"Friend" of 21 Years

Okay I'm cooking the forum again, but an words anyone has would be gratefully appreciated. I really welcome different perspectives. At uni, I made friends with a girl. Soon after she had her first psychotic episode and all her friends dumped her. Although I've never had psychosis, I valued the person under the illness and I have been a great support for her ever since. Taking suicide calls, and assuring her that I still loved her after bouts of her psychosis where she felt so embarrassed. I don't talk about my own problems. Even in the darkest moment of my life recently, I didn't tell her how bad I was, I just told her of all the positive things I was doing to help myself. Her response was
"Could I just ask you please not to write about psychiatry and mental health to me. I find this whole area very distressing. They have been extremely harmful to me in the past and abused my trust. My life is so much on track now and I am going so well. My correct diagnosis has never been mental and has always been neurological – I was poisoned and the meds they gave me added to the toxins in my body and in fact has caused me so much illness". Okay, fair enough.
I wrote back my reality (after a traumatic day in court mind you).
"I have no doubt that you have felt traumatised by the mental health system. I am sorry for what you have endured. I have no desire to trigger your wounds. I care for you and I am interested to know why you would fuse the sharing of my helpful, benign and totally unrelated life experiences as a friend, with your own traumas? I feel a little disappointed in the sense that my mother was so harmful to me in that she refused me medical attention and shoved herbs down my throat rather to take me to the doctor so the extreme child abuse wasn't detected. I encourage you to continue working on being able to separate out the experiences of others, from your own wounds. As much as I care about you, I am not responsible for your wounds nor the healing of them. I feel I am able to separate out how harmful my mother was to me and able to respect that you have derived enormous benefit out of something that was so abusive to me. While, I will never deliberately trigger your wounds nor will I turn myself inside out, walk around on eggshells, deny important parts of my self and not share my important life experiences with you. I have feelings too and your email was harmful to me. I have never attempted to gag you in our 21 years of friendship and I have never invalidated your experiences. No matter how different your experiences have been from mine, I have supported you no matter what. I have no hesitancy in asking for that to be reciprocated in our friendship. I ask you to embrace me as a friend and accept me for who I am, without rejecting parts of me and my life".
I have not heard back from her...
Was I too full on? It was a bad day within a bad time but I still feel like after 21 years of supporting her unconditionally, the friendship had gone way too far one way.

HI liv..

I believe you did the right thing.  You supported her unconditionally for 21 years, unselfishly, all the while suffering in silence.  It was time for her to know these things.  She may need to let it sink in...or like ebony said..it might be lost on her.  Its hard for someone to hear that they were being selfish in the friendship.  Dont beat yourself up over it.  You were there when no one else was.  She should have appreciated that loyalty.  I also think you handled it in a great way.  You were still kind in the words you used.  And your right..it was ALL about supporting her.  True friends support one another.  I believe that completely.  My friends have shown me how much they care during this separation i am having.  If she realizes it or not..know that you were a true loyal friend...and we are all lucky to have you!!  btw..kudos to you!! I dont know of anyone that could endure that for 21 yrs.  Holding it all in to help a friend.. amazing! 

I'm glad you are feeling clearer on your situation EK. It's clarity hard won and I imagine it might come with a mix of sadness and relief. Good luck for Tuesday and for hanging in there until you have the opportunity to take the action you feel you need to take. Thank you.

Hi Stephanie,

Thanks for sharing your own experience and extending the hand of friendship to me :). My friend actually wrote back after 3 days and said she didn't understand my email and suggested we put it down to a misunderstanding and move on.

She has very firm beliefs and rejects anything that doesn't support her hypothesis. I am starting to expect that I am able to share my experiences freely in the friendship. I'm not asking her to agree or accept my experiences, just find a place to hear me, without needing to reject me or shut me down.

Thanks for everyone for helping me to unpack this friendship, so I can learn to be a better friend, both to myself and others.

Hi Stephanie,
I wrote back to my friend saying that I didn't believe it was a misunderstanding and I really needed her to understand what I was saying in my last email. She wrote back today, saying that she had deleted my email without reading it, just in case it had something in it that might upset her. My heart started to beat really rapidly. Here I was legitimately hurt from her harmful behaviour and conveyed that in a loving and respectful way but the "baby got chucked out with the bathwater" just in case there was something in the bathwater might not be to her delicate liking? Does she have any regard for my feelings whatsoever? There is no way you can deal with a person like that. My psychiatrist previously told me she sounds like a narcissist. I think my psychiatrist might just be right! I don't have many friends - I'm lonely enough as it is and it hurts to lose another one! My psychiatrist says that while letting go of the toxic people in my life, will be very painful, it will also mean that I don't have my good energy being eaten up with negative and meaningless exchanges such as the one I have been having with this "friend". Usually as difficult as conflicts may be, working through conflicts with reasonable people, often give us so much more understanding of ourselves and the other person. Trying to work through conflicts with unreasonable people is incredibly harmful... the wound is still there and it gets all infected by their ongoing pathology. I imagine it is very much how loved ones of untreated BP's feel. There is no way to reason, and as much as you love that person, you just have to let them go, in order to save yourself. It's just so sad. I know life is a mixture of good and bad, pleasure and pain, but sometimes I would really like a bit more positive, fun stuff. I try to create it but can't seem to get out of the quagmire. I never give up, and always try to take the most effective action. Hopeful one day I will turn the corner and this pretty barren, painful journey of 40 years so far, might turn into something a little more fertile and joyful. x

Friendships are not meant to last forever. Friendships are not meant to stay the same.

I have a very close friend of over 10 years. But I needed some space from the friendship. We see each other less often but have more fun. No long conversations on the phone but staying on touch through Facebook.

I value her friendship and in order to make it last I took a step back. It has been a year and I think it is time to take a step closer.

My opinion on your friend is similar to your psych says. She's using you, hurting you, stepping all over you. Letting go HURTS, but make room for healthy relationships. Lay down your expectations (send her a letter in the mail - harder to delete) and let her choose if she will change or let the friendship end.