Caveat: Bitchy.

A conversation which took place tonight:

Older friend of mine: So I was just watching this thing on ABC Primetime. It was basically just teenage girls being mean to each other online. Are girls really that vicious?
Me: Yep.
OFOM: Wow. How do girls survive? Why are you so mean?
Me: Because we don't hit each other.
[pause]
Me: Actually, there is no "survival." It doesn't ever really stop. It just changes from calling someone a rampant slutface because she french kisses or wears a pink bra to calling someone a rampant slutface because she asked your boyfriend drive eight hours to shoot semen on her in the backseat of a car and then hit a deer on the way home nine days before you became official. Not that that happened to me or anything.

(In retrospect, she probably didn't ask him to hit the deer, but it's obviously her fault anyway because she's blonde.)

The thing is, I've done much, much worse things to nicer people than me. I'm sure there are groups of friends out there to whom I am the rampant slutface. (some of them I'd guess a little closer to home than I'd normally feel comfortable with) Let's not forget the way R and I got together in the first place: We hooked up once after a completely platonic sleepover, then I stopped talking to him. For six months. While he pursued me and I had one boy (who I was officially dating) practically living with me and another on the side and one more on the bench just in case. I like to consider this period in my life my make up period for not going slutty my freshman year. I am an overachiever.

Six months down the line he pulled a poor-me line: Should I even try, do I have a chance? After six months of getting shot down, his confidence was just then faltering. I said yes, call me when you get back in town, and promptly got back together with my ex.

Finally, after his best friend sat me down and explained the situation to me in painfully clear terms (Either get together with him, or stop fucking with his brain, because I'm tired of hearing him talk about you) I decided to start seeing him. Ish.

And then came the situation with the phone call and the mental illness and the best friend with whom I was possibly still in love but had just gotten engaged. And I woke up, little by little, and realized that fate had handed me one last chance to get my head screwed on straight before I ended up banging married guys.

Now--god, I can't believe it. And I'm still apologizing to some of the people I hurt. But I'm a better person for it, I hope.