Hi…
I’m new to reddit. So, I guess a little about me: F/34/LA.
I’m not really sure how to start this. Or what I hope to get out of it. Help, I guess. And I know it’s a shot in the dark but I’m just hoping that maybe there’s someone out there who’s dealt with something similar? It sounds insane to talk about out loud to anyone other than close friends or family and as for my close friends and family… well, for reasons that will become apparent let’s just say I can’t really talk to my friends and family about this. So if you have any advice I’d really appreciate it because I’m getting pretty fucking desperate at this point. And I don’t have a lot of time left before she comes to visit.
She. Sorry. I mean Melissa. At least, I thought that was her name. Now I’m not so sure.
Two weeks ago, I was literally living my best life. Not how people say it as a joke. Like, actually. I’d had some tumultuous years in my late teens/early 20’s but those ups and downs were all behind me. I’d accepted some hard truths and settled into a life that I’d worked hard for. My on-off boyfriend of 13 years finally popped the question (if I’d had it my way we would’ve been married a decade ago). So I was just enjoying being newly engaged. My best friend flew us out to Paris to celebrate and start looking at dresses in some boutiques there. Life was really, really good.
So yeah, about my friend. My best friend is a pretty huge actress. She’s like super well known. In fact, whoever’s reading this, I’m actually positive you’ve either seen her work or at the very least know her name/face. She and I, like my now-fiancé and I, met in college. We were both majoring in journalism but actually never met in the journalism school. We met in acting class. See my dream was always to be a super-famous actress. It sounds insane now but at the time that was genuinely all I cared about. That dream was legitimately what got me out of bed in the morning. I always saw journalism as my back-up, but even then, I thought my back-up was like being a news anchor or hosting (like Andy Cohen or Maria Menounos vibes). I never thought I’d work behind the camera (which I do now, and I love!). Actually if you went back in time and told 18-year-old me that 34-year-old me would be a line producer on a local news show, 18-year-old me would have probably been suicidal. But anyways. My best friend and I hit it off in acting class freshman year and pretty quickly became inseparable. In a lot of ways, her friendship has saved my life over the years. She means a lot to me.
But that said, it wasn’t always easy being her friend, when we had the same goals and she had such a leg up. She comes from a family that let’s just say has a lot of resources (without going into detail, to protect her/my identity) and her family had no problem throwing those resources behind her to make it all happen for her in Hollywood. In fact, she ended up dropping out Sophomore year. Staying at school didn’t make sense. She was just getting too many role offers.
So, yeah. That was hard. I’d taken out massive loans and my parents didn’t have any resources to throw behind me. I was on my own. And by best friend was smooth sailing from role to role, signing with major talent agencies and being spotted with major Hollywood heartthrobs. She didn’t know it, and I’m not proud of it, in fact I’m super embarrassed about it now, but for a while there, I was pretty much extremely, seriously jealous to a dark/unhealthy extent.
So anyways.
My best friend and I were walking in to a Parisian boutique to try on a few dresses when I got a text from a number I didn’t recognize.
“Hey girl! I just heard the news, so excited for you and (my fiancé). Lots of love xxx”
I’d gotten so many congratulations texts in the week since I’d gotten engaged, I didn’t think anything of it. I was just a bit embarrassed to not have the number saved – I have a bad habit of not saving numbers – but nevertheless just responded: “hey! Thank you so much! I actually just got a new phone and not all of my contacts synced 🙈whose number is this?” The typing bubble popped up… then vanished. Then popped up…
“It’s Melissa! From (university’s name).” I instantly got a pit in my stomach.
Melissa was someone who I’d very intentionally left in the past.
Melissa and I were also friends from school. But she’d entered my life during a really dark chapter and to be honest, when I think of her, it’s hard not to picture her as the other shoe dropping.
When my best friend first left university for Hollywood, I’d gone through a period of intense loneliness. At the same time, my boyfriend (now fiancé) and I had hit a rough patch – stupid shit, just juvenile 19-year-old stuff. I was wondering if our relationship had any future at all, really, or if I wanted more out of a partner/relationship. I’d never felt so alone.
And then I met Melissa.
She was extremely charismatic, that’s what first struck me about her. And she listened. As we got to know each other, that’s what a big takeaway was for me. She was the first person in my life who really, truly listened and not only that, wanted to know the answers to the questions she was asking me. And more than that, she never forgot anything. We’d lay out on the quad for hours, her just letting me vent about my best friend, my boyfriend, my parents, my insanely high-achieving brother. She was fascinated. And the way she looked at me, it was like I was all that mattered to her. Like I was her world.
I know that sounds weird. But for someone like me, who’d never been that important to anyone, it was actually really nice.
The thing is, I think I told her a little too much.
See, my boyfriend had really been getting on my nerves (for the reasons above) at that point in my life. Plus, I don’t know, I was young and stupid. Let’s chalk it up to that. But anyways. I’m not proud of what I did. But I did it. I cheated on him with… let’s call him BRAD* (*obviously changed the name, not taking the chance that someone who knows us will find this and connect the dots). Brad was just some frat guy I met at a party and honestly, I don’t really know what I was thinking, but we ended up having sex. At first it was just like, a one-time-thing at a party, we were both kind of drunk, whatever. But then it became a way I could somehow sabotage my relationship and fuck up my own life, so of course I kept doing it. I probably cheated on my (now fiancé) upwards of 30 times over the course of six months with Brad. And the worse part is, a few years later, Brad and I did it again (during my quarter-life crisis). Of course, my fiance to this day has no idea. Yes, we’d dated other people during the times we were “off” again, but we were very much “on” during the times I’d slept with Brad and honestly, on some level I was fucking Brad because I was just so angry with my fiancé (at that time) and wanted to hurt him.
Melissa always lent an ear to my relationship problems and relished in the stories about Brad. She thought the whole thing was just so scandalous and delicious and asked for every last detail. Of course, I gave them. I was very much with my boyfriend (now fiancé) and my best friend was off on location too busy to respond to my texts let alone talk for hours, so at this point in my life Melissa was the one person in the whole world I could be honest with.
I also told her a lot, I mean a fucking lot of personal details about my best friend, that she’d shared in confidence. I figured Melissa was like a vault. I’d never tried therapy at that time, but now I know that I was basically treating Melissa like a therapist, as if she’d signed an NDA. I told her about my best friend’s traumas, her ED, her parent’s divorce, private details of her dad’s quirky habits and insane romantic life, her innermost secrets, everything. My dumb 19-year-old ass told myself I was only telling Melissa this as a way to process it all and help me be there for my best friend. And honestly, it did feel good talking it out with someone because my best friend’s lavish upbringing was just sooo foreign to me at the time so Melissa and my gossip-sessions were a way of processing it. But the truth is that I was doing this out of like, some deep dark void inside me. Jealousy. Anger. Disdain. You name it. And whenever I was with Melissa, I felt this darkness growing, like every negative emotion I’d ever had was festering inside and all my insides were turning black like coal.
Whew. Okay. So that’s just the tip of the ice berg, but it’s enough.
So, you can see why, while sitting in that boutique with my best friend, who’d literally flown me out first class to fucking PARIS, FRANCE and was going to be the maid of honor in my wedding to MY FIANCE, I was extremely disturbed to get a text from Melissa.
I was so freaked out I actually dropped my phone. My best friend rushed to pick it up so I wouldn’t spill my complimentary champagne flute, but I beat her to it. She eyed me, I was definitely acting weird, but after a moment we just went back to looking at dresses. I spent about 20 minutes absentmindedly raving about dresses (while secretly trying to not have a heart attack) before my phone dinged again.
“(My name)? Are you there?”
I was actually starting to feel ill at this point. Because there was a lot more I’d told Melissa during our friendship, things that could hurt me, my family, my friends, my relationships. Basically, Melissa was like the one person on earth who had all the ammo she needed to ruin my life. And normally, I’d be like – who cares? So what? But the thing is, I know she’d do it. I can’t tell you how I know. It’s just a feeling I got from her towards the end of our friendship, before I’d started to distance myself. It was something in her eyes that wasn’t quite right. It was the frothy vigor with which she’d try to get me to open up to her, digging deeper and deeper into the weird web of traumas, lies, and secrets. Mine and everyone else’s.
She’d really revealed herself towards the end with all the times she’d pushed just a little too hard for info. I wasn’t sure what she’d do with it – or why – but I got that feeling in my gut that something wasn’t right. Plus, by the end of our friendship, my best friend’s schedule had calmed down and she was back in my life full-time. And my boyfriend and I had worked through our issues and were actually really happy. So in the end, Melissa became… baggage. Scary baggage. A liability, actually. Something I had to cut loose. So I did.
My phone dinged. Melissa, again. “Hello?”
My best friend looked over, laughing about how popular I was. “getting engaged’ll do that to you, I guess.” I tried to laugh, to look calm, but I was not calm.
I figured I’d bite the bullet. “Hey, (best friend), do you remember Melissa? From school?” My best friend raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Melissa? Was she a pi phi?” No. Melissa hated sororities. After a few more half-hearted guesses, my best friend shrugged. She didn’t know any Melissa from school.
That was weird. But I figured, she dropped out sophomore year, before I really started hanging out with Melissa. It made enough sense.
But later, I asked my fiancé if he remembered Melissa from school. Sure, it’s been a decade or so, but he has a pretty stellar memory. But even he was drawing a blank. Nope. No Melissa.
This is where it started to get weird.
I texted a few friends asking if they knew Melissa from school’s address for a save-the-date (it occurred to me I couldn’t recall Melissa’s last name, which for some reason gave me chills). Literally every single one was like “who?” Nobody could seem to remember her.
The weird thing was, I could recall her like I’d just seen her yesterday. I could close my eyes now and see her like she was standing a foot away from me. Tall, skinny, blonde with dark eyes and a button nose. She walked a little funny, with a limp that she said came from a childhood accident, she’d been hit by a car but didn’t like to talk about it. And this intensity behind her eyes. When I first met her it wasn’t there, she was actually pretty childlike with big smile and this goofy-silly-fun energy about her, like a twelve-year-old in a twenty-year-old’s body. But as we got deeper into our weird-intense-co-dependent and semi-fucked up friendship she’d gotten… darker. By the end, I felt unnerved just being in her presence. Like I had to take a shower after seeing her, almost, it’s hard to put into words, she was just bad vibes. But what was weird about it was when I tried to shake her off and cut her loose, it was easy. Like one day she was just poof, gone out of my life. I can’t say I was very sad about it, either.
DING-DING-DING.
I was trying to enjoy dinner in Paris with my fiancé but my phone kept blowing up. It was Melissa again. And again. And again. Her most recent text read: “I know you’re busy but I need a favor.”
I turned my phone’s ringer off. But I couldn’t shake the paranoia and anxiety. How did she know I was busy? Did she mean in life, or literally right now, because I was at dinner with my fiancé? Did she know I was at dinner with him? How could she?
Later that night I figured I had to respond to her, or I’d run the risk of pissing her off. And IDK if you’ve ever been in a situation with someone who could seriously fuck up your life and relationships but you don’t want to piss them off.
I typed: “Hey, Melissa! So good to hear from you! Sorry for the delayed response, I’m out of the country celebrating my engagement. I’ll be back on my phone soon.”
Melissa responded immediately, despite the insane time difference. I wasn’t sure where she was living these days, but it must be somewhere in a vastly different time zone, and wherever she was, it had to be an odd hour at that time.
“We need to speak in person.”
For some reason, a chill ran down my spine. The thought of seeing her face-to-face after all these years… well, weirdly, I felt like I’d seen her face to face recently. Like, in my dreams. When I closed my eyes. She felt near, in a weird way that I couldn’t quite explain.
I was losing patience but still wanted… or needed, to tread lightly. I typed: “what’s this about?”
“Remember how I was hit by a car?”
This whole thing just kept getting weirder and creepier.
“yes.”
“It has to do with that.”
What did she want from me? And why was she being so roundabout? She wasn’t threatening me – again, she didn’t have to, the threat was implied – but still. I couldn’t quite figure it out.
I told her I’d see her first thing when I got back from Paris. I get back from Paris tomorrow. And I’m feeling… not great about it, to be honest.
So yeah. I don’t know what to do. And I’m freaking out.
ISO: advice for how to handle this? How to just somehow avoid her and/or not panic about my entire life being ruined?
Thanks in advance.
EDIT: thanks for all the advice. Things have taken kind of a weird turn… I posted an update here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/13wbc91/comment/jmamm78/?context=3