Whipping Post?

In school, I had friends that picked on me on one hand then stuck up for me on the other. This post is about two in particular. Friend 1 often insulted my intelligence through "jokes" and Friend 2 seemed to find pleasure in convincing me of whatever thing she chose to come up with, i.e., she convinced me a girl we knew was gay, who in fact wasn't, and then she told me about dreams she had even crying while telling me about them only to later admit that she had been lying. Friend 1 tried to get me to try drugs and Friend 2 used a guilt trip to keep me from trying drugs. Friend 2 used to pick fights (arguments) with me just for the sake of arguing and many, many years later she said she was jealous of me (which may have been why she picked fights with me in the first place). Ironically, I felt jealous of her story telling ability and she was more "endowed" that I was until much, much later in life. Friend 2 also recognized that I was extremely depressed and convinced me to seek help from a intuitive, fantastic teacher (RIP). I hung out with both friends and if you couldn't tell by the way I have been speaking of them both, they hated each other. I felt stuck int he middle all the time. I may have been naive about a lot of things and oh so many jokes went over my head (nicknamed Prude for a reason by Friend 1)) but I saw each of those girls as my friends, not because of how they treated me but I felt they were both damaged and hurting as I was, and I felt being there for them was more important that any meanness they produced intentionally or not. So, when another friend from high school, that I reconnected with as an adult, told me he saw me as a "whipping post" for those girls, I felt offended. Being naive doesn't mean stupid and I made a conscious choice to remain friends with both girls to spite their short comings because I felt that is what friends do. However, I realized later in life that mutual respect in a relationship, whether friends or significant others, is most important but I have always had to learn those lessons the hard way. So, my mistake was putting their needs in front of my own, but that doesn't mean I was anyone's whipping post.