I have a friend who until this year was my best friend. She was the one I could trust with anything, the one I always wanted to hang out with, the one who I talked for hours on the phone with. Now, she is someone who I can no longer really trust, I avoid hanging out with her, and I sometimes ignore her calls. However I blame our lost friendship, not on her but on me and our other friends.
She has a serious problem, one which I think she cannot help. I have looked it up and found that she is most likely a pathological liar. She fits all the signs and symptoms perfectly, and I think if given help she could go back to being her old self. I don’t think her parents realize her problem, otherwise I’m sure they would have sought professional help for her by now. When she’s around them she’s a totally different person, always calls them “mommy” and “daddy” and always says ‘I love you” when getting off the phone with them or leaving. All of my friends and I have realized her problem, and have discussed helping her and talking to her about it but we never do. We are all too selfish to help her, to say anything to her, out of fear of her reaction. My parents once found a note from her to me in the trash, one where she told me things you’d be shocked to read. My parents threatened to call her parents and show them the note, because they needed to get her help. I begged them not too because I did not want her mad at me, and I needed a partner in gym class. My parents never showed her parents the note. Deep down I knew they should but I couldn’t bring myself to tell them that. I asked my friends what they thought and the said to show her parents the note, and they said if she got mad at me they’d back me up, because she needed help. Months after the note, only two of our friends have had the courage to say anything to her, even if it’s not what she needed to hear. They both caught her in a lie and told her she was lying, that only made her mad and did no good.
Even as I write this essay, I can’t see myself confronting my friend about her problem. Though something needs to be done, and soon before she ruins her life. This I believe.