When Friendship Sucks

There's a good friend of mine who's visiting from Boston right now.  She grew up in the Bay Area and has a lot of friends here, so it can be hard to schedule time with her.  Which sucks, because I kind of feel like I get a certain time slot, and at the end of it, Our Time Is Up -- she has to run off to meet someone else.  We can't just chill.

I try to be understanding about this.  I'm not the only one who wants to spend time with her, and I'm hardly the only person she needs to see.  It still hurts a lot, but I've been telling myself that my hurt feelings are my own shit, and I shouldn't put them on my friend by trying to have a dialogue about it.  (And yes, I do realize that this is a bad idea for my relationship with my friend.  But old habits die hard).

Then, last week, she went and blew me off.  It was regarding a fairly serious matter -- basically, she'd been in a car accident on her way to meet me somewhere, and wouldn't be able to make it.  She said she was OK, that she shock was wearing off, but the "pain was setting in".  That, of course, got me fretting.

So I tried to check in with her.  I emailed her.  I called and left her a voice mail.  I expressed my concern for her, offered what support I could, and asked her to let me know how she was doing.  No response.  Two days later I tried to check in again.  No response, again.

By this point I was pretty anxious.  Busy my friend may be, but blowing someone off is not really in her character.  That, of course, argued for her being hurt.  On the other hand, if she were hurt, a mutual friend who also knows her family would have learned about it, and that friend would have told me.  What the hell was going on?

I didn't get a response until five days after the day of the accident.  On New Year's Eve she sent me a text wishing me a Happy New Year and promising we'd talk soon.  And now I'm pissed.

So, yeah.  We'll talk all right.

I'm trying to keep in mind that my friend is an emotionally intelligent person who has the capacity to make room for my feelings.  But it's not easy.  I have very little experience with people who can do that, and I've lost a major friendship with a person who would or couldn't respect some very important boundaries.  In essence, I've never dealt with a serious emotional conflict in a friendship that has gone well.


Now I have something else to be anxious about.