frustrated and annoyed

OK, this could potentially be very long and complicated but i will attempt to make it short and sweet.

There is this girl who i have known for a few years now (4 to be exact). We used to be pretty good friends and were roommates for a while. At the time she was in a serious and long term relationship with a guy and spent virtually all her time either with him or working. As a result I was basically her only friend for much of those 4 years. Sometimes she was cool to hang out with, but she could often be very unpleasant and not enjoyable to be around. It was the general consensus among all of our (read: my) friends that she was overbearing and often rude. However, I stuck by her for much of that time especially while we were living together. It wasn't until later on when I finally started losing patience with her and found out she wasn't being a good friend to me (ie: trash talking my relationship with my bf behind my back, telling others things that i told her in confidence, etc) that I started distancing myself from her.

Anyway, she has since been dumped by her long term bf, and in the past couple months has been trying to weasel her way back in to my group of friends (they've all known her as long as I have but never had real friendships with her). They first started inviting her out occasionally out of pity. Now she's apparently done a complete 180 and is "awesome" to hang out with. News to me! She is STILL doing things that frustrate me though which is preventing me from attempting to rebuild our friendship. She twists my words around and takes offense to silly comments i've made (nothing of ANY importance or anything anyone else would be offended by) and goes and complains to my friends about it in an attempt to get their sympathy and fish for compliments. I often don't even remember these things i've apparently said to her and notice that she takes things out of context. She constantly plays the guilt trip card with my friends if she doesn't hear about every party/hang out/whatever. I just have no patience for her anymore.

SO having said all that, I'm wondering if I should just suck it up and accept that she insists on being part of my group of friends and that they haven't rejected her. They know my feelings about her and say they don't worry about her griping and defend me. I'm just so annoyed that she's decided to suddenly be the complete opposite of what she was before she got dumped by her bf and is imposing herself in my circle of friends. After I've spent years retaining and building on my friendships (ie: NOT being a b*tch to them) and she thinks she can just walk right in and expect invites to everything.

Am I overreacting? Should I give her a second chance and let bygones be bygones? She knows how I feel about her and why but hasn't really made any attempt to fix it. I don't have any strong desire to be friends with her again but am wondering if I should just do it to keep the peace.

I'm not sure you have a choice. Your circle of friends have accepted her so your only two options other than accepting her yourself are: not associate with the circle anymore. Or, try to make the circle see her the way you do. I'm sure you won't want to leave the circle. Trying to get the circle to agree with you will backfire because you will appear to be the one who is causing the problem.

If they all like her and she's turned herself around--why hold a grudge?