When do you know if a friendship is worth saving?

I (19F) have been struggling with a friendship of mine for a couple years now, and I don’t know if I should stop trying. For the sake of this post i’ll call my friend (19F) Jessy.

Jessy and I met when we were just 11 years old in elementary school. She’s been one of my best friends since we met. She moved away after about a year of our friendship but we managed to stay close. In grade 10, she moved back and we went to the same high school, from there our friendship was stronger than ever.

A few years pass, we’re best friends and hanging out all the time, we eventually graduate high school, walking down the aisle side by side.

We were both applying to university and decided to apply to a couple of the same schools, one of them being my safety school. A few months pass and I get accepted into my first choice university one of the best in my whole country. This has been my dream school since i was kid, so I accept my offer as I couldn’t bring myself to turn it down.

Jessy was mad at me for choosing my top choice school over the safety school we were talking about going to together. I tried to explain to her how much this school means to me but she saw it as I was choosing this school over our friendship. The school she ended up going to was the one we were going to go to together, which is about two hours away from my school by bus. She eventually forgave me for going to a different school and we continued to hang out all the time.

When september rolled around and we both started attending school we became closer than ever spending the night at each other’s dorms almost every weekend. We had a lot of fun and told each other basically everything.

About 3/4 through the school year things started to change a bit. She was meeting up with guys online and exploring her sexuality which I totally support. However it got a little weird a couple times… One night she invited me over to her place to spend the night, i get there and we’re hanging out n everything’s good, until she gets a text from this guy saying he wants to hookup so she leaves me at her dorm alone for the rest of the night and comes back around 7AM. I was a little annoyed that she left me alone all night but I understood.

Fast forward to the end of our first year of uni, she needs be out of her dorm earlier than I do so she decides to spend a week at my place. I was originally okay with this as shes usually respectful, but something changed.

She was being really rude to be in my own place while i was letting her stay there, some examples of this is recording me sleep, calling me names like “don’t be such a bitch” or calling me stuck up, things like that, nothing to end a friendship over but it felt very disrespectful.

Then became the beginning of the end.

The first comment she made that really stuck with me was after we disagreed on something small, she looked at me in my eyes and said “i wouldn’t say that if i were you, i can put your tooth brush in the toilet and you’d never know” for context i have a private bathroom w a lock so when she’s in there she has access to all my products. This comment made me super uncomfortable, because even if that is a joke, it wasn’t funny to me.

She had been hanging out with another friend a lot, staying at her house for weeks at a time and i think her behaviour might have changed by hanging out with her 24/7.

After this came summer and the worst of it.

For some context, my phone plan had ended and I went to Costco with my family to get my phone switched to a new one. While I’m in costco, I see that she unadded me on snap, so I text her number asking why she unadded me, from here i got a stream of texts that I will never forget.

She tells me she blacked out and blocked all of her hoes, I’m getting annoyed with her and being like i’m not one of your hoes?? why did you unadd me? and this is when she snaps at me saying “Get over it it isn’t like you’ve been a good friend either”
this pisses me off bc I try really hard to be a good friend.

This conversation continues, me being confused as to why she’s doing this, and her sending messages that are mean and don’t really make sense, for example I told her I was extremely confused as to why she was acting like this and this was her response
“Be pissed be confused but there are things that have been building up for a long time some of which have just been pointed out and I just can’t be involved in things out of my control” At this point i’m so confused and hurt, all while i’m in Costco and this guy at the kiosk is asking to take my phone as i’m getting all these weird texts from her.

Now i’m full on balling my eyes out trying to call her to understand what’s happening and why she’s wanting to end our friendship, she then apologizes on the phone, hangs up and continues to send me more hurtful messages. She sent a really long message about how my mental health is too much for her, and how she can’t handle me as a person anymore. I’m shortening this a lot but i’ll add a screenshot from a couple of the texts for context on how she was texting me.

At this point i’m so over this conversation, hyperventilating in Costco bc my best friend of 7 years is just done w me with no heads up or context. I tell her i’m blocking her for a couple days to just let the situation settle so we can both have a clear mind the next time we talk.

A few hours later I get a frantic call from the friend who she’s been really close with lately saying that Jessy tried to off herself and is unconscious in her room. I give her Jessy’s Mom number so she can help and talk to her. Now i’m in a restaurant with my family, getting up every 5 minutes to answer a phone call about Jessy being dead. This whole day was absolutely terrible and I will never forget it. Jessy was okay, and did not die, she got rushed to the hospital to get her stomach pumped as she ODed

I get confirmation that she is alive and in the hospital. After this I reached out to her to see if she was okay and I got no response which is understandable.

A few days later I get a phone call from Jessy, she said she’s in my neibourhood and wanted to meet up to go for a walk and apologize for and explain why she lashed out on me so hard.

I meet up with her and she tells me that she was actually just scared to meet up with this guy from a dating app and that he was going to be there any minute. I’m shocked as I was told this was gonna be one on one talk about the situation, instead, I awkwardly sat with them as they made small talk and drank beer. I was annoyed but stayed w her for about an hour before I decided I was done with this weird hangout.

She never apologized to me for what she did in Costco, and her “apology walk” was BS she was just scared to meet this guy. At this point I can feel our friendship weakening and i’m wondering to myself why I’m still putting in effort. I understand that she’s going through a tough point mental health wise, but so was I and half of the stuff she said to me in Costco was about my mental health, using things I told her in confidence against me just to hurt me.

After this her hurtful words played in my head on repeat, and I still never found out what it was that she was mad at me for or what I did to make her lash out on me like that.

I was in a tough situation bc I care about her so much, even though it doesn’t feel like she cares about me anymore.

Fast forward about 6 months, I have distanced myself from her for a while now, I have been busy and so has she, so we hadn’t really made much time for each other. (at this point i was back in school and she dropped out of her uni and went back home to live w her parents again)

She gets a boyfriend (16M) at her work, and he becomes her everything. The only time she talks to me is about him. I get it, when you first get into a relationship you’re excited, but it got weird fast.

She preceded to tell me all about their sex lives and how she is all he’s ever known, and how she likes it like that. She said she likes that he was a virgin and that he’s never even kissed a girl, and how she’s the best teacher. I don’t wanna hear about any of this, but it’s all she will talk about.

Around Christmas time, me Jessy and our other friend agreed to meet up at a bar to catch up and celebrate with the 3 of us. Jessy is late, and brings her underage boyfriend into the bar with us. Me and my other friend are really uncomfortable by this bc we will all get kicked out if he gets IDed, mind you, he’s 16. It was awkward and when we told Jessy that he’s legally not allowed to be in here, she said that if we say anything it’ll hurt his feelings. So after a bit we left early due to being so uncomfortable.

A month or so later in January of 2025, he turns 17 and she was going to take him to the city for a weekend of fun. I get a call from Jessy saying how she’s frustrated with her bf and how she doesn’t wanna see him anymore let alone go to the city w him. After a short talk, she agreed to talk to him and still do their trip to the city. (Mind you they were supposed to leave at 10AM and I got the call from her around 11:30AM the same day and she had been ignoring him all morning.) This isn’t really my business, but she brought me into it.

I get a call from her asking to meet up with them in the city, I agreed but told her to text me when she’s leaving bc she’s chronically late. She tells me she’s leaving, so then I leave. I make it very clear I don’t wanna be waiting outside in the cold alone so to please be on time or at least tell me that you’re gonna be late. So I get there on time, and she had yet to leave even though she told me she was leaving over 30 minutes ago. At this point i’m annoyed and ask her what’s happening and she’s isnt answering. Fast forward about 35 minutes of me sitting outside, alone, at night, and she finally shows up w her bf. She said they were arguing that why she was late and at this point I just didn’t care, I just wanted to eat and go home.

The past few encounters I’ve had with her have been something like this, it’s never just a smooth hang out.

About 2 months ago, we agreed to go to a concert together, we got the tickets and had our plan. About a week before the concert I text her asking to pick up her stuff from my house bc we’re moving (she had 4 big bags of stuff at my house for the past 6+ months) I ask when would work for her, she said tonight.

I told her that night doesn’t work for me bc I have plans and she said she was just trying to be helpful, I said it’s okay how about tomorrow and then in response to that, she asked if my boyfriend had met my parents yet.

This was so outta pocket and had nothing to do with what we were talking about. I tell her that’s not relevant to the conversation and redirected the conversation to when she was able to pick up her stuff. She proceeded to bring up my boyfriend after I tried to shut that part of the conversation down.

At this point she’s ignoring my question and continuing to bring up my boyfriend. I ask her one more time when she can pick up her stuff and then she starts talking about her grandpa who is sick and wasn’t in the best condition. I sent her a few paragraphs showing how sorry I was, and how difficult that is as I know first hand from both of my grandmas having cancer, so I understand the pain and worry.

She had told me a decent amount about what was happening with her and I was trying to listen and give my support. After I send her another paragraph about how sorry I am I tell her that I understand how difficult it is, but i’m also in a tough situation right now, my childhood dogs just died how would you feel is [insert her pets name here] died, that’s how I feel right now. (I had tried to call her about 6 times in the past 48 hours and I didn’t get a text or a call back, I just wanted my friend to talk about literally anything as I was really hurting)

She proceeded to read my message, and leave me on read. She also viewed my instagram story where I posted a picture saying RIP. She left me on read for a full week, until I texted her again saying she needs to pick up her shit or it’s going into storage bc once again we’re moving.

She texts back to that, and ignores the message about my dogs dying. She then says “i’m excited for the show” disregarding everything I had previously said. A few days later she comes to my apartment to spend the night for the concert we’re seeing, it’s kinda awkward but over all it was a decently good night. There were a few uncomfortable moments where she made me go to a strip club, but that’s a story for another time.

Anyways, sorry for the literal novel, but I’m in a shitty position rn and am needing some unbiased advice.

I can’t get over all the small things she’s done, and her behaviour has not changed for the better. I’m just confused and frustrated on what to do and if our friendship is worth saving. I feel like I’ve put in more effort than she has recently, and I don’t trust her. I want to be her friend still bc of how long we’ve been friends for, but actions speak louder than words. What should I do? What would you do?