From Best Friend to Enemy

Just imagine, is it possible for someone who was once your best friend to turn to become your enemy? Well, this is definitely possible, although it may be uncommon. The fact is that, this had happened to me once.

When I was in Form 2, I was a close friend of someone, and we were together most of time in school. However, starting from the latter half of Form 3, we were no longer friends, instead we became enemies. So, what caused us, once very good friends, to become enemies? I am telling the whole case here.

I won't mention his name in this post, instead I will refer to him as Mr X, since the letter 'X' is used to represent unknowns in Mathematics and he was a great fan of Mac OS X. I will also use abbreviations to refer to other persons. There were several incidents that eventually caused me to stop being friends with him. Before I talk about why we stopped being friends, I will first mention how we knew each other and became good friends.

When I entered Form 1 in January 2008, I was initially allocated to class 1A13. Mr X wasn't in class 1A13. Three weeks later, all Form 1 students were asked to select the elective option for the Living Skills subject, either KT, ERT or PK. I chose KT, but PK was the only option for class 1A13. Therefore, I had to switch to another class which was 1A11, on 28 January 2008. Many other students had to switch classes as well. Mr X was in class 1A11, and I soon began to know him. He started the first conversation with me by asking me about my family. Then, we started becoming friends and I often talked to him. However, he was not my best friend at that time, instead my best friends were MA and AF. I sat beside MA instead of Mr X in class.

In January 2009, we entered Form 2. Everyone remained in the same class. This time, I chose to sit beside MA again, while Mr X sat in front of me. Because of that, I could talk to Mr X more often and we became closer. In February 2009, one day before the Chinese New Year holidays, I followed Mr X to take part in a chess competition. During the competition, I had the opportunity to talk to him a lot and I gave him my mobile phone number. Then, one night during Chinese New Year, he telephoned me and talked to me for a while. After that, we became very good friends.

At that time, I was facing a problem. One of my friend often sat with me in the canteen during break time. However, he usually ate slowly. Most of the time, I would finish my meal first and he would ask me to wait for him. As a result, I was often late for class. I really disliked that, but it would not be nice for me to refuse to wait for him. When Mr X knew about the problem, he invited me to eat with him behind the school's bookshop during break time. With that, I would not have to face the problem I just mentioned. Later, our teacher rearranged the tables in my class. Previously, only 2 tables were joined together, but after the rearrangement, 3 tables were joined together. Mr X chose to sit on my left, while MA sat on my right. Since then, we became even closer.

As time went on, Mr X would phone me almost everyday just to ask about some simple things. He liked to talk to me and we shared our problems together. During break time, we would eat together. During ICT class, we would share the same computer. We were often together anywhere in school. Mr X often told me that I was his best friend. Starting from May 2009, I started considering Mr X as my best friend, replacing MA and AF, and that lasted until 10 August 2009. During that period, it was the peak of our friendship.

Now, I will talk about why I stopped being friends with Mr X. As I stated earlier, there were several incidents that contributed to this. The 1st incident happened in August 2009, the 2nd was in February 2010, the 3rd was in May 2010 and the 4th was in August 2010. Problems in our relationship began after the 1st incident and our friendship completely ended one year later after the 4th incident.

1st incident:

In August 2009, a tragedy happened. The H1N1 influenza lasted from May 2009 until September 2009. Among that period, the most serious was in August 2009, because it was widely spreading in Malaysia and it spread into my town, Kulim. On 10 August 2009 (Monday), Mr X did not go to school. Then in the morning on the second day, 11 August 2009 (Tuesday), he phoned me. He told me that he did not go to school on the previous day because he was sick. I hoped that he wouldn't be going to school on that day but Mr X told me that he would be going to school. My grandparents asked me what he said to me. Usually, if I refused to tell them, they won't force me to say. However, on that day I was being silly and I told them everything. After hearing what I said, they were worried that Mr X might spread his sickness to me. They told me to keep away from him, but I lied to them saying that he wouldn't be going to school. I regretted telling them about it. As soon as I arrived school on that afternoon, one of my friend told me that someone in our school had been diagnosed with H1N1. During the assembly, the teacher announced about that and gave every student a mask. Then, I saw Mr X. In class, Mr X stayed quite close to me. I did not stay away from him because I was afraid that he might get insulted. Then, a teacher came to my class and asked all those who were sick to go home. A few students went home but Mr X did not. I then said to every student "If you are sick better go home and don't pretend that you are not sick, otherwise you repay is you will get H1N1 !" Mr X suddenly showed me his Panadol and said to me "I never knew you would curse me. I thought you are my friend." I was unhappy about that but I just apologized. In my opinion, he should have gone back home, as this was the instruction from the teacher.

Throughout that day, I stayed quite close to him and I did not wear the mask all the time as it was uncomfortable. I was not worried of getting infected, but I had to make sure that my grandparents would not see me being together with him. When the school was over, I quickly walked in front of Mr X. As I walked out of the school gate, I saw him stopping at the gate to talk to one of his friend. I was relieved and I just walked to my grandfather's car. Out of my expectation, Mr X just stopped at the gate for a few seconds and continued walking. He called me a few times from the back. I ignored him, quickly reached the car and opened the door. At that time, Mr X was already beside me. He touched my back and said goodbye before he walked away. As a result, my grandfather saw Mr X and felt worried that he might spread his sickness to me. I was unhappy with what Mr X just did. On that night, I used my newly-bought electronic dictionary. I had stored the email address of my friends in it earlier. When I browsed through them at that time, I came across Mr X's email. I suddenly felt annoyed looking at his email address and I thought of hacking his email. The reason I had this feeling was that I was unhappy with his actions on that day. On the next day, 12 August 2009 (Wednesday), Mr X did not go to school again. MA also did not go to school. As I was sitting alone, I asked my friends AFZ and AF to come and sit beside me. I then asked AFZ to hack Mr X's email and told him Mr X's password. However, AF heard that and he reported to Mr X. Mr X was unhappy with me because of that.

On 13 August 2009 (Thursday), I felt a bit tired and drowsy in school. After returning home, I took a long bath because I could not 'concentrate' on taking bath. I tried my very best to finish my dinner so that my grandparents wouldn't know that I was feeling unwell. After dinner, I lied down on the bed. My grandmother saw that and felt my forehead. Then, she walked out of the room to tell my grandfather that my forehead was warm. Immediately they took me to see a doctor. I expected my fever to be around 37.5 C as my forehead was not very warm according to my grandmother, and my vision was not blurred. Usually when I had a high fever I could not see things very clearly. However, the doctor said my fever was 39 C. He said that it was unlikely that I had H1N1 because my breathing was normal, but he gave many precautions. My grandfather still suspected that I had H1N1 because of the precautions given and the high fever. On the following week (16 August - 20 August), there would be a school exam, but I could not study for it as I was sick. I remembered that Mr X told me that his fever was also around 39 C. My grandfather then telephoned him to ask him about that but he said that his fever was only around 37.4 C. I suspected that Mr X was lying. On the next day, 14 August 2009, my grandparents took me to see another doctor. This doctor use a more accurate device and said that my fever was only 37.5 C. My grandparents and I were relieved. I fully recovered on 19 August 2009. However, as I did not prepare well for the exam, I performed poorly in it. When the results came out, I was disappointed that I only got 6A and 2B. The subjects which I got B were Chinese and Geography. I had no time to study Geography and I could not write my Chinese essay well due to my sickness. My position was 64th in form and 10th in class. In the previous exam, I got 2nd in form and 1st in class, so this was really a great fall for me. I blamed this on Mr X, because if he did not go to school when he was sick, I wouldn't have fell sick and scored badly in my exam. Worse still, Mr X managed to get 8A in this exam. After this incident, I no longer considered Mr X as my best friend. MA became my best friend once again.

2nd incident:

In February 2010, our English teacher gave an oral test. That was the only oral test in 2010 and it was held in groups. The teacher divided us into 6 groups. The teacher did not allow us to choose our group members. She asked Mr X to divide the students into 6 groups and ensure that each group had a mixture of boys and girls from different race. She also asked Mr X to choose the leader for each group. At that time, there were 5 top students in our class, who were me, Mr X, OJK, JV and NVP. Mr X chose himself, OJK, JV and NVP to be the group leaders for 4 out of the 6 groups. However, he did not make me a leader for any group. Instead, he placed me in his group where he was the leader. I really wanted to be a group leader as well and I strongly believed that I deserved to be one. For the 2 remaining groups, Mr X chose two other students, MTG and RB to be the leader. MTG was quite well disciplined but RB was not well disciplined. Therefore, I felt that Mr X could have let me be the leader for RB's group. I knew that he wanted me to be in the same group with him, but he could have let me be the leader for his group. He was already a prefect and the leader of several clubs and societies, while I was just the treasurer of our class, so he should have given me the opportunity instead. I felt that he was selfish because he wanted to be the leader and at the same time wanted me to be with him. I was really upset about that. Worse still, Mr X failed to carry out his responsibilities as a group leader. I then boycotted the group during preparation and I joined the group only during the oral test. Eventually, I got a score of 28/30 in the oral test. After this incident, I no longer considered Mr X to be my close friend.

3rd incident:

One night in May 2010, my mother telephoned me. She told me that KPP, my primary school friend who was studying in SMJK Chio Min, posted a photo of all my primary school classmates on Facebook and tagged me in it. I logged into Facebook on the next day to see the photo. There were some comments for the photo. The first comment, written by a Chio Min student, stated "I really missed that. How I wish we could be together again!" Another Chio Min student commented "We could meet last year during Daniel's birthday party. I don't know why he did not have a party this year." DG, a student in my secondary school (SMKSB) replied "It's because Mr X is Daniel's best friend now. He has forgotten you all." Then, MXY, another girl in SMKSB replied "Daniel is so close to Mr X. They always hold hands everywhere they walked." Not wanting the Chio Min students to misunderstand, I replied "Mr X is just my friend, not my gay partner, MXY likes him instead." TWS, a SMKSB student replied "I support Daniel. What he said was right." Then, a Chio Min student replied to TWS in Chinese "How did you know? Is it because you and Mr X know each other's feelings?" This comment was written in Chinese except for the word 'Mr X'. I didn't continue replying to the comments and I turned off my computer. After a while, Mr X telephoned me and kept asking me "What is happening on Facebook? Is it true that MXY likes me? They said that we are gay?" It turned out that when I commented on the photo, it appeared on Mr X's home page and as a result he saw the comments. I said to Mr X that I was just joking about MXY liking him and I told him to ask DG and MXY if he wanted to know more, since I was no longer online and I had limited internet access at that time.

In school on the next day, Mr X was still not satisfied and he asked me the same questions again. He said that DG refused to tell him anything. I told him that I was not sure what happened later because I only logged into Facebook for a short while. However, he would not believe me and he kept on asking me. Eventually, I could not bear with him any longer and I said to him "You should be banned from Facebook!" He replied "Go ahead and ban me!" Then, we had a minor quarrel. In my opinion, he should not have bothered about the photo since it had nothing to do with him. On that evening, Mr X telephoned me to ask about the same things again. He wanted to know the meaning of the comment written in Chinese, as he could not read Chinese. Since the comment contained the word 'Mr X', he knew it was about him. Although I did see the comment, I had forgotten what it was about, but he would not believe that. On the following day, he continued asking me the same things in school, threatening to end his friendship with me if I refused to answer his questions. I decided to just ignore him. He told his friend that it was his father who wanted to know everything. Then, I also told my friends that I would not mind losing Mr X as a friend. Later, he tried apologising to me, saying that he wanted to be friends with me again. I continued to ignore him. On that evening, he phoned me and apologised once again. He said that TWS had explained to him about the whole incident and he had understood everything so he would not continue asking me about that. I then agreed to forgive him. After this incident, we talked to each other again like before, but I no longer considered Mr X to be a real friend. I think that in this incident, every one including me did something wrong. However, the reason I said MXY liked Mr X was because I wanted to divert the Chio Min students from the thought that he was my gay partner. It would be better for them to think that a girl liked Mr X than to think that he was gay. However, Mr X blamed me for doing that instead. The fact that he kept asking me so many questions clearly showed that he was blaming me.

4th incident:

One day in August 2010, we went to the Science lab during Science class. At that time, the teacher gave us back our Science paper for the PMR trial examination. Due to some errors in the marking, all students could receive extra marks. Many students including me got only 1 extra mark while a few students got 2 extra marks. However, Mr X got 3 extra marks instead. I wanted to know the reason for that so I took his paper to have a look. He then said to me "Why are you looking at my paper without my permission? If you are so impolite I will not want to let you see it." I still managed to find out why he got the 3 extra marks. I was unhappy with his reaction. Although it was indeed my mistake, Mr X had done the same thing to me many times in the past. Back when we were sitting together in 2009, he often did not bring his textbook to class and whenever that happened, he would simply take mine and place it on his table without even asking me, resulting in me having no textbook in class. I never scolded him for that. This time, I did it to him just once and he scolded me. On the next day, we had class in the Science lab again. Our teacher asked us to finish an exercise within 30 minutes. Mr X said "There are so many questions. It is impossible to finish it in 30 minutes." In my opinion, he should have said "I will try" instead, so I answered him back 'Everything is possible in this world!" He replied "The ability of humans is limited. Only God has unlimited ability!" He said it so loudly that everybody in the lab could hear it. After we completed the exercise, our teacher discussed the answers with us. One of the question was "Name the object in the picture above" and the answer was 'satellite'. Almost everyone in the class answered 'satellite', but Mr X answered 'solar-powered satellite'. He had always liked to give his answers as long as possible, which made me feel that he was just trying to show off. I said to him "The answer is satellite. There is no need to write solar-powered." He replied "The picture shows a solar panel on the satellite. Are you blind? Don't you see it?" I was very annoyed with that. Later, someone asked the teacher "Is the space shuttle a spacecraft?' The teacher answered 'Yes'. Then, I asked the teacher "A rocket is also a spacecraft right?" Mr X immediately said 'No' while the teacher said 'Yes'. Mr X insisted that a rocket isn't a spacecraft and as a result even the teacher was unhappy with him. I said to Mr X "Teacher said that it is and I believe her." Mr X replied "If you take a rocket, you would be bombed to death!" I got even more annoyed with him. After these incidents in the Science lab, I completely ended my friendship with Mr X. I never talked to him again and I considered him to be my enemy. This is the case until now.

Apart from the 4 incidents, there were also several other reasons that contributed to the worsening relationship between me and Mr X.

1. Mr X was very concerned about his hairstyle. He often told me that many of his friends and teachers disliked his hairstyle but he felt that there was nothing wrong with his hairstyle. As a result, he hated his hairstyle but yet he refused to change it. He would also bring his comb with him all the time. In my opinion, boys should not be too obsessed with their hairstyle.

2. Mr X was not confident with himself. He kept thinking that he was not smart, that no one likes him, that he was ugly and so on. Therefore, he was often unhappy and depressed. I felt that he had way too much negative thoughts.

3. Mr X often shared his problems with me, especially problems with his relationship. Initially, I was happy to listen to him. However, as time went on, I felt burdened. He also would not accept the advice I gave him.

4. Mr X would phone me almost everyday. Most of the time, he just asked about simple things like the homework, the timetable and so on, which was really annoying. Worse still, most of the time he would call my house's landline phone instead of my mobile phone. Therefore, I could not know that it was him calling until I picked up the phone, so I could not ignore the phone call. I really regretted giving him the number of the landline phone.

5. Mr X always wanted to take part in every competition in school and he would do anything to enter the competitions. Besides, he always wanted to be the leader. Actually, he had taken part in many competitions and he was holding positions in several clubs and societies. In my opinion, he should give others the chance at times.

6. On 4 August 2009, Mr X came across a blog owned by some girls in our school. He felt that the name of their blog was inappropriate. Therefore, he created another blog to tell them the mistake. However, he was really worried of the consequences that he would face for doing that, so he used my Blogger account to create that blog instead. Worse still, he let me know about that only after he had done that. I was alright with that in the beginning, but I later realised that my popularity among those girls could be adversely affected because of that.

7. Mr X was a very sensitive person. Once, my friend MA was practising his oral test with me. Suddenly, Mr X came to say something to me. When he realised that MA was practising his oral test, Mr X apologised for interrupting. However, after apologising Mr X continued to talk, so I ignored Mr X. Just because of that, Mr X thought that I no longer wanted to be friends with him.

8. Mr X would always share the computer with me during ICT classes. However, most of the time he was the one using the computer and I had little opportunity to use the computer. This became worse after he had a Tagged account. He kept using the computer to browse his Tagged account. It was me who signed him up for the Tagged account after he received an invitation to join Tagged and I really regretted doing that.

9. Every year before 2010, my secondary school (SMK Sultan Badlishah) required every student to donate a minimum of RM25 to the Parent-Teacher Association. Many students including me felt that it was too much and that it burdened our family. In 2010, the school suggested increasing the minimum donation to RM50 per year. Many students including me were strongly against that. However, Mr X agreed with that by saying we should 'follow the river' instead of 'going against the river'. In reality, he supported that because his father held a position in the Parent-Teacher Association and would benefit from the donations.

10. Whenever a classmate or a teacher asked Mr X a question, he would answer as long as possible, but most people could not actually understand what he answered. He also liked giving strange answers.

11. In May 2008 when I was in Form 1, we had an oral test for the Malay subject. There were 36 students in our class. Our Malay teacher wrote the numbers 1 to 36 on pieces of paper and put them into a container. All students were asked to pick one of the papers randomly. The number written on the paper picked would determine the order which the students would take the oral test. For example, the student who picked number 12 would be the 12th person to take the oral test. Unfortunately, I picked number 5, so I would be the 5th student to take the oral test. In the previous oral test, I was the 3rd person to take it. I felt that it was unfair because I was always unlucky enough to be among the first few students to take the oral test. So, I cheated by adding 2 in front to change the number to 25. It turned out that the student who actually picked number 25 was Mr X. I told Mr X that the teacher made a mistake so there were two number 25's. Although he did not see me cheating, he was very sure that I cheated. Later, the teacher distributed a name list and asked all of us to write down the number we picked. I wrote number 25 in the name list. The teacher said that on the first day of the oral test, the first 8 students would be doing the test. I did not make any preparations for the first day because I thought I had written number 25. However, on the first day of the oral test, I noticed that on the name list, my number had been changed from 25 to 5, obviously by Mr X. I told the teacher that my number was actually 25 but Mr X told the teacher that I cheated by changing 5 to 25. The teacher believed Mr X and she forced me to do the oral test on that day without any preparation. I could not speak well and I scored only 16/30 for the oral test. Although I cheated in this case, it was because I still could not speak Malay well so I needed more preparation time. Mr X was a prefect and he always spoke very well, even without preparation. In addition, during the previous oral test he was the last few students to do the test while I was the 3rd person. So, he should have agreed to exchange with me. The marks for that oral test was carried forward to Form 3. Luckily, for my year it was not included in the PMR examination, otherwise I probably would not be able to get A in Malay which would result in me not getting 8A's for PMR.

12. On 14 October 2010 after my PMR examination, the school organised several activities for the Form 3 students. One of the activities was the Treasure Hunt competition and I wanted to take part in it. My friend AF was in charge of the name list, so I asked him to write down my name for the Treasure Hunt competition. Each class could send 5 students for the Treasure Hunt competition. There were already 4 girls taking part in the Treasure Hunt competition, so I wanted to be the 5th participant. However, they did not want me to take part because I had already joined 2 other competitions. They felt it was unfair if I were to take part in so many competitions. Therefore, AF wanted to remove my name. However, I noticed that Mr X was taking part in 3 competitions as well. So, I argued "Why does Mr X get to take part in 3 competitions while I don't?" I insisted that if AF were to remove my name, he must also remove Mr X's name from one of the competitions. Mr X angrily asked me "What proof do you have for that?" Another boy, AFZ got angry too because he thought I was intentionally looking for trouble with Mr X. The girls were also angry that I insisted to take part in the Treasure Hunt competition. However, I refused to give up. A week later, AFZ told me that the 4 girls had chosen AF instead for me to be the 5th participant for the Treasure Hunt competiton. When I asked the girls about that, they said that Mr X complained to our teacher that he felt they were unsuitable to take part in the Treasure Hunt competition. They were really angry with Mr X so they went to meet our teacher, and the teacher supported the 4 girls. When the teacher asked about the 5th participant, the girls called me but I ignored them because I was busy playing chess with someone. Therefore, they decided to choose AF instead of me. I then met the teacher and explained to her that I had given my name for the Treasure Hunt competition before AF. The teacher, the 4 girls as well as AF agreed to let me take part. Eventually, I took part in the Treasure Hunt competition with the 4 girls. In this incident, my statement that Mr X was taking part in 3 competitions was a truth so he should not be angry about that. It was also wrong for Mr X to judge the 4 girls as being unsuitable to take part in the competition.

So, that's why I was no longer friends with Mr X. We won't be friends again, not now, not in the near future and probably never will at all. Lastly, thanks for reading this!