I don’t really have many female friends. I’m pretty shy and awkward but really close to my family and perfectly happy with the way things are. I do have one friend, I’ll call her F, who was my best friend throughout secondary school. I used to be really outgoing and confident but something incredibly traumatic happened to me when I was 15. I wasn’t ostracised or anything at school because of this but no one really knew what to do with me other than to look pityingly at me. The only person that didn’t change was F, she was always great to me and made me feel normal and I’ll always be grateful to her for that.
Over the years we’ve kind of drifted apart. We still see each other for a night out maybe once every 6 weeks or so as we live in the same town but not much contact other than that apart from sending meme’s now and again. Obviously we didn’t see each other at all from Feb last year until a few weeks ago.
A few weeks ago she phoned me up in tears, her landlady needs the house back, she’s been there for years but never had a proper contract and as we live in a holiday destination absolutely everywhere is only renting out to tourists week per week (well, from Monday anyway). She asks if she can stay with me for a few weeks until something comes up. I have been converting an old stable block in my garden for my mum to live in as she’s getting increasingly frail. It’s not got a kitchen yet but otherwise all in working order so happy for her to stay there for a few weeks.
She arrived last week. The first night she arrived I said I’d pop round after dc were asleep and show her how everything works, see if there’s anything she needs. I go round with a bottle of wine and it’s immediately clear she doesn’t want me there. I’d poured myself a glass of wine and she was doing exaggerated sighs and just playing with her phone so much that I ended up staying less than 10 minutes. She messaged the next morning apologising saying that she was just feeling really useless at the moment, never wanted this to be her life and was really embarrassed that I’d had to help her out.
I thought I’d just give her space and leave her to do whatever but a few days later the electrician was due to go round and I needed to be there so I told her and went round when I said. Again, huffing and puffing and making it really uncomfortable for both me and the electrician.
Then today I was in the garden when I heard her come in through the bottom gate, she hadn’t seen me as I was out of view (not deliberately hiding!). She had a friend with her and I heard her say “you’ll have to be quiet, if she sees I’m in she’ll never leave me alone”. Friend laughs and I didn’t hear what was said next then F said “I know, not much longer then I won’t have to live in a hovel hiding....” then I didn’t hear what was said.
Where she’s staying isn’t a hovel, it’s a really nice conversion that I’m not asking for any payment for. I went round once when she arrived, clearly didn’t want me there then have been round once more when I had to.
Am I being made a fool of? I’m feeling so upset. I thought I was doing something really nice for a friend and she seems to hate me for it.