I lost one of my best friends when I was 16. She’s not dead. But her parents found her Twitter and found out she liked girls. 

All her accounts disappeared and she wasn’t anyone texting back and at first we thought like oh maybe she got her phone taken for the weekend. But then her cousin who became friends with us through her reached out and said her parents found her twitter, deleted all of her accounts, made her change her number, were making her do

online school, and were putting her in conversion therapy program. They even went as far as telling this cousin of hers to not contact them or her again because she was a ‘bad influence’ for not breaking her trust. 

We were internet friends so it’s not like I could see her around, but her parents made her do online school and cut her off from her local friends too so that wouldn’t have made a difference. The only time anyone has heard from her since was a few months after everything when one of her old school friend’s who was also in our little ‘twitter circle’ found her new number. She reached out, only to get a very scripted sounding response that said something like “i’m fine now please don’t text me.” keep in mind she had known this girl for YEARS. 

She was special. I can’t remember her ever being angry or even shady towards anyone. She just radiated kindness and goodness. It’s been three years and I miss her so much that I cry if I think about her for more than ten seconds. The weight feels like I’m grieving a dead person and it’s crushes me. Please ban conversion therapy. It destroys lives. It dang near destroyed mine and I wasn’t even the one put in therapy.