Toxic Flat'mate'

I had a friend that was really toxic, she was the leader of our friend group, really charasmatic and easy to get along with. She's the kind of person you instantly like. So the first year of our friendship was fine, we got on really well. But in the second year we flatted together (5 of us all girls) all of us friends or aquaintances before hand.

That year was a really tough year for me. I call it the Year of Hell in my mind lol. To kick it all off my childhood friend died a month into me moving into a flat with these other girls. I took it really hard, but I'm a very private person when it comes to negative emotions. I'd stay in my room until I had my emotions under control before I'd go out and socialize with everyone else. This girl would come in and try to get me to open up to her, but I didn't want to. (I later found out that this is what she does, she gets people to open up to her and then she uses it for gossip.) She'd use all the typical lines saying she was worried and how it wasn't healthy to keep all the pain inside. By all appearances she seemed like a good friend, just trying to look out for me.

Then after a night out she confessed to going through my phone messages between me and a friend from home and found some concerning messages. I wasn't pleased. She told me she knew it was wrong but she had been worried I was suicidal because I wouldn't talk to her. I told her she'd taken the messages out of context and that she hadn't found anything at all. She spun the whole situation around and started avoided me telling everyone that I didn't trust her and she wasn't sure I wanted her around anymore. All of our friends were trying to convince me all she wanted was too help and not to be so harsh.

In the end I caved, sick of everyone acting like I was a bad guy for wanting to keep my privacy. We reached an uneasy truce, but these little things kept happening. I'd come back from uni to find the pictures in my diary moved to the wrong page, or my calender was on a different part of the wall. If I went away for a weekend I'd find my bed looking like it had been slept in. When I confronted my flatmates they told me ( I kid you not) that it was the ghost (the door to my room would open and close randomly so we joked that I must have one) or that I was paranoid. I didn't have any proof just supsicions so I had to let it slide and started locking the door.

Then I started dating on of her friends. Too be honest I thought she had set it up, since he kept coming down to see her and she wouldn't tell him until he arrived that she was busy. This happened four weeks in a row and he'd end up hanging out with me instead. I don't know why but she hated it. She told me in front of her friends and people I didn't know that I was too robotic and emotionless to date him (she claimed later that she was joking). She ganged up with the rest of the flat to give me the shovel talk. I got mixed messages like 'don't hurt him' but also 'break up with him' but also that she was 'really happy for us'.

Eventually she seemed to calm to the idea when it was clear that both him and I were going to do what we wanted regardless of her opinion. I thought that was the end of it, but she started telling all her friends and his friends that I was turning him against her. She told me to stop poisoning his mind against her, that she wasn't going to lose a childhood friendship because of me.

Then she (allegedly) started telling guys to hit on me, and 'just go for it' and that if I said no 'it was just for show'. This information is according to a male friend of mine, but again, when I confronted her she denied it. Perhaps she didn't, but in that time she constantly abandond me with strangers who made me uncomfortable because they had tried to hit on me. She went as far as to invite one to stay at our flat for an entire weekend and was furious when I ditched them for my boyfriend. Apparently it's rude and irresponsible to leave an aquaintance you didn't want around with your flatmates while you go on a date with your boyfriend. (Note the sarcasm)

While I was staying with my parents for the Christmas Holidays my boyfriend broke up with me out of nowhere. One day we were making plans and the next he was dumping me because (her boyfriend) told him to. I found out later from several different people that while I was away and unable to defend myself she told everyone I had been cheating. I don't think my (ex)boyfriend actually believed it, but I don't think he could handle the heat anymore (either way he's a coward) and broke it off. But that wasn't even the icing on the cake...

The icing on the cake was when she told everyone I had moved out over summer (Everyone knew I was moving out when the lease was up which was a month after summer ended). When I returned to my flat a month before the lease was up, I found some stranger in my room, my stuff thrown into trash bags and chucked at the back of the closet. The real cinch was that I no longer trusted my flatmates and had locked my room. She had BROKEN IN and packed my stuff to fool people into thinking I had left early. Not only that, but the new guy and myself were both paying for the same room.

Suffice to say I hightailed it out of there, and refused to speak to them for a good week. A few months later she had the nerve to ask me if I hated her and I laughed and told her I trust her as much as I would a minefield with no path. I haven't spoken to her since then and it's amazing how much better my life is without her in it. A lot of people who wouldn't talk to me then are good friends of mine now while anyone who sided with her completely have systematically been cut out of my life. A couple have apologised, they hadn't realised just how awful my side of things was. She was very good at playing the victim manipulating things her way that it wasn't until she was gone that people began to put the whole picture together.

Ironically that flat fell to pieces after I left...