Friend Ghosted me for a year and suddenly wants to meet up....I don't

[Louve]

One of my close-ish friends has ghosted me for the past year for no reason, other than going off on a bizarre Chamanic career change (literally) and getting back with her ex (who she cheated on). She wrote to me last night out of the blue with a generic, hi how are you, let's meet up soon etc. This is the second time in our 10-year friendship that this has happened and I am certain that I haven't offended her - rather her off on a bizarre life choice trip. Yes she is quite unstable, doesn't have kids and probably has no clue that this isn't a normal way to be.

AIBU to either tell that I don't feel like meeting up after such a long time with no news, or even ignore the messages? I have never got involved in any type of drama, or do this to my other friends - not my style at all and certainly no time for that with two young kids and full time work.

Trying to work out the kindest but fair way to deal with it!

Personally I'm not good with people who disappear from my life and then reappear after a long while like nothings happened. I don't blame you for not being eager to meet up, focus on people who can be bothered with you instead. I definitely agree that even if you do meet up she'll probably disappear again.

I dunno. I have friends I don't speak to for a year at a time. Then we meet up. I don't consider that ghosting, that's just friends who will probably always be friends regardless if we're not in regular contact. Sometimes other things take priority but we remain friends. Maybe it's like that for her, but not you, then you have to decide if that type of friendship is for you.

@EmeraldRoulette you make a good point. And telling the truth about your feelings isn’t, of itself, creating drama.

I was trying to condense things because I didn’t want to write an overlong post. OP said she’d never got involved in any kind of drama in her friendships. But one of her two options was telling the friend she didn’t want to meet up because she hadn’t heard from her for a year. To me, this would raise the temperature and could potentially spark a difficult conversation, hurt feelings, angry feelings- in a word, drama. Which OP had said she didn’t want.

If it’s the case that she ignored your attempts to stay in contact and has now reappeared a year later without addressing that, I’m afraid I’d have no interest in restarting the friendship.