so you're blowing me off because i'm a little... depressed? - morals, friendships, and depression

was my depression selfish? is hers? how can we navigate our own complex emotions AND someone else's? how to admit that a friendship is over?

In October and November of last year, I was in the deepest depression of my life. I pushed away all my friends and family and collapsed in on myself, my chest folding in like rusted patio furniture. For context, I was sixteen (I am seventeen now, and much wiser, as all seventeen-year-olds are) and in the first term of year twelve, had constant chest pain, and my friendship group had just gone down from four to three.

Now nearly a year later, I am better than I have been in a long time (and lucky enough to be writing this from the sweetest rental apartment in Porto.)

A few months ago, a friend in my group (which had gained a new member and gone back up to four) began to change. She ignored us, pushed us away, wasn’t present when she was with us. It felt as if she didn’t want to be around us, but stayed because she had no one else. She was no longer friends with one of the girls in our group, and it was like everything was falling back apart. We grew irritated with her, complained to each other about how she preferred her phone over our company, never joined in, sat in silence at our table, once even got up and left me completely alone for the whole day, even going home without saying a word to me. And then it hit me. That was me. She pushed me away the same way I had done to her a few months prior. If she had become a mirror of the person I was in October, was I reacting the same way she did back then?

I asked my close friends (excluding her) if the way I had acted in October had made them upset with me- and they all said yes.

I have been unable to stop asking myself this since then: was I a bad friend for pushing them all away when I was in the depths of my depression, or were they the bad friends for being annoyed by it? And is it the same for the situation I am in now? Am I a bad person for being frustrated that someone I used to be so close to is an entirely different person now? Am I allowed to feel that?

I accept that I was not in the wrong by being depressed, and subsequently losing my interest in anything and anyone, but I do not blame my friends for being annoyed. I did push them away, and whether I was depressed or not, that still hurt them. What matters is that when I was ready, I came to them, and they were there.

So really the same thing applies to my one friend. She is not wrong for struggling (I do not know if it is actually depression or not as I am not in any position to diagnose her) but it is also not wrong for me to feel stuck in a friendship that she seems to not want to be a part of. There is more to it, like our rocky past, and her argument with our other friend, but maybe all of it just comes down to the fact that we are no longer compatible. I am not the person I was when we first met, and neither is she.

Maybe this friendship has found it’s natural end? Should I feel so guilty about saying that? Dealing with my own turbulent emotions this past year has been hard enough, but having to navigate her landmine of explosive reactions and accusations that we no longer like her (not to our faces, of course, but to our parents and friends) is just draining. And honestly, I don’t want to end up in the same position I was in last year. I have worked hard to be in the place that I am now, and I’m tired of feeling like I have to put her feelings first and mine second. Is this a selfish thought, or a reasonable one?

Is this just what it is to be getting older? People change and friendships change and I am changing, and maybe she doesn’t get that yet.

I’m sure this is a universal experience, realising that maybe you weren’t made for each other, destined to be best friends forever, like you had thought when you were fifteen.