To reach out to a friend who removed me from their life...

[Isbrexitoveryet]

First up, I’m prepared to be told IABU, but please don’t totally decimate me, because this whole situation has broken my heart into about 324 billion little tiny very spikey pieces.

My childhood “best friend in the whole wide world” who was my number one, tell everything to, speak to everyday person, ghosted me last February. I am not 100% certain on what I have or haven’t done, because in the six months before that I was psychotic, I have limited memory, and still today only have pieces of Fragmented information and half bits of my life from about June 2017-January 2018.
The mental illness made me do many risky, dangerous and down right horrific things. I started fights, tried to kill myself, and presented for a late term termination of my pregnancy because I believed inanimate objects were going to harm us and I had to save my baby by sending them to heaven where they’d be safe.
So I know I could very easily have done something during this time that caused damage to our friendship.
(I fucked things up with another friend during this time, by ghosting her on her wedding day (because it was 3 weeks after the TOP, and i had started to gain insight and her baby was due the same day as mine, I couldn’t cope)

I don’t know why things happened the way they did, and I love her more than anything in the world, and always will.
I would love one day to be able to explain all of this to her. Because she is so truly amazing, she’s just had her 3rd child DD2 and they both look so well.
I would love to one day be able to ask what went wrong, explain and find out, I don’t think for a second that I will ever get the chance but I want to make sure I didn’t hurt her, or that she knows it wasn’t with any intent.

Thanks if you’ve got this far. And I probably won’t ever get a chance to see her again, and explain myself, nor would I know where to start if I had the chance. I just miss her, and I am so sorry.

If you’ve had time to read this thank you 100000 x over.

I understand why you're hurt by this, and I sympathise greatly.

However, I also think perhaps you need to accept that nobody is under any obligation to stay in contact with anyone else. It doesn't really matter what her reason is. If she wanted to stay in touch, she would have done, and I think you need to respect her boundaries.

I would also add that to me, your post seems very emotionally intense in a way that might make me feel a bit uncomfortable if I was your friend. I once pulled away from a friendship that was just all a bit much for me, where the intensity of the other person's feelings about the friendship actually scared me a little bit and where I was constantly walking on eggshells for fear of inadvertently upsetting her.

I can't lie: I would be a bit freaked out by a friend who wanted to speak to me every day and felt their heart was broken by a period of non-contact. It would just all be too much for me, and - like your friend - I also have some mental health problems of my own which would make it extremely difficult for me to deal with a friend whose behaviour was erratic or extreme. I completely recognise that's probably a weakness/fault in me, not the other person involved, but I think you need to understand that sometimes, it's just not about you. We're all different and we all have different boundaries and tolerances which I think we need to accept.

I think what I found hardest about all of it to be honest was that when she was unwell, I made her calls when she asked, I took her kids to x y z, I gave her money when her mania meant she spent all of hers, I paid off debts, and I spent years of my life picking up pieces (although there were any great times) she has been at rock bottom and I’ve helped her out, when it meant buying her electric and food shopping on credit because her rating was bad, when it meant missing my mums dinner because it was raining and school is 2 miles away, or not drinking on her birthday because she needed her eldest DC picking up at midnight it feels gutting that actually after all of that when the going got tough she went.

Should read “on my birthday” not on her birthday

It actually sounds as if you were the one doing the caring a lot of the time previously and she couldn’t cope with the roles being reversed? I had a BFF with MH issues and I used to go out of my way to help her, even foolishly lending her money. She could never cope when I was the one needing support from her.

We’ve lost touch now, mainly because the loan was never repaid and it was a bone of contention with my DH, but also because I came to realise that she was basically a user.

Friendships tend to be complicated when both friends have MH issues. Sometimes there’s just too much water under the bridge for a friendship to be restored. Personally, I wouldn’t write to this friend tbh, you sound quite churned up about her and I think you could be hurt if she doesn’t reply, which she might well not do.

I’m sorry you’ve been through such a hard time, wishing you a continued recovery.

But you say in your OP that you think you must have done something to damage the friendship while you were psychotic enough to start fights, make suicide attempts and have a late termination because of violent delusions, but you don’t know because you have only fragmentary memories of six months.

In a later post you say that not only did your best friend not know about any of this, even though you were in contact daily, but you were in fact looking after her even while you were ill, giving her lifts and money, and booking her taxis. And your psychosis has become ‘manic’ episodes in which you hosted great parties and did well in tests, and your friend also has manic episodes in this version, and is very much the recipient of your help.

Which is it?

If it makes you feel better then you should absolutely try.
It is important to keep in mind that she does not have to forgive you or accept your apology. If you feel you’re in a good enough place to accept this as a possibility then of course try. I hope it does have a happy outcome for you both.

Reenascreena I think the point is that the OP genuinely doesn’t know because that’s the nature of a psychotic episode.

Sorry to hear of your troubles [fProbably oversimplifying here, but she sounds like a 'fair weather' friend.

While everything is fine or while you're doing the bulk of the work they'll be your friend. But they don't stick around when the going gets tough and the friendship requires effort from them.

Sometimes they don't reveal themselves for years. That happened to me.

But she’s given two conflicting versions of what happened, Lizzie. In one, her own behaviour is frighteningly out of control, and she may have hurt her friend and not remembered afterwards, and she’s contrite and desperate to make amends. In the other, her own behaviour is ‘high functioning’, she remembers perfectly what happened, says her friend never knew about any of her mania, and that she was in fact helping her friend financially and organisationally, and the friend is being ungrateful not to return the favour.

I don’t think the two can be reconciled.

They can, though. It sounds as though she’s coming to terms with having had a serious manic episode. Have you had any experience of someone who has been psychotic? It’s so scary, both for them and for them and for those around them. She probably is normally high functioning, which is typical of someone who is bipolar.

I think her concern could be that her friend witnessed one of her episodes and was freaked out? Because believe me, it is scary. (In my case, I experienced it with my DB and my former BFF.)

If you haven’t experienced it or witnessed it, I don’t think you’re in a position to comment.

People who are having a manic episode are psychotic at the same time, though I’m not sure that’s always the case? I’m not a mental health expert, obviously.

I had postnatal psychosis. I assure you I’m all too well aware of the issues, Lizzie. I think that if the OP hopes to reconcile with her friend, she needs to be honest with herself, especially if there are gaps in her memory. If she cannot in fact remember what happened during the psychotic period, as she says in her first post, then that is an entirely different situation to the relationship she describes in her later post, where she is the benefactor and her friend — who is entirely ignorant of the psychosis — is the one being helped.

Okay, I apologise. I think she’s describing how the friendship was before the psychotic episode, she had clearly MH issues them before the crisis. I think she genuinely doesn’t know what happened during that particular period. She doesn’t remember doing anything to hurt her friend but she’s afraid she might have done.

That’s how I read it anyway.

Thanks, Lizzie. I think the OP’s most recent post is definitely about their previous relationship, but the post from yesterday at 21.40 sounds like an entirely different take on the time period of the psychosis.

I think there’s some anxiety involved here too. She’s afraid that she might have done something terrible during a manic phase to explain why her friend has dumped her, whereas in all likelihood her friend simply couldn’t cope with her manic episode and ran a mile.

I think there may be some confusion on the OP’s part as well.

Either way, I don’t think we should be pressing her, I think, as she is fragile. I don’t care that it’s AIBU, I don’t think it means we should have an empathy bypass.

I think she might not be back, actually.

You say you were psychotic for 6 months prior to her going NC with you. Psychosis is very hard to deal with and, as you were like it for 6 months, that is a long time for someone to have to cope with it. It can be very scary for friends and family to experience, yet alone deal with for so long.

As your friend experiences mania I presume she has Bipolar disease and she may not have been able to cope with your MH issues as well as her own. Your ill-health may have compounded her ill-health.

I think it's fine for you to write a letter explaining your concerns that you upset her when psychotic but best do it without the expectation of a reply.

I have been on the other side of this. I supported my SIL with no polar through a very distressing and intense 2 years. It took its toll on my family and my marriage, I found it very hard to be as supportive as she wanted me to be (beck and call 24/7) whilst raising a young family. Things calmed down a bit and then she made some disastrous relationship decisions that we'd advised her not to do and - all of a sudden I was the enemy and she was sending up to 40 texts a day decimating my character until I blocked her. She has no recollection of all this and thinks I'm a bitch for no longer wanting anything to do with her, but the truth is she was so emotionally draining, even when she wasn't manic, and I had a lot of illness problems with one of my kids and it's all just too much for me at the moment.

She is in touch with her brother (my OH) but he keeps me out of it. I know she'd like to reconcile, but I have so much trauma in my life atm I have no time for hers.

Iean this kindly OP, I know MH issues are a nightmare struggle and you need support, but maybe you need to accept that it won't come from your friend. If I received a letter or contact from my SIL wanting to go over everything I think it would send me over the edge.

If you do reach out, I would do baby steps. Maybe a text saying I've been thinking about you, how are things with you? See if she responds. Don't go in with a full rehash and apologies. It may be too much for her.

I hope you find peace, whatever you decide to do.

You are making a recovery, this is all still very fresh. Do you really think you are ready to start opening it all up again. If she tells you how you were, what hurt her, why she doesn't want to speak to you anymore or if she refuses contact how will you deal with that? I think maybe in this case you need to give yourself a lot longer. Several years. I'm not saying you can never speak to her again but you are still very vulnerable and she stepped away for a reason, even if it was just that she wasn't really as invested in the friendship as you that is till massively impacting. Concentrate on you for now.

I would agree that baby steps are best, or maybe a ‘thinking of you’ card. Tbh, I’m virtually NC with my DB because I can’t cope with all his MH issues; I have enough to cope with myself, with 2 adopted DDs, one of them with SEN, and my own PTSD and depression.

Sometimes there really is too much water under the bridge. Reaching out to your friend with a ‘thinking of you’ card/text is a good idea. But please don’t send a letter rehashing old ground. If I were to receive such a letter from my brother/ex friend, I wouldn’t bother reading it.

Hi all! Thanks for your help. I think if I do anything at all I will certainly go slow. But hopefully all will pan out. Sorry for the confusion.
I think Lizzie has understood best. I know for certain that I wasn’t violent or aggressive to or in front of my friend as the context of seeing her was generally around other people, and in my more high functioning periods. additionally the N/C Happend towards the end of the illness. So I don’t know I had more insight then and I wasn’t thought disordered then.
Although the whole thing makes me so confused

If you do write, will you even know if it has got to the right address? You need to be doubly OK with not getting a reply because she might not want to, but might also not have received it.

Presumably she still knows how to reach you, if she wanted to?