Ok. So I have known this friend since childhood. TBH, childhood nostalgia is probably the only thing we really have in common, as our lives have taken different trajectories. While I do care about her, sometimes I'm not sure I really like her as a person.
Her personality and views (think someone who believes everything they read in the Daily Mail) get on my nerves. I just have to grin and bear it when in her company (in the knowledge that it will soon be over).
She also doesn't understand me, she doesn't know what drives me or makes me tick, but in her head she thinks she can read me like a book. In fact she's just projecting herself and thinks (or wants to think) I'm exactly like her. It actually seems like she doesn't listen to me and only hears what she wants to hear.
I don't mean to be unkind, but she's basically an underachiever who takes no responsibility for her future. She dropped out of school, has worked in minimum wage jobs since her teens and has never moved out of her parents' house (now aged 39). Her parents pay for everything (including buying her a car!) and they don't ask for a contribution to the household. Meanwhile her feckless spending habits (junk she doesn't need and top-priced branded goods) mean she is regularly overdrawn.
She's always been like this and it hasn't bothered me before but some time ago we had an awkward one-sided conversation.
During a conversation about cost of living rising, bills etc. She was complaining about having no money and worrying about her lack of future prospects. I flippantly said I didn't know how I'd manage in the future either (I was just trying to make her feel better, if anything I was thinking more along the lines of future pension provisions). Somehow, in her head, she twisted this to mean that I had invited her to live with me when her parents pass away. I had suggested nothing of the sort. She completely ignored my tensed up expression and stunned silence, and started planning all the things she would do to my house, as though it belonged to her!!! She also made a weird confession that she's always had me in mind as someone she could rely on to go and live with!!!
Judging by the reaction from her parents, the next time I saw them, she had also shared this news with them. They now seem to think I'm going to look after their daughter when they pass away.
We haven't discussed this "future living arrangement" since the awkward conversation but the unspoken expectation is now hanging over me and is making me anxious about the future confrontation.
She has also started texting and emailing me more frequently than I find tolerable, trying to foster (or assuming) a closeness in our relationship that just isn't there.
Even during times when I don't hear from her, I sometimes fret about when the next communication will arrive.
The advice I might give to someone in such a situation would be just to have it out and be honest with the person, but the problem is I'm just not that close or comfortable enough with her to take this approach. Even if I could confront her, I don't think I can express in this post how delusional she can be - she would only hear what she wanted to hear.
I want to be able to stop worrying about this, to be able to cast it from my mind as though it never happened. I want to be able to get rid of this expectation that's hanging over me. I hate the fact that she thinks she can rely on me to provide a roof over her head, and that she thinks it's a completely normal thing to do. I have my own life to live and my own future which doesn't include her coming to live with me.
AIBU to find her unreasonable? How can I stop feeling annoyed about this?