Cutting someone off and finding better friends

I snapped S like three times or something trying to explain my situation with M. He was crying over his English presentation score and he got an 88 which was like perfectly fine but apparently V said "no offense y'all did bad" and M got really pissed at him. I think both of them are in the wrong: V for saying things without considering the social context or being more tactful and trying to understand things from M's perspective, M because I think he's just really dramatic and overreacting a little bit and I don't think there's anything he can do about it. There's nothing that I can do about it either so I just left him on delivered. It isn't about this isolated incidence though; I feel like I'm having a big fallout with M. It's been a series of events that's been building up to this. First of all, a lot of people (I can give a whole list) hate him. The abundance of that population just shows that he is not a good person nor friend. I have always acknowledged M's flaws and what's been preventing me from dropping him for years is the fact that he is nice to me so I feel like I need to be nice to him as well. But more and more I see him being an asshole to other people and having unscrupulous morals. I think the academic pressure plus not "getting it" in stem classes like getting a 3 in AP Chemistry despite reading through the entire textbook and getting a C in Euro last year because he got caught cheating plus the whole friend group break up in May... I feel like all of that has made him into a bitter person. S analyzed him very well: she said that he has a "superiority-inferiority complex" where at times he's like extremely egotistical and other times he's extremely insecure. (I wouldn't be surprised if S becomes a Psych major) I keep trying to make M feel better but I feel like he never will act on what I say. Also, I feel like he's always being backhanded about his comments; he'll say something and it'll be subtly poking fun at you or making you feel bad and putting him in the right. It feels like every conversation with him evolves into an argument and he nitpicks all the little nuances and spins them into big faults and doesn’t see the full picture. He's more concerned about "being right" than being a good person. There are loads of things that I don't know that he did like with A and A. Since everyone ditched him now he's very antisocial. He used to be super extroverted and it's just been progressively getting worse. I still feel guilty, like I have a responsibility as M's friend to look after him because I'm worried if he's going to do something to himself. He told me in August that he felt burnt out and depressed. But he also has become very competitive academically with me like telling me he went somewhere for a conference but explicitly saying that he wasn't going to tell me where. Like girl, if you're going to gatekeep, that's not how you do it. You don't shove it in people's faces; what are you expecting? He's very insecure and usually I'm fine with that since everyone is a little bit insecure, but he ramps it up to a whole new level and projects it onto others, making them feel bad.

Today during advocacy I was practicing my Spanish presentation outside and I was just talking to Y. I was like oh my God I just snapped S like a hundred times what is she going to think of me? But the S walks by and she said that it's all OK and that I am too nice and I should really get away from M. During break I went over to her friend group. I really enjoyed it; they're hella introverted but it was fun being in a quiet group instead of being with a bunch of rowdy people. I missed my old group a bit though, how everyone was laughing. For the past two years I have been hanging out with guys primarily and I've just become a little bit fed up with that. I want to have a girl group again. I've been trying to become more extroverted. For example, I'm trying like see what's a good friend group because after last year's friend group split, I haven't been enjoying my time with those people. I enjoy spending time with the girls but I feel like I never feel any interest in talking to the guys--not like they're like uninteresting, it's just I don't relate to them very well. I tried asking W the other day; I was just kind of ranting to him about V and he was really understanding. I said if I knew the other guys in your group better, then I would hang out with you guys but then he said that some of them are racist and homophobic and now I am going to avoid them as per his suggestion.

It's very strange. In two years I will be moving out of this tiny town. I don't know where I will go for college but it doesn't matter much. It's a transitional period in my life right now and I'm trying to find new friends who I vibe with and who don't piss me off every day like M and V. It's sad because those were my two closest friends and I'm slowly discovering that they're problematic. Those two are the source of so much of my distress and drama and I think that there's potential for me to have a better emotional life this year.

I didn't explicitly tell M that I was cutting him off until Tuesday Sept 10. I haven't been initiating conversations and he keeps trying to make small talk. So on that Tuesday he sent me this song, "I Drink Wine" by Adele with no context. I pull up the lyrics and they're very similar in theme to that conversation I had with him in August about what he's going through. I assume that he needs my advice so I give him some. Then he follows up with "Im going to go. Your being so rude right now." When I asked him what I did that was so rude he was like "Do you ever think about the impact your words have on other people?". So I asked which ones of my words he had a problem with, and he said that I shouldn't have assumed that that song was related to his situation. It makes NO sense why he should be pissed though, the last serious conversation we had was exactly about his mental health and he sent me the song with zero context. Was it wrong for me to assume? Plus I gave him perfectly good advice and wasn't berating him in any way. This is exactly what happened in the August conversation as well. I told him that I wasn't sure if I could help him and it would be better if he sought out a professional, but then he said "Fuck you". I was very fed up at this point so I said "I’m kind fed up with all this. Is it ok if we take a break from talking". After that he started sending me paragraphs trying to explain himself but I just left him on read. In person he keeps trying to talk to me, asking me if I watched the presidential debate and how was Lang and where I was going during lunch. He does not understand what "taking a break" means. I guess he only learns his lessons after he loses his best friends...

Maybe I should think less about social stuff but it's hard as a teenager. Your friends are very important to you and when you don't have a very supportive friend group, you always have low self-esteem for me at least. No friends while being happy is something that only a few people can achieve without getting depressed. Humans are social animals.