A Kingdom for a Loaf of Bread

Marlene joined our gaming group over a decade ago, introduced by a mutual friend. Initially reserved, she gradually integrated, sharing aspects of her life and personality. By 2022, she presented herself as an open-minded, sexually liberated adult who appreciated being treated as an equal. She frequently spoke about her interests, including rope bondage art, her experiences with sex-positive spaces, and her desire to be in environments where she wasn’t judged.

I took her at her word.

In February 2022, Marlene often steered our chats into personal and sexual topics. She openly discussed her frustrations with societal expectations and her experiences in sex-positive spaces. Encouraged by her openness, I casually suggested a sexting friendship. She declined, I accepted without hesitation, and we moved on. Simple.

It should have ended there, but it didn’t.

Weeks later, things took a turn. During a discussion about restarting our Valheim server, Marlene suddenly lashed out at the group, accusing us of excluding her and not being there for her – a baseless claim given our consistent efforts to include and support her. Her disproportionate response was baffling and hurtful. Multiple people reached out to me in private, expressing their disbelief. I did not respond to any of them, but just acknowledged what they shared with me. Alas, what followed was even worse.

Two weeks after that, I reached out privately to address her outburst, but Marlene denied feeling upset and instead tried to rewrite the narrative, claiming her behaviour was entirely calm and rational. She was trying to gaslight me – a deliberate attempt to make me or us, question the perception of events. What’s more, I later discovered she had shared selective, out-of-context snippets of our private conversations with a mutual friend, painting me as predatory and casting my candidness in a sinister light.

Suddenly, she wasn’t just someone who declined an offer – she was a victim of some imagined pressure, a target of inappropriate advances. Conversations that had once been mutual were now recast as one-sided, twisted into something unrecognizable.

She was rewriting history – and she believed it.

At first, I doubted myself. Had I misread something? Had I crossed a line without realizing? That’s the power of gaslighting – it makes you question things you know to be true, but I keep records of my conversations. When I looked back, I saw it plainly: she had been an active participant, she had been open and engaged, and at no point had she expressed discomfort.

Yet, when confronted, she refused to acknowledge reality. Instead, she played the victim – not because she was one, but because it was easier than owning her choices.

This betrayal cut deeply. I had trusted Marlene, treating her with the respect and honesty she claimed to value. Her actions revealed not maturity but manipulation – an unwillingness to take accountability, a refusal to acknowledge her own role in what transpired. She wielded my trust and openness as weapons to deflect responsibility and distort the truth.

How did her trust in me erode so suddenly? I was left bewildered, deeply disappointed, and disheartened. Here was someone who had openly expressed her appreciation for being treated as an equal despite her youth – someone who prided herself on her lack of judgment and her open-mindedness. Yet her actions betrayed those very values she claimed to uphold.

It seemed she wanted the freedom to present herself as mature and unreserved when it suited her, while still demanding the careful handling of herself, who could not be challenged or questioned. In essence, she wanted to enjoy the privileges of adulthood without embracing the responsibilities that come with it – a desire to have her cake and eat it too.

There are certain betrayals that cut deeper than words. They don’t come in the form of dramatic fights or grand acts of treachery. Instead, they creep in – slowly, subtly – until one day, you realize you were left out in the cold while everyone else chose to stay inside.

I want to emphasize a few things that Marlene said to me – things that, to this day, still boil my blood.

She said, “Like, sorry if I fed into that or what… I just thought I finally get to be myself and share stuff. I saw it as sharing with your friends that are just your friends.”

Trust and openness go both ways. I wasn’t just a listener in her self-discovery – I was sharing, too.

Among my closest friends, I’ve always been candid – whether it’s complimenting Darren on his attractiveness, exchanging risqué jokes with Reuben, or even propositioning some of my female friends within the mutual understanding of trust. Their responses have always been gracious – either an easy rejection or a reciprocated playfulness. Marlene, however, was the only one who took something built on trust and mutual respect and twisted it into “making things awkward.”

Awkwardness is not an inherent state. It’s created – usually by immaturity, insecurity, or a desire to escape responsibility.

She said, “I think it’s the fact that you are also like 20 years older than me.”

That was when it all clicked. That was when I realized she had never stopped being “the outsider,” the “kid” we had to tiptoe around.

So what if I’m 20 years older? I wasn’t some authority figure looming over her. I was her friend – someone she repeatedly claimed made her feel seen, valued, and treated as an equal. She enjoyed not being the little sister, not being the one we had to hold back around.

When it came time for her to take responsibility for her own words and actions, suddenly, the age difference mattered. Suddenly, she was too young, too innocent, and I was the creepy older guy who should have known better.

So which is it, Marlene? Do you want to be treated like the grown adult you insisted you were, or do you want the luxury of slipping back into the safety of being the fragile kid whenever it suits you?

It became painfully obvious that her idea of acceptance was entirely one-sided. It was never about being equals – it was about us accommodating her, and her alone. She expected to be embraced as part of our world, but the moment things didn’t go the way she wanted, she wielded age and power dynamics as a weapon, as if she had no agency in any of it.

But what truly enraged me was her audacity to paint me as a “dirty old pervert.”

She didn’t just twist the story. She didn’t just rewrite history to suit her narrative. She equated me to something vile, dragging my name through the dirt with a level of cruelty I never would have expected from someone who owed me gratitude, owed me trust.

I showed the entire conversation – unedited and in full – to Amber. Her reaction was visceral. She called Marlene a gaslighting cunt. I sat there in silence, letting the disappointment sink in.

Deep down, I had always known something was off with Marlene, but I chose to overlook it – for the sake of harmony, for the sake of maintaining the friendship group dynamics.

Some of our mutual friends already knew. They knew what she did. They knew she twisted trust into a weapon, rewrote history, and painted me as the villain. Yet, she still sits among them.

I get it. She didn’t betray them, so it was easier to shrug, rationalize, keep the peace – to sit beside her like nothing happened, but tell me: when does betrayal count?

Some of them questioned what she said. Some of them understood exactly what she did. Yet, nothing changed. Some of them even made space for her, as if none of it mattered.

It felt like I was the one who had to shrink.

That’s why I pulled away. That’s why I don’t show up in Discord like I used to, because while they all carried on, something shifted irreversibly for me. That weight has been eating away at me ever since.

It’s true, Marlene no longer hangs out with us, but the damage was already done.

The moment she was still accepted, still invited, still welcomed, despite what she did – that was the moment it no longer mattered whether this happened yesterday or twenty years ago. It happened. It was real, and none of them can undo that.

Thomas, I remember when he tried to deflect – tried to frame it as though it had always been obvious that Marlene would never truly become part of our core group. That, in the end, she was always on the fringes, and she was never meant to be one of us, but that was never the point. It was never about whether she would have stuck around and grown into our circle. It was about the fact that she did what she did, and those who knew about it chose to let it slide.

That is the part that cannot be rewritten. They all diminished me, and for what?

Metaphorically, they traded an ally who has been with them since the founding of our great nations, for someone who barely commands a farmer’s militia and runs the economy of a back-alley potato market.

They threw open the gates for someone who never earned their place, while I stood among the wreckage of what was lost. And that is something I will never forget.

So she baked some bread. Helped someone move. Is that all it takes? A few favours, a couple of gestures – that’s the measure of a great ally? Is trust and loyalty so cheap that they can be bought with a loaf of bread and a handful of cardboard boxes?

I have been offered many things in my life: gifts, gestures, even grand displays of generosity, but what most fail to understand is that gifts hold no sway over me. People treat them as currency, a transaction, a bridge between individuals, but to me, a gift is not a means of influence. It is a reflection of the giver. What is given, how it is given, and under what circumstances, all reveals more about them than they realize.

A gift is an extension of the soul, not a binding contract. Its worth is not measured in gold, nor in sentiment dictated by social expectation. It is the meaning I attach to it that defines its value.

So no, I cannot be bought. Accepting something does not mean I accept the person who gives it, and society? Its conditions, its silent expectations, its unspoken rules? They do not dictate my choices. If one seeks to offer something in the name of what they believe is “acceptable,” they should also understand this: I am not bound by the same conditions that govern them.

Thomas may believe this is just another cycle of disconnection, that I’ll resurface like I always do, but this time, it isn’t. I am worn down. I am tired. While this may not be a capital offense, it was still betrayal. A betrayal of trust. A betrayal of gratitude.

She took from me, and she gave back nothing but cowardice and deception. Trust and gratitude are not abstract concepts to me. They are not cheap gestures. They are everything.

I learned that the hard way.

When I worked at Loud Productions, everything fell apart. Everything.

One night, I locked myself in the washroom and cried for hours – literal hours. Security guards came and went, but none of them disturbed me. They saw what I was. A man broken.

I cried because I lost Virginia to my insecurities.
I cried because I lost my friends to betrayal.
I cried because I lost my business because I was young and incompetent.
I cried because I lost my family’s support because they expected so much without giving me guidance.
I cried because I lost myself.

That night, I was nothing.

Over the years, the domino effect of that collapse forged something unbreakable in me. I rebuilt. I learned about trust and gratitude, and they became the foundation of everything I stand for.

They cannot be bought. They are earned.

So when Marlene betrayed my trust, when she took from me without giving anything back, when my closest friends let her stay, what do you think that did to me?

What do you think it felt like when the very people I trusted chose to invest in something fleeting, rather than stand by the bond that was already fortified long before these newer friendships existed?

If the roles were reversed – if this had happened to any of them, if someone new had violated their trust – I would have stood by them completely. I would have never let a traitor back into our circle.

Imagine a kingdom of nations, each of us lords and ladies in our own right. When we were great, I attended your grand feasts, celebrated your triumphs, called them my trusted companions. They still are, but I no longer wish to sit at those tables – not when a traitor stands among us.

The last time I saw her, I buried my anger beneath civility, but seeing the rest of them softened the edge, and the marriage proposal between Thomas and Tammy dulled it even further. My respect for them all remains intact, and that is the conflict I now carry, the clash between unyielding principles and long-standing bonds.

I would still go to war alongside them, but when the traitor sits in our ranks, what does that say about the respect they have for me?

I will be civil. I will not start a war, but I will never forget who stood up and who stood aside, and the only one who stood up, was Amber.

The only reason Amber remains civil toward Marlene, is because I asked her to.

And I will never forgive Marlene – unless she does something she has never done before: take accountability. Not with excuses, not with half-truths, not with self-preserving narratives, but with an apology that doesn’t just sound good – it means something, but I don’t expect that to happen. People like her rarely change.

That’s the difference between us. I don’t rewrite history – I learn from it.

Until then, she remains what she chose to be.

A traitor among friends.