Nothing to Say

Sophomore year of high school, my best friend since the fifth grade began to grow distant. She was stressed out with her high school workload, she was anxious at the thought of beginning the college process, she was unable to hold normal conversations like she used to, always spacing out. I felt for her, many of her fears and worries were ones I shared. I always tried to be there for her, to talk to her when she needed help, but as time went on, she stayed the same. She was always down and miserable and unhappy. It seemed like she didn’t feel anything anymore. The friend I had known for so long wasn’t there any more. I couldn’t help her. Most of the time there wasn’t even anything I could say to her. I felt like I was failing her as a friend. As much as I tried to understand what she was feeling, I couldn’t. For me it was easy, if I got upset, I could talk to a friend or a parent and in time I felt better. But she couldn’t be consoled. I had no idea how to help her because I had no frame of reference to what she was going through. They say the closest thing you can get to true empathy is imagining yourself in the position of another person, because it is impossible to know what their experience is truly like. The next year was even worse for her. She began to become further crippled by the huge amounts of work she had to do, and we barely talked. I was struggling to do work as well, and being around her had become an emotional drain. It killed me, because I wanted desperately to help her in any way, but at the same time I couldn’t be around her. This kind of guilt was extremely hard to carry. So I distanced myself from her. I abandoned her because I saw in myself similar emotions to what she was carrying, and attempts at empathy not only didn’t help her, but made me feel worse. Another friend, who had experienced recently several deaths of loved ones reacted violently to her situation, saying she had nothing at all to be sad about and she needed to get over herself. Senior year, my friend finally began to get help. She was diagnosed with depression, and over time, she has gotten much better. I’m happy to see my friend in a better place than she was, but I still can’t help but feel guilty that I selfishly left her when she needed help most of all, that I let my other friend say such awful things about her, and that I failed to understand what was going on with her.