I'm feeling down today in general, but I need some advice re a friend who seems to have cast me aside. She's been like this on and off throughout the whole time I've known her, which has been about 5 years. Sometimes she wants to hang out, and she tells me private things about her life, then, she disappears for long stretches. At times she'd even like stuff on my facebook page, but still wasn't available, which annoyed me.


When the pandemic hit, we started hanging out every Saturday. She made time for me. I always wondered why. But I think it was the pandemic. It was a strange time. And people were all out of sorts, lonely, etc. I had the intuition that she might one day do this: just randomly distance herself. But it almost seems like a slow fade, too. It started in October, when I got a job that I quit 2 weeks later. I hadn't worked in 8 years, and it was a poor fit. The things is, I got the sense she was judging me. At that point, though, we'd stopped talking as much.

At one point, late last year / early this year, I went through an extremely painful and difficult time where I live. I'd had a neighbor who was violent with the house and mentally ill but super unstable, and I'd had to call the cops on him, complain about him to my landlord who did nothing, etc. I even stayed in a respite house twice because of him. Anyway, I say this because she was very supportive of me during this time and gave great advice. She even said that if I needed to, I could stay at her house if I needed to ever. I really appreciated it, though never took her up on it either.


What I am feeling now...is a few things. Anger, because what the hell. I saw this coming, but it still hurts. It is so disappointing to have a friend just drop me like she has. At the same time, while we were close sometimes, she never really resonated with me. Thinking about her now, on an energy level, she just isn't there.


I am wanting to somehow...drop her back. But reading what I just wrote, that I want to "Drop her back," makes me feel like I'm trying to punish, and I don't want to be like that. At the same time, I feel that I deserve better. If she ever decides to contact me again and be like "hey! haven't talked in a while, how are you?" I might just not respond. Which feels right.


Me talking to her about this.....feels out of the question for me. I am literally scared to. I'm also just so put off. When we were closer, as "pandemic buddies," I talked to her once because she did pull away and I'd been worried. She was super nice about it. She said she'd been stressed. I'm just not interested in doing it again. This seems like her M.O. And I'm sick of it. There's something about her that bothers me, too. I almost feel used. I have noticed she has been super close / not close with others too. There is a woman who passed away suddenly in our circle at the beginning of the pandemic, who I did not know well, but she seemed to know her well and I thought they were good friends. But When I expressed my condolences, she said "I didn't really know her." I also get the sense that she has different friends for different purposes, which in my opinion, weirds me out. Like, I am her mental health / psychology friend, for sure. But I know she has drinking friends, who I totally don't know, and other different types of friends.


Maybe somethings in her life have shifted. Maybe she has judged me - I don't know, since I haven't talked to her and am not going to.


I have thought about telling her that I will not be around for a while to hang out with. But #1, something weird seems to have shifted with her where she seems like she doesn't care, and getting a blase indifferent message back from her would bother me. I also...I keep remembering her offer about staying at her home if I ever have an emergency. Which, honestly, things seem to have changed anyway, but I worry about what I would do in the case of an emergency, again, like where I would stay. I should come up with a plan.


I am probably not going to say anything to her. And just let her go. And...my plan is that if she messages me...I will ignore her. That will be really hard. Sometimes I do want to make it official.


I'm also wondering if I'm making "something out of nothing." But truthfully, I don't think I am. I'm hurt. And I think it makes sense.


I guess my question is, what's the best way to cope with this? Like, on my own and towards her. I think on my own...I need to be busier. I've been looking for a job. But not very hard this week. I think it would also be good to...find ways to make other friends.

Edit: the main thing with me wanting to make it official somehow...is I feel I need to protect myself. I feel that she is treating me poorly. She's done this before, and I have always just fallen back into it and let her back in when she contacts me again.