i'm not expecting any answers because this is a really long rant, so i apologize! but they are greatly appreciated
okay, so i have this friend. we've been friends for about 3 years now, and these 3 years have been the best and worst three years of my life. the problem is, we met right after the covid era. i also had lost my 9 year best friend during covid while living in a brand new state. (literally a double homicide!) so, i had no friends for about a year. and as a insecure 13 year old girl who already had issues with her parents, i just had no love being reciprocated to me. however, when my friend walked in my life, it was such a breath of fresh air. when we first talked it had felt so natural (which was extremely rare because i used to have the WORSE case of social anxiety) and he actually wanted to talk to me for me. i got really attached to him. we spent the first year constantly being on the phone with each other, knowing everything, sharing our secrets, and just being inseparable. however, we started to get kind of rocky because as my mental health began to deteriorate, i noticed it was mainly his fault. i was blinded. he was just so insufficient of showing me love. what makes it even worse is that i'm the type of person who does a person's main love language to show love, and does the other four at the same time! it really hurt me to see me put my all into someone who couldn't do the same. 8th grade year was the horrible for me. because i was still attached, he's all i could see in my life and he couldn't even love me. but, late 2023 was the absolute worse. no other era compares. i had been disassociating, EXTREMELY suicidal, anxious, unconfident, everything. the problem was that after he had joined color guard, our relationship changed a lot. as i'm writing this i feel really extra and clingy but bare with me. he goes on these intervals of not talking to me even though we spend about 3 hours together in school everyday (ex: not talking to me for a month, then he would talk to me for another 2 weeks before ghosting again.) as attached + anxious as i used to be, let's just say the results of this wasn't pretty. he used to say it was because he was tired and mentally unwell, which i respected and still do respect, but what made me upset was after the 1st 3 weeks of him not talking, he returned back to normal with his color guard friends. it always had me wondering: why not me? i don't want to sound overbearing because we're not in a relationship or anything, but i just wanted it to be us against the world. i wanted to be his favorite because words couldn't even describe how high he was in my mind. but things happen for a reason, right? okay. i apologize for the long contextualization, but my main issue now is the fact that after he started to ghost me on the 2nd day of the 2nd semester, i mentally decided this was enough. i went through absolute hell and back because of him, and had no desire to feel like that again. i was doing good honestly; until he started talking to me again (which was about the day i came back from my stuco trip.) now the little affection he's showing me is drawing me back in and i'm extremely ashamed of myself. every time i laugh genuinely or give him tmi jokes like i used to i cringe so hard. we aren't close anymore mentally, so why does he have such an impact on me? he has so many friends, so why me? i'm tired of the way he made me feel on the bad days, but the feelings on the good ones? it couldn't compare. he's been displaying small acts of service which i appreciate, but is it really worth me staying after my mental health went through all of that with him? am i selfish for feeling hurt by these situations when he's hurting inside too?? i just want me to stop feeling bad. i didn't want to leave, but i may not have a choice. usually the first thing old me would do would be to try and communicate, but his communication skills have obviously been off. the last time i tried to talk about guard (which took three months to speak up about) was in late-ish december. he just said that it's apart of the program, which i do understand. out of all the times i've tried to communicate how i feel, he either dismisses it or acknowledges it but doesn't change enough for me to notice. i want to feel loved. the quote "just because you love me doesn't mean i feel loved" definitely applies to this situation!! i want him to offer to do things for me because he knows how much i struggle to live (although he doesn't know how bad it's been because he doesn't really bother to ask anymore.) i want him to communicate and ask if i'm okay when he notices something off. i want him to talk to me outside of school again, but i know that's unrealistic. i want him to write equally long birthday paragraphs as i write him, but again, i know that's un logical. i want him to comfort me and my overthinking instead of give me advice, but that's unheard of from him. all of these requests have been asked for more than once, but they're never given to me. it has made me feel like the biggest burden in the world. am i asking for too much? am i trying to treat our friendship like a relationship just because i strongly believed i was in love platonically?(unrequited ofc😜😜) i'm not mad at him in any way and i don't even think that this is his fault, but i just need to detach. it's not healthy for me to put someone in 1st place when they in return would make me 3rd at best. the worst part is, i'm afraid that won't be possible unless one of us leaves. i have proved to myself that as i remember his existence, i will think about him. he consumes all of thoughts and emotions, and i'm sick. i'm plagued with the fear of never finding a best friend like him. i don't even know what i see at the point. when we're okay, i just feel safe. i feel at home. i can act like myself. i'm concluding that these are all because we have time on our side, and we've shared a lot of that together. he's honestly one of my only friends that isn't a school friend either, which is really embarrassing. i am falling behind, tremendously. if one of us were to go through with this, this would be my 4th loss of a best friend in the past 4 years. can i really handle another heartache like that knowing he's by far the closest one i've ever had? i'm scared. i'm scared. i'm scared. in fact, scared is an understatement. i want to cry to my mother about this, and cry about how i'm petrified to let him go. i want to cry about how miserable my life has been and he hasn't been able to give me the kiss of reason and live yet, but i still hold onto that hope. i want to cry about the fact that he encouraged a 13 year old girl self harm for the first time, just because she felt like because a man couldn't love her she deserved to hurt herself. all i wanted in our relationship was to feel loved, but i don't even know if that request is asking for too much. maybe i'm a people pleaser. or maybe, i was just giving you the amount of love i felt was my sacred duty to deliver. i felt as if you deserved no less, so why should i? i really am and will always be lost in this situation. i feel like i'm sinking underwater, and no one can hear me. i just want to feel human. alive. happy. loved. is that too much?
