My friend is constantly contributing to my stress instead of helping me with my peace.
I (27F) have a friend who I'll call Vicky (27F) that I've been friends with for about 2 years. We work together so we've known each other for 4, chatted about work things at the beginning just general stuff. But we became closer over the years.
Vicky has been with me through a lot of life events, breakups, moving, job mess, family issues (I've been no contact with them for 8 years), the works. I've also been a support to her over the years and we usually have a pretty good time together. She's more introverted and I'm the extrovert so we compliment each other well.
Issues started in the last 6 months mostly surrounding work issues. We work in the same place and I left for a stint of time because I found a better opportunity, and then returned because that opportunity...turned out bad lol. I'm at probably the lowest level position at our company and I'm actively looking for new jobs and have been applying for the last 3 months. I like parts of this position, working with clients, building on my resume in my field, but management is terrible. There have been multiple weeks where they have forgotten to send my paycheck to me because they never sent my timesheet off to accounting, they try to put us in dangerous positions (we work high risk homes with families), and generally just lack consideration for our wellbeing. We don't get any PTO and if we are sick we have to go to work or we just don't get paid. I haven't had a vacation in years and I'm genuinely at my brink.
Vicky has not been the best support through this. There are days where I just want to complain about what happens at work, the idiotic and incompetent behavior at our job, and how overworked and tired I am. Vicky never seems tolerant of this and always says things like "are you applying for other jobs?" "Well there's nothing really our bosses can do about that". But when other people come to her and complain about work, our bosses, or just general stupid things that go on, she's all ears. No one can do any wrong. At one point I asked her when she was arguing with me "is there something you know that I don't know that's going on?" In order to gain some context and shift my perspective and she said "I'm just trying to give other people (our coworkers) more grace". Months ago Vicky got wrapped up in a weird coworker friendship with someone named Megan. Megan was and is severely unwell. Vicky used to get annoyed that Megan would never turn her work in on time, asked a million questions to the same things over and over, and would often get complaints from clients. However at the beginning, Megan was new and I suggested that maybe she needed more time to adjust and to give grace. Later on as things never got better it quickly became f*ck Megan she's an idiot 😂 grace period over! So I'm not unreasonable.
Yesterday I had a horrendous day at work, like ugly crying in my car, feeling hopeless and trapped in this position so I could have a paycheck. I can't say much, but my job wants to send me into a hazardous work condition that could severely impact my health and safety, and now I'm battling with them to not do that.
Despite a few times Vicky being unsupportive and dismissive, I decided to reach out to her just to vent and maybe get a little validation. Big mistake. During the whole conversation Vicky was asking a lot of irrelevant who, what, where and why. Poking holes in my story, semantics, and then decided to say "well, devils advocate...". For further context, Vicky is not in any way my boss, nor is she even on the same team as me in our company. By the time I was on the phone with her I was so overwhelmed, upset, and hurt that sure maybe some of the stuff I was saying wasn't making total sense. But that's not why I called. She then went on to ask "are you applying for jobs tonight?". It took everything in my body to not sound like a huge bitch and I said "Vicky, I've applied for 10 jobs so far, none of them have reached out". There wasn't a single "I'm sorry this happened" "that's so messed up" anything.
I do think our relationship would be better if I switched jobs, but that's not something I can control at this current moment. I just don't know what to do. I do have a therapist and she mostly focuses on me seeking new employment and I have other issues I need to work out in that time and I don't always want to complain about work, as it's an ongoing unfixable work environment. I want to confront her but I also am wondering if not saying something is better and just to wait until I find a new job, and not talk to her about any of this. I feel like I can't just not talk to her for a few weeks because her wedding is in June and I'm playing a major role in it, so I have to be available to her. Which I guess is another added layer. I have been helping her with her wedding for almost a year, spent money that I don't have for it, countless weekends with her insufferable racist family, planned the bachelorette, helped her with color design and picking a theme, and generally listening to her when her family is draining her. I'm also not the type of friend to be like "well I did this for you so you need to do something for me" I genuinely just want to be able to talk or vent without feeling invalidated. I understand that this could also be contributing to why she has such a low tolerance for difficult conversations, but I feel I'm rarely the person that reaches out to anyone when I'm having a bad day or needing advice. I usually go home, swallow it and hope for a better tomorrow and try not to bother her because I know how much stress she's under. Clearly I'm conflicted. I took the day off today because I haven't been able to speak without crying because of stress and anxiety.