For anonymity purposes, we’ll call my friends Anna, George, Gracie, Parker, and Emma.

Context: I (F19) and some friends (M&F around same age as me) from church are all in a gc together. This gc was specifically made by Anna. The purpose of the hangout was to celebrate Anna’s bday AND get to see George, who lives 2 hours away at college. Since he’s only in town for spring break, we would only have one evening to spend with him. 6 of the 7 people in the gc were supposed to meet up at an escape room, go out to dinner, and then meet back up at sisters Anna and Gracie’s house. 

About 30 minutes before the event, the gc gets a text from Gracie saying that their grandfather was in the hospital, so plans were cancelled for tonight. I responded with the classic “oh no!! I’ll be praying for yall❤️” and so did George. However, seeing as George has limited time in town, he asks whether the rest of us were still up for hanging. Emma (my sister) and I were down and started talking about it in the gc with George when Gracie seemingly gets offended and going off on us in the gc. I can TOTALLY see where she’s coming from with high emotions, but I was caught completely off guard. Anna then begins to chime in, and things get a bit messy, but we’re all trying to stay cool. Gracie then calls Emma, crying to her about how “awful” and “careless” we’re being.

By this point, I’ve called Parker, who was already otw to the escape room. We decide to just go ahead and make a separate gc with the remaining friends, in which we decided it would be inappropriate to continue with the escape room since the reservation was made under Anna’s name. We collectively settle for going to target to buy legos, and coming back to my house to build them and salvage the night.

Fast forward to us leaving target, the worst luck comes upon us and we RUN INTO ANNA AND GRACIE IN THE PARKING LOT!! Long story short, we end up having to tell them that we decided to still hang out, to which the sisters are pissed. They claimed we should have told them, yet they were the ones claiming that they wanted to be left out of the loop for new plans… they also said that we all acted inappropriately in the gc after receiving the bad news, but the first text that was sent totally undermined the dire situation—none of us had any clue that their grandfather was dying! If we had known, we all would have acted completely different. They additionally stated that we should've asked if there was anything we could do for them, etc., which I do admit I could've done better—but l truly didn't understand the severity of the situation! I ended up inviting them to come over but they said they’d rather go home, and that was that. I was honestly relieved that they didn’t want to join us. I was pretty infuriated about the entire ordeal but talked it over with my mom afterward who calmed me down.

All in all, I’m curious to see if their feelings have changed by Sunday when I see them at church. Although I feel bad that I might not have “been there” emotionally for my friends, I never backed down on how I felt blindsided by the information that was later being spewed at me. Part of me wants to reconcile, but the other part wants to be done with the friendships because they’re a bit messy as a family anyway… but idk, AIO?

AIO for not handling my friends’ crisis the way they wanted me to?