My [21nb] friend [22f] used me as a free therapist and now wants to kill herself because I got tired of it

UPDATE the cops found her and she's at the hospital now

I apologize in advance because this ended up being a lot more words than I expected it to be. Tl;Dr, my friend suffers from depression and ptsd but won't let anyone help her, she's mad at me now because I'm emotionally exhausted by our conversations.

Hey all first time posting, just wanted to hear some thoughts other than my own and my partners about this

My friend (whom I'll call Jamie in this post) and I have been friends since 8th grade. At one time she was my best friend. She and I both have histories of mental illness but she has endured more trauma and came out more affected because of it. I've been as supportive as I can throughout the years and she always told me she appreciated it.

I should also get this out of the way, over the years I've noticed Jamie can be very emotionally manipulative and she will sometimes act "crazy" as a way to get attention and support from me and her parents. She has a prominent selfish streak and doesn't usually think of how others might feel about her actions. In high school she was straight up emotionally abusing me but I stuck around because I thought it was her mental illness, not her. She could definitely be described as toxic but I've stayed her friend because when she's not being like that she's actually a very fun and smart individual whom I enjoy talking to. She has been cruel to me before but I've forgiven her time and time again because we were young and stupid, and she's my friend.

She also has attempted suicide in the past, both real attempts and emotionally manipulative attempts. I've had to talk her down from the edge more times than I can count.

After high school, she lost most of her friends as an angry ex slandered her and turned all of their mutual friends against her. She had me, one or two friends out of state, and her boyfriend at the time.

About a year and a half ago jamie got pregnant from her boyfriend who ended up leaving her. She didn't take it well and was having suicidal thoughts but decided to wait until after the baby was born to do anything. She couldn't support a child especially on her own, so about 8 months in she found a family willing to do open adoption, which for those who don't know (and this is just my understanding) the baby will go to the new family but Jamie can still be involved and go visit. They also all agreed to never lie to the baby about his situation, so he would grow up knowing who Jamie really was. This I think has done Jamie's mental state more harm than good in the long run.

So the baby is born, male, I'll say his name is tree since his name is nature related. Tree goes with his new family and everything seems fine, Jamie visits him about once a month.

However, during the late pregnancy and after the birth she got really really bad, saying she felt like shit for "abandoning" her child, saying the father must have left because he thought she was awful, why can't she keep anyone she loves from leaving etc etc. I was supportive and sympathetic to the best of my ability.

Fast forward to the present and a couple suicide attempts later (on Jamie's part), and nothing has changed. She is still miserable. I am still trying to help her but as I mentioned, I also struggle with mental health issues and I don't always have the emotional capacity to respond to her heavily negative texts. I also don't like to just say stuff like "oh honey I'm here for you" I prefer to give real thought out advice like how to make friends, how to change your mindset, how changing your surroundings can change your situation etc. Basically I've been trying to help her realize that yes you can't cure your own depression but you can make choices that pave the way to recovery, nobody else can fix you but you.

She starts almost every conversation with something negative about herself, "why am I so fucked up" "I have no friends bc I'm impossible to love" and even sometimes in the middle of a normal conversation she will interject with messages like this and that's what the conversation becomes. I'm still sympathetic to her situation and I can't imagine the pain she's in but I'm running out of energy to be her free therapist.

She started getting frustrated and angry with me not always responding as I was responding less and less over the past few months. Making jokes about how I never respond or picking on me for never being free to hang out (after high school I moved about an hour drive away so hanging out takes some planning, around my full time job). I knew eventually this would lead to her blowing up at me because it has in the past and I know her patterns.

Two nights ago she attempted suicide again. I told her mom whom she lives with that she was making threats and her mom told me to just keep talking to her and keep her distracted while they unlocked her bedroom door. So I sent her many long texts about how she doesn't have to do this and that opportunities to change her life are all around her if she would just live another day and find them, I gave personal examples of how I was suicidal in high school but I pushed through moved to a different city and met my partner, no my depression isn't cured but things got better because of choices I made. She didn't respond but her mom texted me back saying they got her and she's fine.

Well she responded this morning with "coming from the 'friend' who never sees me and ignores me 80% of the time." I apologized and told her I'm not always available to be supportive every day since I do have my own stuff going on. She told me that I don't have to be supportive every day, just every once in a while.

This upset me because for months I've been emotionally exhausting myself trying to comfort her literally every day. I sent her screenshots of instances in the past week alone where I have responded and tried to help and she dismissed it saying it was only a couple of times out of the "millions" of times she's reached out.

We argued for a bit and I told her that a friendship is a two way street and that it was tiring to only be met with negativity every day, and that I wasn't her therapist, and she responded by trying to manipulate me saying stuff like "I'm sorry I'm such an inconvenience to you, guess I'll stop being a burden". I stayed level headed but I called her out on that saying it was manipulative, I also sent multiple texts basically telling her straight that it was hard to watch her choose to wallow in her pain rather than make the choice to start accepting help and change.

I did snap and I could have been nicer but after all this time she hasn't even attempted to pick herself back up, make some friends, and start actually listening to her professional help (she has a therapist and a psych as well as AA meetings). She has so many choices she could be making but she chooses every day to believe that she won't get through it and this is what the rest of her life has to be like, and I told her as much.

Her response was basically along the lines of "you're not helping, stop being a bitch, you never support me, just because therapy worked for you doesn't mean it'll work for everyone, it's awful that you're treating me like this after I tried to kill myself" etc. I told her I genuinely wished her the best and that I hoped she made it through this, and she said she wasn't going to make it through this. I told her saying stuff like that is the reason she won't. She ended her spiel with "you're wrong about everything you just said" to which I responded then prove it, you have an entire lifetime to prove to me wrong and she basically said no she doesn't because she's going to attempt suicide again only this time it's my fault because I "treated her like shit".

I called 911 and told them what she said so they sent officers to her house for a wellness check and found that she wasn't home. I'm now waiting for a call back to see if they found her or contacted her mother as I type this. I shouldn't be so worried as I know this is most likely a tactic to make me feel bad for making her angry, but there's the chance that she's actually serious this time and that concerns me. Despite everything she's put me through over the years including much I didn't mention in this post I still want the best for her and to know that she's getting better even if I'm no longer in her life.

So reddit lay it on me. Am I the bad guy here? What could I have done differently to both help her AND keep our friendship? I feel like I've done all I can but she says it's never enough, but I can't fix her, all I can do is offer advice that she doesn't listen to. Should I just cut her out of my life and hope she'll be okay after that?

Submitted February 05, 2020 at 02:56PM by nyx-of-spades https://ift.tt/37XxXcl