Intense friendship-
Sorry if this is a bit long but I just need to vent a little too.
I was friends with this person for maybe more than 15 years. We called each other best friends, we chatted everyday, travelled together a few times too.
I have spent most of my life just worrying about her, thinking of her because she’s very… let’s say drama prone? Like if it’s not guy problems, it’s friends… work … family and actually I spent a lot of my time supporting her, advising her best I could as a friend.
I know I’m a bit more introverted and don’t tend to open up easily about my own problems (a totally me thing!!) but as the years went on, our roles in the friendship was just me being agony aunt all the time and I didn’t feel like I had the space with her to share my feelings because she is the focus.
Anyway, jump forward to a few years ago.
My grandma passed away and at the time she was going through some family and relationship problem.
Without going into too much detail - she was involved with a married guy and she was arguing with her family because they didn’t approve. Pretty big things happening in both our lives.
But I was still trying my best to be supportive even though I didn’t think morally what she was doing was right. I tried to advise her before it all blew up but of course love is love! She said she found her soulmate.
I just remember even though staying up late at night making funeral arrangements still looking at all her messages and trying to console her.
Shortly after this I experienced burn out, sort of living life on autopilot . If anyone asked me if I was okay, I would say of course! Because I honestly thought I was fine. Everything that year became sort of a blur, I had some pretty heavy brain fog too, like now I think back I don’t even really remember what I was doing at work or if i did anything fun or significant.
As me and this friend do not live in the same country, we relied heavily on emails and messages.
I started to not reply, give really vague answers and eventually I stopped replying at all.
I was so exhausted. I know it’s really awful to ghost people and not give an explanation But I was so spent I literally had nothing to say. I couldn’t really explain what was going on because I just felt pretty numb. Couldn’t explain so didn’t say anything.
It wasn’t until one evening I was walking home and I had like a really morbid thought, “like what if I jumped off this bridge” despite it being a glorious summer day and I had just had some drinks with friends. I came to a realisation that maybe I needed some help and that I hadn’t been feeling completely myself for sometime.
I sought help after that, got into therapy, had my meds adjusted, started working out! Lost a lot of weight and started to return to my baseline.
Yesterday this friend sent me some very long messages telling me I was immature and a terrible friend because now she knows I didn’t value our friendship like she did.
She ended the message telling me she deserved better.
I sort of get that it was horrible of me to just cut her off. But I also don’t really regret it because in the last two years i’ve managed to make so much progress on myself and my mental health. I just really needed the space and not have to explain.
My friends who are around me gave me so much grace and time to let me be. I’m so grateful and no one ever forced me to explain myself which I really appreciated.
Now with this friend, she’s a lot more dramatic.
Like she always sent me really long intense emails whenever something happened in her life.
Just like the messages she sent me last night, long and intense.
I know I’m in the wrong for disappearing for a while without explanation and I do feel slightly guilty, she does deserve better so maybe I just let the friendship go completely and there’s no need to explain.
Should I just explain anyway?