I've written a couple of quite lengthy posts recently about my friendship with T. I wrote them because I had various thoughts and worries going round and round in my mind and needed to work through them and make sense of them. So the posts were a kind of therapy, which is what my whole blog is. I'm sure they probably bored the pants off anyone who read them all and/or had you yelling at me that I'm better off without her.
The trouble is, I do care about her, and as she is still pretty much ignoring me, I do miss contact with her. I miss her emails about her colleagues' quirks, I miss her numerous texts, some silly, some serious, I miss us getting excited about our next weekend away. I miss being able to share my family problems with her. I miss being friends with her.
However, I don't miss email after email after email analysing everything about the guy she dated for a few weeks and can't get over. I don't miss her suddenly stopping talking to me because she's p**sed off about something she thinks I did wrong. I don't miss meeting up for a weekend and ending up spending most of the time talking through how she feels about the guy who suddenly re-appeared in her life, what it might mean and what she can do about it. I don't miss trying to persuade her that people care about her after she has told me she hates herself. I don't miss trying to be her counsellor, therapist and psychologist.
I know she is depressed and I know she has zero self esteem, and I am fully prepared to provide support for a friend who is getting professional treatment/therapy, as was the case with her a few years ago when she was first diagnosed. But I can't do it year after year for a friend who refuses to get the help she still needs. I am not a counsellor, I am not qualified, I can't wave a magic wand and make her feel better, I can't be the only person she turns to when she's depressed or hating herself.
You all spoke a lot of sense last year about T. My friends have said a few sensible things this time. You all help me to realise that I'm not the awful friend she currently thinks I am. So if our friendship is to survive she needs to get professional help. I am continuing to contact her occasionally. If she decides that she wants to talk then I will need to tell her that, as her friend and someone who cares about her, I think she should seek professional help. If she continues ignoring me I will need to decide when is the time to say the same thing by email.
4 comments:
Katya, pardon me but your friend T seems to be deliberately taking advantage of your goodwill.
In my eyes, you seem like a person who is involving herself in a one-sided friendship.
As an aspiring psychologist, I think it is unhealthy for you to stick around with her when it seems she'd rather not have you around.
As sad as it may seem, I suggest you let her to her own devices. You are a fantastic friend to want to help her all the way but sometimes we fail to see it simply isn't worth it.
Friends come and go - that's life.
I am saying all this because I have also been in your shoes. I am the one who backed away because it seems she prefers not to have me around, consequently it affects me as well because her problems were rubbing off on me as well.
I left, she somehow coped. I moved on.
No one lost anything except a friendship. We can always find one of those.
Thanks for the comment Lovely Willow. You're certainly right that she has taken advantage of my goodwill in the past (or I've allowed her to) when she has treated me badly/ignored me.
I think I would be much more willing to just leave her to her own devices if this was just aimed at me. It is aimed at all of her friends, she says she no longer believes in friends, thinks they don't care about her and seems to want to end all her friendships, despite also saying that she will always love me like family. It isn't a rational decision to end one friendship, so is less easy to accept - I hate the thought of her being totally alone.
She says she is in a dark place and I think my worry is that if I stop contacting her and let he just be alone, that she will think she was right to think that her friends don't care about her and will only keep hurting her, and that she will end up in an even darker place.
If she does keep ignoring me then I agree with you that I will at some point need to let her be alone, as it is starting to hurt being ignoring when I am reaching out and offering my friendship and support to her.
We all have friends like that and it's our responsibility not to get sucked into their drama. There's always one that comes along though and you can't help yourself because you are -that- emotionally invested and you care about them enough. I agree with Lovely Willow, this is harmful for yourself. I do think she'll come around eventually as long as she knows that your door is open, and I think you've made that clear enough to her.
Emotionally invested is exactly what I am. If I'd met her a year or two ago then I think the neediness, drama, demands, issues, depression etc that have happened in that time would have made me very cautious about getting too friendly. I would have made sure I didn't see her too often, and quite possibly would have wanted out of the friendship myself when she first got angry and stopped talking to me.
As it is, I've known her for over 10 years, as an acquaintance for the first few couple,then as a friend, then a close friend. At first there was no drama, she was unconfident and a little insecure, but so was I and so are plenty of people I know. There was nothing that shouted at me to not get too close. But yes, I have made it clear that the door is open, should she want to salvage things.
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