I (f27) tried to stay neutral in a long-term friend group conflict and now I feel completely lost

So I have a close friend. We’ve been friends for about 13 years now, since 2013. We went to the same senior high school. Let’s call her Vowi (F/27). I’m also F/27, and so is Terry (F/27).

In our peer group of 7 people (including me and her), I’ve always been closest to Vowi, and she’s closest to me too. Everyone in the group knows she has a pretty high temper, gets easily offended, is quite confident (sometimes overly so), and she’s loud. She’s been like that since we were young. But despite all that, we stayed friends with her.

Over the course of these 13 years, she dated two ex-boyfriends of one of our friends in the group. Let’s call that friend Terry.

The first one happened back in high school. Both Vowi and Terry liked the same guy, but Terry ended up dating him first. Terry only told me recently that while she was dating this guy, Vowi bullied her in class because of it. Terry would go home crying almost every day and even talked to the school counselor about it. Terry is very quiet, shy, and introverted.

After Terry eventually broke up with him, Vowi ended up dating the same guy. It didn’t last long, though. According to Vowi, she lost interest because she thought the guy was kind of lame, very much a mama’s boy, and she was also disappointed in him. At one point, he gave her a gift that was far below her expectations. She expected more because the guy was rich and he was her first boyfriend, so that disappointment stuck with her.

The second incident happened during the transition period between high school and college. Terry was dating someone else, let’s call him Ades, and he cheated on her with Vowi. Long story short, both Ades and Vowi were clearly in the wrong, and eventually they ended up officially dating.

After that, the friendship dynamic in our group was never the same. It felt like the group split into two sides: Team Vowi and Team Terry. And the rest of us were often stuck in the middle, confused about who to hang out with.

For the past 1.5 years, I wasn’t invited to hang out with the other five friends, including Terry. I assumed it was because I was very close to Vowi. But honestly, that felt unfair to me. I never picked sides from the beginning. I’ve always tried to stay objective. If a friend is wrong, then they’re wrong. No debate. Deep down, I was really disappointed with my other five friends, and emotionally exhausted from being quietly excluded without anyone ever talking to me about it.

Vowi always told me everything, probably because she saw me as her closest friend. We also hung out one-on-one a lot. Because of everything that happened with the group, my disappointment and exhaustion kept building up, and at one point I snapped out of frustration. I know I was wrong for reacting emotionally without directly asking the other five friends why they stopped inviting me.

What I really wanted back then was closure. Vowi even said, “If you need closure, you should ask them directly so you can feel better.” But I didn’t have the energy to do that. If it was going to happen, I wanted it to happen organically, like if we ever hung out together again and the timing felt right. Around that time, Vowi quietly left our group chat without saying anything.

Not long after that, Terry reached out to me and asked me to be her bridesmaid. Around the same time, two other friends were also getting married and asked me to be their bridesmaids too. Because of these events, I started hanging out with them again more often, up until New Year’s.

New Year’s was basically the turning point. That night, I finally heard everything. All the unresolved beef with Vowi, and all the stories about her from their perspective. I didn’t dig for any of this. It just happened naturally. I was a bit tipsy, and even before leaving home, I had already decided to talk less and just listen.

Even before that night, whenever they asked me about Vowi, I always said I didn’t know much and told them, “If you need closure, just talk to her directly.” I genuinely didn’t want to take sides.

That night, after hearing everything, my suspicion was confirmed. They didn’t invite me because they thought I was on Vowi’s side, which was expected but still disappointing. What shocked me more was learning the other side of the story. Things that Vowi either twisted when she told me, or never told me at all. They even had evidence. I was completely bamboozled and just sat there stunned the whole night.

Now, I don’t know what happened, but Vowi has completely distanced herself from me. Like, fully. No explanation. She even blocked my finsta from her finsta. I feel like I got cut off out of nowhere, and it really messes with my head because I genuinely thought we were that close.

So now I’m stuck wondering… What am I supposed to do at this point?

TL;DR: I’ve been part of a 13-year-long friend group that slowly split due to unresolved conflicts between two friends. I tried to stay neutral, but over time I was excluded by one side and later cut off completely by my closest friend without explanation. I’m now unsure whether I should reach out for clarity, respect the distance, or focus on moving on.