When do you walk away? in A day in the life...

I’ve mentioned this in previous entries, but I struggle with mental illness. My diagnoses include affective disorder, anxiety disorder, personality disorder with cluster B traits, and obsessive compulsive disorder. I’m on medication, I’m in therapy twice a week, and I get ECT once a month. All these things have helped but I still struggle, especially with the anxiety. That is brutal!

I’m learning some painful lessons while dealing with these issues: a lot of people don’t believe mental illness is a real thing, and people who I thought were my friends…well…it looks like they’re not.

I’ve been friends with J for 12 years. We started working at the same law firm at the same time 12 years ago. Being the “new kids on the block,” we kinda stuck together. Then we realized we also lived in the same town…about 2 miles from each other. My husband T and I had J and her husband E over for dinner one night and from then on the four of us were the best of friends. We go camping every Labor Day weekend, and every time T and I are in the Chicago area we always stay with them. We’ve also taken several vacations together.

A couple of years ago J was diagnosed with cancer and had to have her uterus removed. After her surgery I drove to Illinois and stayed with her for a week to help out and take care of her. I never thought twice about doing it. She was one of my closest friends…of course I was going to do whatever I could to help her. Our friendship was strong, and I never thought it would change.

About a year and a half ago is when things really started going downhill for me. I’ve been hospitalized four times, once for a suicide attempt. I also started therapy for PTSD due to childhood sexual abuse and being raped when I was 18. While the therapy is definitely necessary it’s also very painful, and there are times when the depression and anxiety will get worse after a session. I’m having to finally talk, in detail, about the things that happened to me when I was younger, and it’s hard. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

But during this time things started to change with J. The times I was in the hospital she never called to check on me, but her husband would. Or her husband would talk to my husband to see how I was doing. She stopped texting me, talking to me on FB, and she never answers the phone when I call. The last time T and I were in Illinois and we stayed with them, J disappeared for an entire day and went over to another friend’s house and didn’t come home until later that evening. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what I had done to upset her.

Later that evening after she came home she went outside to sit in their hot tub. Any other time she would have asked me to join her, but this time she didn’t. Her husband E said “Why don’t you go get in the hot tub with J?” I told him she didn’t ask me to so maybe she just wanted to be alone. She heard that exchange and gave me a half-hearted “You can come and sit in it with me if you want.” So I did. And I told her that I knew that something was wrong, that she was upset with me about something, and whatever it was that I did, I wish she would just tell me. So she did. She was upset that over the past year I had been lax on calling her and checking on her. Her exact words were, “I’ve been going through a lot this past year and you have hardly ever called or texted to check on me, and that has really hurt my feelings.” I started crying and told her I was so, so sorry, that I never meant to hurt her. I told her that her friendship meant the world to me and that I couldn’t imagine her not being a part of my life, and that I hoped she would forgive me. She kinda shrugged and said, “We’ll get through it.” I thought things would be okay.

They’re not. She still barely speaks to me. I text her and call her to see how she’s doing. I sent her chocolate covered strawberries at work for her birthday. I’m doing everything I can to let her know that I care about her and how she’s doing. I don’t know what else to do.

I have to mention that she got even more stand-offish when she found out I was applying for social security, on the advice of my psychiatrist. (I just found out two weeks ago that I was approved....yay!). She looks down on that. She doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with me that I can’t control, and that I could go back to work if I really wanted to. She has a very low opinion of people who are on social security disability for psychiatric reasons.

So now I’m driving myself crazy trying to think of things I can do to get her to “like” me again. We’re supposed to go camping with her and her husband this Labor Day weekend, like we’ve always done, but I just have this feeling in my gut that she doesn’t want us to come along. More specifically, she doesn’t want ME to come. She has no problem with T. Her issues seem to be with me alone.

It’s funny, because E, her husband, has no problem with me at all. Like I said, he frequently asks T how I’m doing. And he and T are the best of friends. I don’t want J’s issues with me to affect T and E’s friendship. But now I don’t know if I want to go camping with them. I’m afraid it’s going to be an awkward weekend, and that I’ll end up in tears because she ignores me the entire weekend.

What else can I do? Should I confront her again about this, and how she’s still acting towards me? Should I keep trying to win back her friendship? Should I just pretend everything’s fine and hope she’ll eventually come back around? What I’d like to do is tell her that I didn’t ask to be mentally ill anymore than she asked for cancer, but I can only imagine how that would go over. But it’s tempting, let me tell you. She got upset with me for not checking on her as often as I used to, but when did she ever call and ask me how I was doing? Never. She never has.

So this is my question: When do you stop letting someone hurt you and just let them go?