I'm Ignoring My Best Friend Despite Knowing He Needs Me Right Now

So, I (20NB) have been best friends with "Pete" (19M) for about three years now.

I want to start off by saying that I'm not the type of person to need to talk to someone every day. If we're really close, I'll send them a quick text asking how they're doing each day but won't push for conversation if it isn't meant to happen in the moment. People get busy, I do too. Some people need alone time, like I know I do.

Well, starting this summer, Pete started to call me at random. While he always did this during our friendship, he started doing it more and more throughout the week. 2-3 times a week of him calling me randomly turned into him doing it every day and multiple times a day.

This has never happened before, and while I enjoy talking to him, my social battery has essentially been draining. Normally I wouldn't have any problem with him calling whenever, but ever since we graduated high school, I'm one of two friends he has, while the other one can't talk to him as much anymore since she's now working a job 5-7 days a week and doing nightshift (I'm friends with her, too, hence why I know this).

This has resulted in me getting spam texted and called during class, studying, work, interviews, auditions, when I'm doing things for my college organization, when I'm hanging out with other friends, and he's even ruined my most recent date doing this. I've tried to tell him when I won't be available, he claims to "forget" and spams me anyway. I've tried turning off his notifications specifically, he just does that thing phones do where they can make a notification pop up anyway despite the notifications being off. I've even tried to help him make new friends; he either finds any excuse as to why he can't go to meet new people or claims that he won't even make any friends there anyway and so he refuses to try.

If you think I'm exaggerating, we both go to different colleges. His is like five times bigger than mine is, and while I didn't have a hard time making friends, he didn't even make one. Like, he had people he enjoyed talking to, but he tried to find something wrong with literally every person he became friends with/tried to be friends with. With one of the people who tried to be friends with him and he turned away, he literally admitted that he had no reason for not wanting to keep them as a friend. When I told him that it, admittedly, sounded like he was being too critical of these people, he tried being friends with that previously mentioned person again and they turned him away immediately. In his words, he said it was proof that he was right.

Now, it's getting to a point that he blows up my phone the second he knows I'm awake. And whenever I tell him, "Hey, I'm going to be busy for [insert amount] days", he will have me tell him the earliest time that I'm available so that he can call me again as soon as possible. And even then, I'm the first person he goes to for help, I'm the person who's supposed to know how to solve all of his problems, and he'll find any minor inconvenience as a reason for him to call me and fix it.

I tried asking him if there's something going on that I don't know about and he says that there isn't, that I'm just the person he trusts more than anything. So, knowing that, it makes me feel bad for wanting space from him.

He texted me a little over 3.5 hours ago and I never texted him back. I feel guilty for it, but I'm just trying to get my mind back together. Between his dependency and everything that I'm piling on right now, it feels like I'm losing myself in the process.