WHEN FRIENDSHIPS ARE TRAGIC 2.0

Alright, so I didn’t learn my lesson.

I did, but not really, not when the same story had a different beginning.

I learned that self-harming in front of someone is a demonstrative “go away, I don’t want you here” sign. What I didn’t learn is judging the balance of friendship.

See, no matter how much fun you might or might not have, if someone says “I’m fucked up” you take a note of that and stop talking to them. Other symptoms include: rejecting your compliments, criticizing (the way you look, speak, etc), never enthusiastically agreeing to hang out, never offering to hang out, refusing your help.

In retrospect, I can accurately pinpoint what was wrong, but during the friendship, because there was time between interactions, there was enough of it for them to forget how much they don’t actually like you and for you to forget this unsettling feeling that your friend isn’t actually paying attention to you.

Over time, I realised that it’s pointless to ask how their day was, it’s pointless to send them funnies, it’s absolutely pointless to tell them if your day upsetting. They simply say everything they want to say at you, without really you as a person needing to be there. There’s a simple check: you don’t say anything and just smile, and see if they carry on talking.

Now, this friend was in a dire need of professional mental help to do with depression. Did they self-harm? Probably. Did they talk to me about how much they hate themselves? All the time. Did I try to talk them out of that by pointing their highlights and making blanket forts? You bet your arse I did. But nothing really mattered.

See, nothing I did really felt like it mattered because there wasn’t any change. Their enthusiasm level never shifted from ‘meh’ towards anything I offered, and if anything, stuff I did without asking (e.g. making dinner when they couldn’t get out of bed) was rarely-to-never reciprocated. I clearly was the wrong person to try to help them, and gradually I started hanging out with them less and less. They didn’t seek out my time which I happily took as tacit acceptance of this friendship drifting apart.

Eventually, they made a mistake and made me look bad in front of someone else, and that was…the last straw. I stopped talking to them. On the whole, they apologised to the third party admitting their blame, but they failed to apologise to me. I genuinely just wanted to hear “hey, I’m sorry I fucked up, but I rectified it” and that’s it.

Several days later, over text, I got a backhanded “I’m sorry, but”…

– I should’ve known that they went and apologised immediately

– I should’ve been more ‘mature’ and come to them first to seek an apology towards me

– I shouldn’t have stopped talking to them, because it made them feel like shit

-They didn’t want to “pressure [me] into coming to tell to [them] what was wrong.”

-They are “fucking breaking down”

–I have no idea how much I have helped them so far.

-They never wanted to let me deal with any of their bullshit

-I should never expect something from my friends (in general) that I ask them for.

-They deserve recognition for their pain when I only suffered a “hit to my pride”

-“[They] are not trying to minimalize my feelings but [I] have made [them] feel like [they] were the worst friend possible who never have done anything to support [me]”.

I ended the conversation about there, because I didn’t want to hear how I don’t have any right to feel bad because they are the broken one.

I could have gone on and try to dispute every point from my perspective, but…why? The person on the other end doesn’t want to hear my side of the argument. They just want to feel that they are right, no matter the cost. They never put me on the same playing field, so to speak. If my role in that friendship was simply to be talked at and I accepted it, during the argument above, then anything I would’ve said – all of it would’ve been excused away or deflected, because my opinion never mattered.

I don’t have any regret about that friendship, because the ‘good moments’ were good, and they are worth remembering. I still have serious issues believing that my friendship really mattered to that person, but in either case I have learned a difference between feeling valued and being told that I am valued.