Most of my “friends” until recently were narcissists and sociopaths to some degree. It had something to do with the fact that I had no self-esteem at all and was completely dependent and had a strong fear of losing friends. It was tiring, but the thing that kept me in those toxic relationship was the fear of being left out. I was that desperate.
But none of them was as toxic as two particular people. One was a narcissist and the other was a sociopath.
The narcissist was a friend at high school. I had basically no friend at high school and one day she offered to sit next to me. She immediately tried to befriend me, asking very personal questions to “get closer to me”. She even claimed that she knew why I was rejected: it was because there was something wrong with me and she could help me become a popular girl. Though I tried my best to deny it, I felt as if there was something very wrong with her. One moment she was really sweet and the next she was a real fireball. I had a hard time keeping up with her mood swing and I dared not to play along with her joke lest she got triggered. She always knew how to talk back to everything I pointed out, there were always “good” reasons for her to do something and in the end I was always at fault. I was finally free of her when I went to college.
The sociopath was less obvious but more toxic. I met her in middle school. I had no friend, again, and we just became friends because we sat next to each other. We usually hung out together, and she was extremely friendly and cunning. She could react with anything very quickly and she always cracked some very brilliant joke. But there was something not feeling right about her: each time we hung out, she was rarely the one to pay for anything. She justified it with the fact that her family was always living on edge (which was somewhat true). I continued to feed on her demand because I was too dependent and sympathetic of her family. As time passed, her greed took on a new level: she started asking to borrow money for various need, most of which sounded reasonable (paying for her school, helping her family…). I believed in everything she said and gave her money. Of course she never paid me back, keeping on putting promises. Again I didn’t complain because I was a fool and because she was too convincing. I finally got some sense into me in college and started to see through her. I found out that her family was pretty poor, but not as poor as she claimed them to be. The money I lent her was probably used for anything but the reasons she told me. The last time I saw her, she was desperately as selfie addict. She insisted that we take selfie everywhere we went to. She was like a spoilt kid who couldn’t get past purbety. I just stopped seeing her and let our friendship fade. My best guess is that she was extremely insecure about her poor family and was using me to create a fake image of a glamorous life for other people, or just to live in her delusion that she was financially secure.
Both the narcissist and sociopath were draining and dangerous, but one thing that set them apart from each other was that the narcissist was less cunning than the sociopath. You could spot the narcissist immediately when you meet them, but the sociopath slowly draws you into them, constantly feeding you with lies and fake love, until you realize you have been rob of something and it was too late to do anything.