Sourness is bitter...

My afternoon has been considerably taken over by personal email, in a huge effort to make someone understand my concerns about our friendship. This isn’t the first time it has happened, when I’ve tried to get things out into the open. However, it has backfired and currently, it is backfiring on me. I’m just so tired of it.

You see, it’s hard work being this person’s friend. I’m probably partly to blame, I don’t know how to handle her, how to put boundaries in place and how to tell her to back off. I’m not good at that and I know she wouldn’t react well to that. More so, because she would dismiss me as being ‘moody’ and ‘easily annoyed – both comments she has specifically used to describe me. The issue is I’m basically only moody when I’m around her, which doesn’t say much, as she seems to be the biggest consumer of my time. We hang out a lot and it’s become quite time consuming.

We do get along for a good portion of the time, but for me, when she oversteps a boundary, I find it very hard to reconcile this kind of situation and then I get annoyed. I don’t tolerate people who don’t take responsibility for their own actions and have no understanding of how their actions affect others. I’ve never tolerated that, except in children and animals and the very old! I think it’s largely because I am always very mindful of how and what I say, affects others. I bend myself in knots, trying to be considerate and all I see her doing, is just being very casual about it all and basically assuming the attitude that I’ll have to cope with it, because this is how she chooses to be.

So, I’ve basically told her that I choose to not be friends anymore. I told her that I chose this because all other avenues and options have been explored and I cannot find a resolution. I’ve said that she doesn’t know me very well, despite the fact that we’ve managed to sustain a 5 year friendship. In that time, this issue has never changed, we’ve never resolved it. This is largely due to the fact that both, she doesn’t know she is doing it and at the same time, doesn’t see it as an issue.

I feel very sad about this. When things were good with us, we were fine. It was a bit of a superficial friendship, but we had fun and we did favours for each other. But I guess I want more, and I want someone who actually knows me, who is considerate of who I am and who wants to be actively responsible for their actions. I don’t mind friends who accidentally do things that are hurtful and realise later, or understand when I tell them. I don’t mind that, because I do it too and I’m always happy to hear ‘feedback’ from my friends. I’m always keen to please my friends. This is another thing, because I’ve let other friendships suffer for it. I’ve been slack and I’ve let myself be a bit monopolised, but I don’t blame my friend for that.

I guess that leads me to something else. In a bid to be flexible and my keenness to be a good friend to this person, I’ve sacrificed some of the things I wouldn’t normally do. I’ve just let many things slide, when ordinarily, I wouldn’t. I have given this person so much leeway, tried to be considerate of where they are coming from, and still, I feel like it’s not enough.

I basically came to the decision that she and I were not good for each other and our friendship was unhealthy.

Now, she is blaming me, saying it’s my problem and that this has been my goal the entire time – to end the friendship.

Doesn’t she realise that because I’ve spent the majority of my time with her, that I’ve alienated my friends and not met anyone new? And that to cut ties with her hurts me a lot that way, despite the fact that I hate hurting people.

The clincher was her attitude about Glen. They were friends before I met Glen, there is history there – friends only. Basically she feels like she put up with him and gave him all these second chances, because he annoyed her or something.

I’m just so lost, I wish I had all the answers.