The title may sound bad, but I do feel like I may have been right.
I (21m) have a friend, “Gary” (also 21m). We’ve been best friends since we were young, having met in first grade. He was always religious, but he wasn’t pushy about it. He just happened to be religious and didn’t care that I wasn’t.
But that all changed about three years ago. He became very angry and pushy, always trying to get me to come to church with him. I always said no, that I’m not religious and he should know that, but he’d snap at me and tell me I’m wrong and going to Hell. On top of that, he started to always wear this stupid fucking scarf everywhere and would act out if anyone even asked about it. It was a jarring change, because he used to be so sweet and kind. He was like a religious monster.
I tried to tolerate it, tried to be patient with my friend, but last week I just snapped after he tried to drag me off to his church again. I asked what the fuck his problem was, and why he was being so demanding. He told me that his church needed more people, mass was dwindling and he didn’t want to see this church he’s been in his whole life have to shut down, that the clergy was trying to get more people in the congregation. I said that if his church was making him try to force his best friend into something they have said over and over that they did not want to do, he should leave.
Was I wrong? I feel like I was right, but he has barely been speaking to me since I told him that. I feel bad, I’m scared that we won’t be able to make up like we always have before. His sister and brothers have been calling me as well, absolutely ripping me to shreds over what I said. They are seriously making me doubt myself and I want to hear from an unbiased audience.
UPDATE!!!
Oh my God. I had a conversation with Gary, and I feel terrified.
He asked if he could come over to my apartment to chat. After a little over a week of the silent treatment, I didn’t even hesitate when I said yes. He came over, and we drank some coffee and talked.
I asked him what was going on. I said I was sorry as well, that I was just worried about him. I really meant it, I missed when he wasn’t trying to force me into his church. Well, it’s really more of a cult. I asked why he was so dedicated to this place, why it was so important. I get that his family has been a part of it since it began, but is it worth it if he’s hurting the people close to him? Would he be willing to throw what we had away for this place?
His response: “It’s just everything I know, Danny. I mean, God has saved me before. If I were to leave, that would be like spitting on God Himself, yeah?”
I was so confused, so I asked, “What do you mean God saved you?”
I am going to write his response word for word. If you don’t believe me and say I’m a karmawhore making shit up for upvotes, that’s fine because this sounds so insane but it’s the start of my living nightmare. I wish I was making this up.
He said, “There’s this sort of… ritual thing? You kind of have to do it when you’re eighteen, or later if you join as an adult. They put you into a room, empty classrooms in abandoned schools is very common from what I’ve heard, and they leave you there. I think you pass when you get through a month or two, but I never did get that far. I have so many siblings, it’s hard to be entirely alone. So I begged to be let out after a week, and as it is with that tradition, I did not pass and they set the place on fire. I survived, albeit burned. Mostly on my body and not the face, but there’s some you can see. It was God, God wanted me alive. Danny, don’t you see that God cares about us?”
I giggled awkwardly. I thought it was a fucked up joke, but Gary started to get upset that I was laughing at him. He wasn’t joking. He was serious. And he started to ramble to me about how I should really join this church and see if I can survive the ritual, see if God wants me to live. See if I’m strong enough to. There were some other unhinged things thrown in there (something about a deer with a mouth of bloody, razor sharp teeth that screams in constant agony?), but I really didn’t pay attention and just told him to leave, standing up in case he tried to hit me when I was down.
His freakout got even worse. He kept saying that I was going to Hell and sobbing, begging me to listen to him because he doesn’t want me to be tortured for eternity. He was getting extremely loud, making me flinch whenever he started a new sentence, so I reiterated that he needed to leave. He melted down further, clinging to me and crying that he didn’t want me to be hurt, that his church could save me. I slowly walked toward the door while awkwardly holding him. When he saw that I had pushed him into the hallway, he started to actually scream again. Something in the vein of how I didn’t have a choice in the matter, but I just shut the door and locked it.
I didn’t think about it for maybe a day or two, until my phone started to get bombarded with calls. It was so bad I shut off my phone and put it in a drawer. Then I started getting calls on my work phone. I shut that off too, emailing my coworkers to say that they will just have to email me for the forseeable future. Then, as if it wasn’t getting fucking ridiculous enough, the phone in the kitchen that I never used started to get constant calls. I couldn’t stop that, so I answered the phone and almost screamed, “What the hell do you want?”
There was a quiet moment over the phone. There was muffled chatter, then I heard Gary’s voice. It was extremely gentle and soft when he whispered, “Hi, Danny.”
I almost immediately hung up, but he shouted, “Don’t you hang up! Answer me! Don’t leave me, you owe me-!”
I hung up anyway, not wanting to hear what he had to say. I did my best to tune out the phone constantly ringing for the rest of the night.
It’s been a week now, and I’m starting to get people in stark white semiformal wear at my door and letters in blue envelopes with my name written on them in dark red ink. I read one, and it was about Gary’s church, which is apparently called The Bloodroot Foundation. I think it’s named after the flower, but it’s really offputting. I threw it away, despite the forms in the envelope that I was meant to fill out and send back. Or give to Gary, because there was no return address. But I still keep getting them.
I’m honestly getting terrified. If anyone has any kind of advice for this type of situation, I’m open to it. I encourage it. This is like something out of a horror movie and I just want it to stop.