My friend

She's amazing and I love her. We've been hanging out like every weekend and watching TV and stuff and getting closer. She's quiet and kinda shy, she apologizes a lot for small stuff and she always double and triple checks to make sure what she's doing is ok when she's over.

Anyways, we were at my dad's house and he got mad at me and my siblings a little because we didn't finish our chores. She looked a little uncomfortable, but so was everyone. It's always really awkward when there's an argument at someone else's house. I didn't think much of it and turned up the TV a little so we couldn't hear. We ended up taking a walk because my siblings and I were supposed to walk the dogs and we didn't. So we did it with my friend then.

After that, everything seemed to be fine. We had dinner and then played "loser lick a lime" (a game we invented) and this 7-second challenge thing and we were laughing and joking and having a great time. Then my dad got mad at my little sibling and was doing some loud berating but not quite yelling and scolded me as well. He was fairly pissed, but he's like this pretty often because we usually forget to finish our chores. My friend kinda tried to apologize and say it was her fault for distracting us (even though it wasn't and my dad was being a little ridiculous about the things he was upset about).

After he went back to his room and left us to work, my friend said that she should probably get back, so we hugged goodbye. She hugged me for an extra-long time and I thought she was trying to be nice since it's a little awkward to be yelled at (even though I wasn't concerned about it). But when we stopped, she had her face kind of covered with her sweatshirt and practically ran out of the house (she didn't get her shoes, keys, or wallet even).

I noticed she didn't get her shoes and I was worried about her, so I grabbed then and went outside after her. I thought she was in her car, but as I was getting my socks off to walk across the grass, I heard crying from the side of the house. I went to check and she was there. She seemed to be really upset and was crying pretty hard.

Through tears, she told me that the reason she had to move a lot was that in the places she stayed she kept messing up without meaning to and the people there would scream at her about it. She has a lot of really painful memories of it and she hates thinking about it. When our dad was berating us, it triggered those bad memories. She apologized for getting us in trouble several times, and I assured her that she hadn't done anything, it wasn't her fault. After she explained what happened, I asked if she wanted a hug. She just kind of nodded, so I hugged her and rubbed her back a little while she cried. She's such a wonderful person, I don't get how anyone could be so cruel to her and I felt really bad that I had (even accidentally) put her in a situation that brought all that back. Then she told me something that hurt my soul. She said "I wish I was brave like you. Whenever they screamed at me I was frozen and all I could do was run away and cry." It must have been so awful for her. She must have been so scared and hurt. I told her that it wasn't a matter of bravery. I didn't handle it better, I just shove all my emotions away and ignore them. People just handle situations in different ways and one isn't better than the other. I think it was helpful. I hope it was the right thing to say.

After she stopped crying, I got her shoes, wallet, keys, and some drawing she had done while she was over. We have not an inside joke, but an inside idea that there are levels of friendship. We talked about what the benchmarks for different levels should be and they were things like hanging out outside of school, sleepovers, telling secrets, and things like that. Before she left, she seemed to be feeling better and said that we had probably leveled up in friendship. I agreed.

Thankfully, she still wants to hang out on the weekends. I don't know if we should hang out when my dad is home though because he does get scoldy really often. We'll probably mostly chill at my mom's house. She doesn't yell when guests are over. I'm not going to bring up what happened and I'm going to treat her exactly how I did before since I don't want to make her uncomfortable and it doesn't really affect daily life. But if stuff is getting tense or people are arguing, I'll find some excuse to leave with her so she's in triggering situations as scarcely as possible. I really like her and I want her to be happy, but I'm not going to meddle and I won't try to fix her problems or patronize or anything. But now that I know, at least I can discreetly avoid uncomfortable situations.