*Long* Am I in the wrong?
I've been friends with this person since Middle school, now we are both adults and married. I have kids, they have a career. Our friendship has always been complicated and truth be told, I've tried to leave the friendship at least 3-4 separate times to my recollection, but I always end up going back because after enough time apart I always conclude that the problem is me.
I'm not going to focus on the long history, it's full of me hurting them and them hurting me, there is *usually* no such thing as a 100% innocent party and I don't want to use stuff from 10+ years ago to inform my today. But rather I'm going to focus on the past year and a half.
About 2 years ago I attempted to leave the friendship because it had just become an unhealthy environment for me and I had just had my first son who was extremely difficult. I was simply in a terrible mental spot and this person and the subjects they wanted to engage with made me feel anxious/insecure (whether it was justified or irrational I never really figured out, but I needed to get away). Then about 9-10 months later I reinitiated contact and we both apologized to each other. A consistent theme I've felt over and over again in our friendship is that it revolves a lot around her and her life but when it comes time for me to talk about my hardships or seek comfort I get crickets. At first she was really good, we talked every day - thick as thieves. I became pregnant with my second son around that time and it was hard and I was scared (especially because my first son was/is so hard), but then she ran into big marital issues a few months later. It led to a complicated situation and they ended up living with some family nearby. Of course I had problems of my own at that time, but I really tried to set those aside and be THERE for her. I was dependably sending encouraging texts, picking up phonecalls to listen for hours like every few days, baking favorite treats, offered my home up as a place of refuge, picking her up and driving to and from places when we hung out, etc. I did end up bringing her to my baby shower and she bought out my baby registry unprompted which was definitely nice. I really was trying to be in her corner when she felt everyone else had turned their back. This went on from fall to spring and in the spring I gave birth to my son. She did not visit me in the hospital because it had snowed the night I gave birth, she did call me absolutely bawling about her husband while I was there. Then when I got home and I was a few days postpartum she came to my house (announcing it like 10 minutes before showing up) and sat across from me (did not ask to see or hold my baby) and just talked about how she initiated contact with her husband again. No she didn't bring a meal, she didn't ask me how I was, or even offer a coffee. Then about a week or two later she asked me to gather her stuff that she had left at my home and leave it on the porch for her to grab because her husband picked her up from her family's and was driving her home. No in person goodbye but she told me we could have the few pounds of ground beef in the freezer as a thank you. That was the last I saw her in person (over a year ago).
Twice over the past year she said she wanted to hang out with me but then cancelled because it had snowed that week in both instances (we both live in the north). She lived about an 1.5 hours from me and recently moved 2 hours from me. In both instances I was supposed to drive the lion's share of the commute to meet up. She had also invited me out to her town for her birthday but 1.5 hours to and from with a 2 and 1 year old is not easy, or I would need to find childcare (i.e. my husband stays home from work) to make it happen. She has passed through my area several times to my knowledge within the past year to go to her family's house even further from her than I am. Now of course they are family, but she doesn't stop by for coffee, she doesn't tell me she's around, nothing twice she left a package of stuff on the porch for me, but she didn't tell me she was stopping by and would leave without even saying 'hi'. Before I had children I was always the one going out to her (every few months) but in the past 2.5 years she came to my house 1 time after the birth of my first son for dinner on her way home from family's, then again a couple times during her marital separation when she temporarily lived nearby. But she has never come out specifically to see me at my pace ever.
She called me alot in the summer but I started to notice all our phone conversations revolved around her; her husband, her hobbies, what she was doing that day, her coworkers, her friend's lives, vacations, her job, her struggles/anxieties. When I got the opportunity to talk it was because she was on the computer and I would get the 'hm' and 'mhmm' but rarely an engaged conversation unless it was about politics which we both tend to agree on or something topical but rarely personal (like about me or my life). I also noticed that when she would send me pictures of her outfits I would hype her up alot but when I would do the same or a picture of my cooking it would just be a comment about the thing or a really odd compliment that you don't immediately know is a compliment. I've also been really diligent about Venmo-ing her on holidays, hard days, or special days, just enough to go out to eat somewhere with her husband or as a pick-me-up (think $35-100) since I'm not able to actually get out to her and spend time with her myself these days. She always gave off the impression they were so tight for money and I knew they had more than us but I ended up finding out they have literally 5x the amount we do - and no this is not done for me (no I didn't do it to get money back) but I was startled to learn just how much she had but how broke she talked. I felt a little peeved that she talked to me (who she knows is worse off than her) as if she understood my financial strain and was in the same boat. Many times I comforted her through her anxieties, even though she knew we have less.
Fast forward to this spring, I am pregnant a third time. This time though it isn't going well. I have something called a subchorionic hematoma and it is big. It has caused me a lot of pain since 5 weeks pregnant. I have had several ER trips, been given opiates for pain, been to more clinic visits/ultrasound scans than you ordinarily get in an entire pregnancy. I have hemorrhaged so much that I've lost 20-30% of my blood volume just within the past 2-3 weeks alone, will need 6 IV iron transfusions, and my doctor has told me that she has no idea if my baby will live or die because this thing is so persistent and my uterus contracts so violently when I hemorrhage that the pain is akin to labor. I am now 12 weeks pregnant and so exhausted and scared for my baby's life.
I was quiet about it because like I said when I tell her about my life, I usually get crickets. Eventually I opened up about it and then I got ... crickets. But she continued to send me junk on Instagram all day while ignoring my text. I became angry and confronted her about it, I expressed my hurt, the lack of action that hurt, and I made sure not to use the classic 'after all I've done for you' line, I tried to be careful not to attack but express that it just hurt. No this is not the first conversation I've had with her about ghosting me when I tell her something I'm dealing with, but I got virtually the same response I always get when I call out this behavior - that she overthinks and doesn't know what to say and so she ends up not saying anything because she's awkward and yada yada. At that point in my exhaustion I just said 'its okay' and gave up. A few days later she texted me about how I can buy half a cow for a few cents cheaper per pound than what the grocery store sells, and how it might 'help my family'. I ignored it because wtf, and she has said nothing to me since, and she made sure to stop sending me stuff on Instagram.
Honestly I'm furious. This is hands down one of the hardest seasons I've ever had in my life. And I'm so absolutely done. I don't think this girl has ever actually loved me, I adored her, I have loved her like flesh and blood. I've never asked for food, money, or even a visit, but I can't even get a true listening ear. I know I'm not a perfect person, I know this is just one side of the story but I think I may have been a fool the whole time. When I need a friend who will comfort me and listen she's nowhere to be found. She hasn't even asked me how I'm doing. Someone please just tell me; am I just emotional right now or have I been fooled into thinking I was her most best friend like she told me I was? So many flowery words but it's all been entirely absent of action. My heart is broken, this is just the cherry on top of my health and wondering if one of these days I'm going to deliver my baby into my toilet.