Dear Prudence,I’m a 23-year-old woman. My senior year of high school, I became friends with a girl I had a crush on. I told her the next spring that I had feelings for her, and she said she didn’t feel the same way. I was insecure and confused not only about our relationship but my sexual orientation. I wrote a radio play about that experience during my last year of college and called it an “unrequited love story.” It was largely composed of real emails and messages we sent each other throughout college, so I had to tell her about it before it was produced. At that point, she told me that she had indeed had feelings for me, but hadn’t been able to admit it at the time, for a variety of reasons. We had planned to talk more about everything when my sister died unexpectedly. My friend helped me cope with the loss, but she’s been distant lately, ever since I saw her briefly in September. I’m confused about where we left things before my sister died, and I also miss her support, as I’m still grieving. I really don’t want to bring up the play again, partly because I want her to be the one to do it. The fact that she hasn’t makes me think she just doesn’t care enough or that the perceived (albeit different) tension between us again is just on my end. How do I get our friendship back if we never sort this out? How do I move on?
—Former Friend, Former Muse