I've been frustrated my friends for a long time now, maybe a few years. We have a yearly get together, and perhaps over the years each of us have changed. Even though I have agoraphobia, anxiety, and health issues, I still force myself to go meet up with them, because I just want to see them happy, and I just want us to enjoy our time together.
But every time I've gone, one of my friends thinks that's the perfect time to bring up all these bad things about me, and she'll just get angry and yell at me in front of all our other friends. I like to try and keep the harmony, so I try to explain myself, but she just interrupts me and talks over me. It's made me very upset how she does this, and she picks apart everything I say, and twists everything. If she wanted to talk to me about something, she could have set me aside and privately talked to me. She could have messaged me online any day out of the 365 days that we weren't meeting up to talk about things. But instead, she chooses the one day that everyone had to meticulously book off from their workplace and set aside other plans for, just to get angry and at me.
My other friends just sat there staring, they didn't do anything but stare. I don't understand, I've seen people physically fight, and I'll just run in and separate the two, even if I risk getting hurt myself, because I care about other people not getting hurt. And I'm the one who has anxiety, and who my friends would make fun of for being too cowardly, but when push comes to shove, all they do is just stare and do nothing, while I run in to try and help others.
Then some time later, my other friend needed help online so I jumped in and helped her out, and since we didn't chat for a long time, I tried to catch up with her and asked her how she was doing, but the weird thing is that she didn't seem to want to talk to me, and then 10 minutes later she left this angry message, saying how she was angry that I didn't go out and eat with her a year ago, and that I'm a bad friend, and even though I apologized and said I had agoraphobia and health issues, she gave me the silent treatment and never replied. I mean, I just helped her out just moments before, and that's why we started chatting again in the first place, and it's like she had amnesia and didn't appreciate my help or my attempts to reconnect with her, because she was blinded by rage. After I responded to her message, it's like she was waiting for me to say something specifically, and if I didn't say what was on her mind, she wouldn't talk to me. I didn't want to play her mind games though. We were both adults of the same age, and what she was doing was just immature to me. After she didn't reply for a week, I just left a final message that it's the end of our friendship, and she still didn't reply after that, so I guess I didn't mean that much to her.
The more I try to spend time with my friends, thinking that they'll be happy, that friends should help each other, that friends should stick up for one another, the more I see the exact opposite. They might have the title of being a friend, but not the substance. I would help them and stick up for them, and even if I have anxiety and issues of my own, I'd set set them aside for them. Yet they just get angry at me over petty things, and I don't want to be angry at my friends, but they don't give me a good reason not to be. I've never yelled at them back, I never want to argue with them because I want to keep the peace, but I just don't want to be around them anymore because of how they treat me. I can't even communicate with them because they just cut me off or give me the silent treatment.
I keep thinking about whether or not it's better to have bad friends, or no friends at all. Every time I see them, or try to reconnect with them, they have treated me badly, that I just think that bad things are always going to happen whenever I see them again. It's gotten to the point that every time I think about the word "friend" it makes me recall bad memories of them, that I've associated friendships with anger and hatred, even though I never wanted to think of them like that. I treat people how I want to be treated, but time and time again, that kind of thing is not reciprocated. If they get angry and yell at me, does that mean they want me to get angry and yell at them back? I just don't see the point of what they're trying to do. It's not like I won't apologize or try to make amends because I want them to be happy, but I guess they just like to stay angry and be right about everything. I guess I have mixed emotions about what to do and how to treat them in return. I feel like cutting them off, because I fear that of I reconnect with them it will lead to more drama and chaos.
