Am I a bad friend for feeling this way.

Warning: this might be long, but I’ll break it down.

Intro ig:

I really need to talk to someone about this….. One of my best friends is a girl I’ve known for a few years now but the friendship is long distance. I don’t see her often but we talk on the phone every day.

Incident one:

Last year she pretty much invited herself to my house to stay for a week which was kinda awkward for me because Im still young so I still live with my parents and my family is very dysfunctional, I never have any friends over so allowing her to stay at all was very stressful for me. I didn’t want to say no because she had a few issues and I figured I could put my own needs aside to help her have a break. I hated it. I don’t feel comfortable having people sleep on my bed (I’m a huge germaphobe and I won’t lie, the feet and the farts and sweating would make me never see my bed the same) so I set her up with a mattress on the floor and I did my best to make it super comfy. By night two she was saying her back hurt and she wanted to sleep on the bed with me. I really didn’t want this so I made an excuse about a family emergency and said she’d have to go home. I KNOW I shouldn’t lie but she’s really pushy and I just wanted her gone. 😔 She went home and ever since she’s been asking when she can stay for a week again… I have a super busy life right now and it would throw my whole schedule off. I have said multiple times that my parents just say no and I’ve given a reason for that which I won’t specify on here because it’s too specific and I’m scared she’ll see somehow and know it’s me 💀 But she KEEPS pushing and being like “I just don’t understand why” and stuff when I’ve literally explained it.

Problem two:

She also has mental health problems a lot and often puts it on me. I am always there for her the best I can be and I try to give advice where wanted and help where needed, but it’s constant. I struggle a lot too, but she doesn’t care. For example, I was on the phone to her one day and I was in the middle of talking to her about this incident that happened that had made me seriously uncomfortable where I was basically grabbed and this person tried to kiss me and my other friend had to get them off. I was talking to her about how I had to go to school the next day and see that person after they had really kinda scared me. She clearly was not listening as she just cut me off mid sentence to laugh with her brother about something unrelated on the other side of the phone. Mind you, this was the first opportunity I had to speak that whole call because I’d just got done listening to her talk about all her worries and problems. It really hurt my feelings and made me feel unimportant.

Problem two and a half:

She just doesn’t see anything I do as priority. She doesn’t work, she doesn’t go outside, she doesn’t have any hobbies that take up all her time, her hobbies are like colouring or drawing. Yet, if I send her voice messages she always “can’t listen” and I use snap so she just won’t listen and then 24hrs later they delete automatically, so she will pretty much just ignore a lot of stuff I talk to her about even though she’s completely free. Now, the reason this is such a big issue for me, is because you can speed up voice messages on Snapchat, but she will send me like 30 minutes worth of videos which you can’t speed up, and I will always watch every single one. She expects me (a much busier person who works and goes out a lot more) to set aside all that time to listen to her (which I do happily because she’s my friend), but won’t listen to a 40 second voice note from me, which she can speed up?? Again, it makes me feel so unimportant and disrespected.

How it’s currently going:

I’ve just started stepping back now. I don’t answer her straight away, I don’t send her voice notes, I don’t constantly ask how she’s doing or about her day, I don’t tell her anything that’s going on with me, and I don’t act enthusiastic to make plans or talk with her, because I’m not, and I’m not going to fake it. She brings my mood down all the time just because she has bigger problems than me, and I’m not interested in being her therapist anymore, when she makes no effort to at least try to better herself. Recently, she will start acting really off and mad or dry or something and it’s obvious she just wants me to ask if she’s okay, and when I do, I just get the same “I’m never okay lol” type of thing or else it’ll be another rant about everything going wrong in her life, with a lot of it being very preventable, predictable, or easily fixed. On the other side, if I don’t ask if she’s okay, she will just ask me “are you okay” just so I have to say “yeah wbu” and then she can go on her rant. I will always listen to my friends rant, I have a few other close friends who I am also always there to listen to, but the difference is, they are always there for me too, and they don’t make my problems feel tiny just if theirs are slightly bigger.

The overall question:

Am I a bad friend for feeling this way, or am I right for taking a step back? Has anyone else experienced this? Should i say it to her and deal with her turning it on me and getting upset? If you think I should talk to her about it, what should I say?

End:

If anyone has read this far, which I don’t expect, thank you so so much. It really does mean a lot to have someone listen to this because I just don’t want to talk to people I know in real life about it because I don’t want to bad mouth her to people who might know her or something, and they would probably just tell me to drop her. Sorry it was so long, I really needed to get this out it’s been bothering me for months ☹️