The Birthday Disaster: Where I Fucked Up

As said multiple times before, I was equally a bad friend to them (Boss Man, Smartie, and Baby), so I want to highlight a key part when I screwed up to show that I’m not some victim-complexed coward that thinks everyone hates her for no reason. There’s definitely a reason, multiple even.

In the other “Birthday Disaster” post, I touched on the issue on how Smartie and I had differing stances on what was or was not considered ‘leaving someone out’. Because of that, for a good 1-2 years, I would sneakily hang out with Boss Man without the sisters. I did that because they were always busy to constantly hang out. I like seeing and socializing with friends for a good 3-4 days out of the week. Due to our long-distance friendships, I understood it would be harder for us to meet up collectively as often as I would want, plus all the times when Boss Man and I were free, the sisters were unavailable. Still, Smartie didn’t like it when we hung out separately. Because I rather not argue, I just went behind her back and kept scheduling hang outs with Boss Man and asked Boss Man to keep it a secret as well, because I didn’t want to deal with another scolding from Smartie. Also, I understand this is ‘different’, but it also rubbed me the wrong way when the sisters could hang out together and go on trips, but I can’t go with Boss Man. It’s not like I scheduled a meet up with 2 of the others and completely left just 1 person out. I understand they’re sisters so it’s inevitable for them to hang out with each other, but I still didn’t like the hypocritical feel it gave off.

So a few weeks before the birthday plans even came up, Boss Man and I were together. We grabbed dim sum and went to the mall. At the time, Boss Man had forgotten her credit card in the car, so I took care of the bill. No problem. She also told me that she had just lent a hefty amount of money to someone, and it’d take a while for her next paycheck to pay me back. I didn’t mind at all, and she did give me a timeline that it would be at the end of the month.

After my birthday plans got cancelled, in the same FaceTime call, Boss Man brought up that we could go and celebrate my birthday together at a restaurant that next day with just the two of us to make up for cancelling. At the time, even though I was still sad in shock of what just came up, I pretended to go along with it because I didn’t want Smartie and Baby to get suspicious of my true feelings if I declined the invitation. Even though I was upset that they cancelled on me, for some reason, I didn’t want them to know. For some reason, I was scared that they’d get mad at me for being upset. I answered Boss Man in a type of “I’ll think about it and let you know”-type of way, knowing damn sure that I’d be too sad to go out the next day. At least Boss Man had the compassion to try and cheer me up, compared to Smartie that just laughed it off.

The next morning, I texted her at late noon, pretending that I woke up too late to want to do anything. She believed me, but I still wanted to double-down and make sure that she wasn’t worrying about me being upset from last night, so I called her after work. This is where I completely fuck up. On the call, I wanted to give off the impression that I really wanted to go but couldn’t. What excuse did I use? The worst one possible.

I wish this conversation was done over text so I could remember exactly what I said. Since my birthday was at the end of the month, I used the excuse of “Oh I really wanted to go, but I wasn’t sure if you had money to go out and eat since you still haven’t paid me back from that other time yet.”

Go ahead and berate me in the comments. I deserve it. Do you know what’s worse? I didn’t even know the severity of what I was saying until a week later when she brought it up to me. I was trying so hard to cover up one problem (that wasn’t even a problem to begin with) and in turn just made her feel like complete shit.

I didn’t even stop there. To make my excuse more believable, I, then, started asking about updates about when the money would be sent over (because, again, it was getting to the end of the month). What I said and how I worded it probably left Boss Man in such a shock that she just sent me back the money she owed. Because the money was never my true intention in the first place, I genuinely told her that she didn’t need to send it back right away, but she highly doubted that THOSE words were true and sent it anyways. Still I was oblivious to what I had just done and ended the call by saying, “Yea I really wanted to see you today, but I just didn’t know if you could meet up.” I really wish I had concrete proof of what I said because I believe it was so much worse and I want to be completely transparent with everyone, but I can’t remember the exact words since it’s been so long. I was such an idiot and said stupid stuff that I genuinely didn’t even mean. My head was just so far up my own ass I couldn’t see the harm I was doing to her. She was so nice and went out of her way to try and cheer me up after what happened the day before and I did that to her.

For the next few days, she hadn’t answered my texts, but I thought it was just normal since I still wasn’t aware of how heavy my words were. On the weekend, she texted in the group chat that she wanted to FaceTime call us. Still being unaware, I was making jokes at the beginning of the call. After everyone got situated and comfortable in front of the camera, that’s when Boss Man announced to everyone what I did and how it made her feel. In her own words, she explained that the way I came at her made it feel like I was a “loan shark” and that now she truly knows “how calculating and money-hungry Lia is” and she knows in the future that she would “never borrow money from Lia ever again”. Please believe her words. Even though I never meant what I said, the way I said it was enough to make her feel this terrible. When she asked me to explain myself, I didn’t even know what to say. I apologized that my actions made her feel this way and that it wasn’t my intentions. Although from her point of view, it probably looked like I was just trying to cover my own ass and seemed insincere.

Through the tears and hyperventilation, I said some even stupider shit. “I didn’t want you to feel like you needed to spend money to cheer me up if you didn’t have the funds for it.” I’m so fucking stupid. I was in too deep and still didn’t want to say it was because I was sad from Smartie canceling my plans. Now in this call, I thought if I brought it up, they’d think I’d be turning this into a blaming circle, trying to deflect my actions, and not own up to them. So, in turn, I try to own up for my mistakes, and yet made it worse along the way.

Boss Man explains that she wanted this to be a group call, rather than just a serrate call between the two of us, like how it was initially, because she wanted everyone to be aware of the problem, so we can all be open to each other’s grievances. Since I’m the one that caused her pain, I’m not one to judge how she deals with healing and confronting the issue. This is something I can take 100% of the blame. I mean, it’s not like this was anyone else’s fault. So, in the end, learn from this, dear readers. Just be honest with your feelings from the beginning, or at least if you’re going to lie, DO NOT bring up ANYTHING about money.

The rest of the call was just the girls trying to pretend this was a normal FaceTime call; talking about school and work.

TLDR: I’m truly a money-hungry, selfish cunt that doesn’t deserve good friends.