Years ago, I had a falling out with a friend. It was over such petty shit, too. We worked similar jobs. Me, tech support at Zoomtown (Cincinnati Bell's DSL branch). He worked tech support for Time Warner, in Columbus. We'd hang out on weekends (I was renting a house in Cincy from his mother, so he'd drive down, crash there, we had a D&D group...).
And then I got a job with Clear Channel as a sys admin.
The first sign something was up was when he was supposed to pick me up for game night (my then-SO needed the car for work) and... never showed. And when I got in touch with one of the guys we gamed with, he went 'Oh, K said you weren't coming tonight.' So he ditched me, then lied about it to the group. Lovely.
He began avoiding me altogether. Then, one weekend around when I moved out of the house, I was in the kitchen with him and his father. I finally broached the 'wtf man?' subject. He then proceeded to rail on me about how it was unfair I got the job I did and he didn't.
Even his father pointing out: a) you're not qualified for it, b) you never applied in the first place... got nowhere. He was just so angry that I, someone a few years younger than he, had a better job.
I moved on. Kept contact with his father for a while. It hurt, but what could I do?
This was 2005.
The next time we had contact was, oh, probably 2012-ish or somewhere in there. I was on a game. Suddenly had a bunch of people come to me and share pages he'd sent them. See, he figured out I was there. I had no idea he was. But he went around paging people things like: 'Don't believe anything she says about me! It's all lies.'
Now, considering I'd never said a word about him, had RP'd with him, and obviously had no clue who the fuck he was... no one fell for it, thankfully, but it made my time there incredibly uncomfortable (until he left upon finding out that no, people weren't going to turn on me based on his say so).
It's always kind of sucked. At one time, I called him my brother. My chosen family. I moved to Ohio because he wanted me to, because he helped me get my initial job, etc.. I spent holidays with his family.
But the vitriol, I just couldn't anymore.
And then today, he wants to connect with me on a social media site. 12 years after the falling out. A handful of years after he was still being cruel towards me.
I'm trying to tell myself that it's because his father passed away a few months ago, which can make anyone rethink things... but I can't help but be really anxious about it.