This happened several years ago but I always wondered if I was truly the blame for this.

When I was elementary school, I got really close with this girl Wanda. She lived a neighborhood over, and she would practically beg me to hang out with her after school. My mom didn’t like the sound of this. She’s really to herself, for one. She also had a terrible childhood that involved violence and neglect; so she never wanted us out of her sight.

Every time I asked to hang out with Wanda, she would blow me off and just say “no, end of discussion”. However, I kept asking and I got on her nerves about it enough for her to finally give me a reason why.

She explained that she was worried about Wanda’s older brother. She shared with me that when she was younger, a friend of her’s brother was inappropriate with her; and she was worried about something like that happening to me. 10 year old me didn’t understand the weight of what my mother just said to me. To me, all I took it as was finally a reason to give my friend Wanda for why I can’t seem to hang out with her outside of school. I told Wanda and she told her mom. Her mom, of course, wasn’t happy about that and unfortunately me and Wanda never hung out, outside of school. To this day, my mom blames that incident on me. Every once in a while, my mom used to bring this up; and she would even throw in there that at school award ceremonies, Wanda’s mom would give her the stink eye.

I always thought that my mom was being a fucking asshole about this. I was 10. And even then, my mom just told me this and walked off. She never followed up with me about how important such a thing was and never talked to Wanda’s mom and cleared things up. She just put it on me. AITA?