AITAH for not reaching out when a 'friend's' mother died?
Ok, hear me out, as this will be long, so I apologize in advance! I am trying to process the situation even tho this happened several years ago. I just needed external opinions as some of our mutual friends thought that I was uncaring. Someone who I thought was a close friend of mine had been quite distant to me for months before the event took place. What I mean is she would tell other friends in our circle about life events and confide in them instead. And I don't mind, it's her decision who she is privy with. We would still meet up for coffee, or dinner, etc and she would finally tell me things about her personal life months after she has told our other friends. I have known about her mom before from our mutual friends that she has been more privy too, but I wanted her to feel comfortable to tell me herself, that's why I never pried about her mom. Even when she was being distant, I would still reach out to her and asked her how she has been doing. Afterwards, I found out from another mutual friend that the reason why she was so distant with me was because I was texting my partner during one of our heart-to-heart conversations. Had she told me that I was being rude for being on my phone, I would have put my phone down immediately and apologized. I honestly didn't realize it at the time, and I felt bad, so I reached out to her once I found out about the root of all this, and apologized for my behavior. Afterwards, I thought we are back in a good place as friends, she even took me out for coffee for my birthday. UNTIL.. I read a scathing PUBLIC blog of hers on her business website about how she needed to cut off 'toxic people' from her life. The blog was definitely about me even though she didn't name names ie. It mentioned about me being on the phone then, me apologizing to her afterwards, me being in a new relationship and how rude it was that I was texting him. I distanced myself from her, given that I felt she didn't want me in her life anymore, as I was a 'toxic person' that she needed to cut off. I didn't want to confront her or apologize again, as I was worried that she will write another blog about me again. I completely lost trust in how she would handle a situation that involves me, so quietly removed myself from the situation, and deleted her number. Any further apologies from me, I thought, would not do anything again to regain her friendship. All of these our other friends were privy to, and they never bothered to ask for my side of the story. So I distanced myself and surrounded myself with friends who didn't take sides. I also wasn't on social media a lot for my mental well-being (i still had my account, and I eventually deleted the app from my phone). This was all during COVID BTW. Anyway, her mom passed away, and since I have no contact with her anymore, no social media, I didn't know her mother passed away. Even our mutual 'friends' didn't tell me about it. I found out about her mom at least a month later, from a friend who is an acquaintance of hers. I never reached out as I felt I was on the 'outside'. She told our other friends that I should have known from social media. That just validated how I felt that group treated me. They made me feel so low that they wanted me to know about her mom from social media instead of from one of them. So my friends, AITAH? I'm still coming into terms with this, so please be gentle. I'm sorry for writing this long, but THANK YOU if you got this far!
TL:DR: a former friend, who didn't want me in their life, her mom died, and I didn't reach out to her. Our mutual friends think I am uncaring and an a*****e. I forgot to mention she wrote a second blog about me, deeming me a narcissist. Yikes!