about my feelings whether she disagreed with me or not.  I know she would not have liked it if I had invited her ex over and I knew him as well so why would she do it to me?  I saw red.  I don't remember what I said but essentially she looked at me wide eyed and said she didn't know it would bother me.  Fuming, I closed my tab and walked out.  Her response?  To send me a bottle of wine via Instacart with instructions for the driver to tell me, "Sticky says she's sorry".  She was a coward for that.  I thanked her for the wine thinking it might prompt a conversation and it did not.  She said you're welcome as if she did something great.  I crafted a breakup text, hit send, and again no response.

About three months went by without contact and during this time I moved out of the building.  Never expecting to see Sticky again, I ran into her when I was with a mutual friend at my favorite country bar.  Another friend encouraged us to speak and it was like nothing had ever happened.  I truly missed her, like I said, I thought of her like a sister and we had been very close.  Breaking up was life changing because I was so used to having her around.  During the time we didn't speak, she had built another tribe on Bumble BFF.  

Shortly after we started speaking again, it was as if we didn't skip a beat but it took me some time to get used to the new people in her life.  Not the girls from Bumble BFF so much as the guys she was hanging around.  Sticky doesn't have a lot of self-worth, I know because she accepts the bare minimum from MEN (and men only).  She's always been thirsty for male attention, good or bad.  Some of the men she was hanging around were extremely disrespectful towards me and her both.  One guy said she had no class and I clapped back at him hard like any good friend would.  I always stood up for Sticky.  Shortly after a couple of instances occurred where I stood up for both her and I to these guys, she noticeably stopped inviting me places.  

With that said, let me rewind just a bit.  One day, before we took our 3 months hiatus, I went to a friend's birthday party on the bay.  The day drinking and sun did me in and I fell asleep early with a gold necklace on that had "Love" in cursive and diamonds.  In the middle of the night the necklace was choking me so I placed it on my nightstand, too lazy to get out of bed and place it in my jewelry box.  The next morning, Sticky knocked on my door around 6 am.  She had a black eye from falling off a scooter, still drunk from the night before with a bottle of Jack in her hand.  She needed to talk.  I had her come into my bedroom to tell me what happened since I had a friend visiting and she was asleep in my office/guest room and I didn't want Sticky to wake her up.  After Sticky vented to me, I offered to make her and my guest breakfast and she said she wanted to go to her apartment to grab ingredients for an Irish coffee.  Later that day, I noticed my necklace was gone.  I searched in the carpet since it was thick carpet, I was hopeful that it might have just fallen off the nightstand.  When I couldn't find it, I asked Sticky if she had seen it, she said no.  

So now we're past the 3 months hiatus and she FaceTimed me early one day to tell me about the date she went on the night before and SHE IS WEARING MY NECKLACE.  I was shocked.  I never thought she was capable of taking from me.  I didn't say anything immediately because I didn't know what to say to not be accusatory and not display anger.  Shortly after is when she started excluding me from her friend group and I realized I had nothing to lose.  I asked her why she was excluding me and if that was my necklace.  She said she finds me difficult to be around.  And she said the necklace was not mine but that she liked my necklace so much that she copied it to replace her "one of a kind" gold necklace that TARNISHED.  TARNISHED!  Meaning NOT REAL GOLD.  Sticky was CHEAP.  CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP.  She didn't spend significant money on anything but Jack Daniels.  She was the type to fill up her Shein cart with 30 items for a grand total of $50.  I responded by defending my actions in standing up to disrespectful comments her guy "friends" made about her and also said wow, what a coincidence that she bought the exact same necklace that I "lost" on the same day she was in my bedroom.  Sticky did not respond, again, she is a coward.  But she did put the necklace in an envelope with a Post-it and mailed it to me.  No return address and no signature on the Post-it.  Sticky wrote, "I did not steal your necklace.  I don't care about jewelry enough.  Either way, though, I don't want it, so I hope you enjoy".  

HOPE I ENJOY MY OWN NECKLACE?!    

@mytraumawearsprada What is everyone doing with their Friday night? Also, I wish I could see like this girl, even lip syncing had me winded lol #brokenheart #brokentrust #friendship #sandiegolife #whendoesitend ♬ original sound - official.autumncorin