TIFU forcing a close friend to confess to being anorexic (nsfw because TG for eating disorders)

So let me preface this by saying it was almost 15 years ago, when I was an adolescent (m13), but I still regret it to this day.

To be frank, I was a little shit in middle school, an asshole even. For example, my best friend was a bit chubby, and I affectionately nicknamed him “my little chub”. At the time, I really wasn’t au fait that what I was saying could be hurtful to people, cause I never really was one to be hurt by words.

We were a group of 4 friends, 2 girls and us, and pretty tight. One of her, let’s call her Sarah, I had the biggest crush on, but being that young, full of hormones and not knowing how to behave, I didn’t know how to express it adequately. So I tried to get closer to her by teasing her. And by all definitions except mine, it was more akin to bullying than anything else. She was really beautiful and sweet, but also pretty skinny (but not overly so), and I don’t know what went on in my head at that time, but I began teasing her about being anorexic, like it was a compliment or something (you don’t know how much I cringe writing and recalling all this, it’s harder than I thought, I wanna slap my younger self).

If it happened once, like it’s bad but it could be excused for being insensitive and not understanding it at the time, but it became a thing for me to say it for like an entire school year. Yet she just always laughed it off and I never picked up the signs I was making her uncomfortable. Our group was always together and i can’t imagine what I’ve put her through during that time.

After a while, I became pretty close to one of her friends, and I tried to extract information about if she liked me, and how so. She didn’t say much more than “you have no chance to be with her”. To highlight how much of an asshole I was, here’s a little show of my character at the time. My best friend had a crush on the other girl of the group for more than one year now, let’s call her Mary. And once, talking to Mary on MSN/Skype, I felt like maybe I had a chance with her. I was still on Sarah but never had a gf before, so what did I do ? I shoot my shot and she became my girlfriend. You should have seen the face of my best friend when we kissed Monday before class. He didn’t really talked to me for 6 months after that. Relationship lasted 3 months.

We were still going at the same parties together though, and that’s when I had that fateful talk with Sarah. For once I was serious, and she opened to me about what I’ve put her through, all the things I said over the year, how it hurt her, but she couldn’t tell me cause not even her family knew, neither her friends, because of how shameful she felt. I was flabbergasted, never in a million years would I have thought she had this disorder, and never would have I thought I would bully her so much that I forced her to confide in me.

It was a long night and we talked just the both of us for a few hours. I at least had the clarity of mind to not try to justify myself, and just mostly oscillated between listening to her and telling her I was sorry and that there were no reason for her to feel ashamed about it (happened a lot later in the conversation). She was a hell of a lot mature than i was, because she didn’t hated me, and just wanted me to understand what I’ve done to her. I didn’t knew where to put myself after that, what to do, what to say, I just wanted to erase this entire year and wished I could undo what I’ve done.

Ironically, we became closer friends after that, and I ended up doing a 180 in terms of personality, I won’t say that traumatized me, that would be disrespecting to her, but I was so horrified I promised myself to never put somebody through something like that again because of my shameful ignorance. I stopped with the edgy jokes, the kind that can happen to one in a hundred, I stopped with the nicknames, and began to try being more open to how many walks of life there are.

Fifteen years later, it is still one of the most shameful things I’ve ever done, but I never hurt somebody like that again. She forgave me, and to this day, she and I are still close friends, despite the group not being a thing anymore.

TLDR: Bullied one of my best friends to confess she was anorexic.