Putting in effort into your friendships is good. It means that you are a good friend and that you value friendship.
Always being there for your friends is good as well. Being a loyal and dependable friend are good qualities to have.
Having a one-sided friendship is not something that you want to have.
You can call yourself a good friend all day long. You are there for your friend no matter what you're doing, where you are, or who you are with. You are always there to give advice and comfort them. They can always vent to you about their problems. You are always making plans, making sure they are okay, and showing that you are there for whatever. Whether that means watching Netflix and crying, or going out and partying. The word I used the most in the last six sentences is 'you'. What does it mean when you are always the one to be there for your friend? What does it mean when you are always there to give advice and to give comfort? What does it mean when you are always all ears when they are venting? If they are not doing those same things, you are in a one-sided friendship with someone that doesn't value you.
I don't talk to my friends that much anymore. Junior and Senior year, two things happened, I got into a relationship with my current boyfriend and my depression got bad. Those two things caused my friends and I to drift apart. When I was in my first years of high school, through the end of junior year I was the single and wild one. My closest friends all had boyfriends and they were with their boyfriends every single day, not making time for me or their other friends. I had other single friends and I would constantly be doing stuff with them. I would invite my friends that were in relationships to go out, even inviting their boyfriends, and I would invite them to hang out or to party. It was never just me inviting them to parties and 'single' things. My friends would always say no. But when they were having problems with their boyfriends I would always get a call asking me to go over and comfort them. I would go to their houses, give them advice, listen to them cry for hours, and try to help as much as I could. When they were back on good terms with their boyfriends it was back to no hanging out. When I was at the end of my junior year I got into a relationship. He was my best friend, and I wanted him to be friends with my best friends. They were all getting out of their relationships. No matter what it was, I would invite my friends to hang out with my boyfriend. I would invite them to go eat with us, to go on road trips, to go to parties, etc. During senior year, my depression got bad and I was always anxious or sad when I was out. Some nights I would be completely normal and other nights I just wanted to cry while being with my friends. I can pinpoint the exact night that our friendship changed. I went out with three of my friends. We wanted to do something childish and go some place where we could talk and hang out so we went to a park late at night. My boyfriend was with his friends playing basketball. I was very anxious that night. I couldn't shut it off. My head was just filled with anxious thoughts. My friends wanted to go to this place called the rice mills. They are these abandoned mills that are rusted, old, dirty, and totally scary. They are really tall though so once you get to the top (after climbing a rusted and broken ladder up nine stories) you get a view of the whole city. It feels so good getting to the top. I had gone to these rice mills many times before with my boyfriend and some of our other friends. These three friends that I was with never wanted to go when they were in their relationships. Since I was feeling so anxious I didn't want to go do anything crazy. I also told them that I had already gone multiple times and didn't want to go again. My friends were all saying that I was being weird and that I was being boring. I told them that I had been the crazy and wild one while they were in relationships. I had already done everything that they wanted to do. They are the ones who never wanted to go with me. That night made me feel like shit because they were always allowed to be sad, mopey, and boring but I wasn't. I had to be the crazy and wild one.
After that night I think my friends stopped inviting me out. I never got invited to go to parties with them or to go do crazy things with them. They all had these single and wild friends but they never once thought of me. Even though while I was single, I invited them to every single outing I had, even if I knew they weren't going to go. This is how senior year went. I would always get called to be there to comfort them and give them advice though.
Now that we are in college it has gotten worse. I moved away and they never reached out to me. I'm less than an hour away and I am always at home. They didn't say bye to me. They didn't remember my birthday. When I would go back home and invite them to hang out there was always a reason why one of them couldn't. I confronted one of them. My best friend. She has always been the quiet and shy one. She doesn't go to parties, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, and doesn't like being out late. When I would invite her to hang out she would always tell me no but then she began to ignore me. She would read my messages but not text me back. I confronted her one day because I felt that I was always putting in so much effort into the relationship and she never cared. I was always there for her, no matter what. I was always considerate of inviting her. And she couldn't give me the time of day just to reply and say why she couldn't go. She admitted to being a bad friend and to not putting in as much effort and we hung out about three days later. That was in the beginning of December, and we haven't hung out since. With my other friends it is the same thing. One moved three hours away but doesn't text me and doesn't reach out to hang out when she is home. The other is pregnant, but anytime she needs me I'm there for her, when she wasn't pregnant she wasn't really there for me, but now that she's pregnant it is worse. My last close friend stopped texting me. She unfollowed me on social media and we haven't talked for almost three months except for when I snap-chatted her once or twice. I don't know what happened between us or why she decided to cut me out of her life but it's for the best if she isn't going to value me.
I haven't talked to my friends for about a month now. I reached out, they reply two or three times, and then they stop replying. They haven't tried to reach out to me. I'm back home now, driving to college twice a week, and they still don't try to hang out. I see them on social media hanging out with other friends. With my pregnant friend, one day that she was said she asked me to pick her up and I did. We went out to eat but she started face-timing one of her friends and I heard her say, "I tried calling you to hang out an hour ago and you didn't answer. I wanted to go with you guys to the soccer game." I felt like shit when I heard that. I was her second choice because one of her other friends didn't pick up the phone.
My friends don't value me or anything I've ever done for them. I have always been there, every single time, for every single one. I would drop anything and anyone for them. So what did I do to them for them not to want to hang out or talk to me? Why don't they care to reach out to me? Why don't they check up on me? The only people that I text are my mom, my boyfriend, and my gay best-friend. I don't have anyone to talk to, snap-chat, send funny things to, vent to, or cry to. I go through every day alone, not talking to anyone. I have no friends anymore. If I have always been a good friend, why am I alone?
