Dear Prudence,
I am currently experiencing a minor 15 minutes of fame in the city I’m living in. My life is pretty much the same and I’m not quite famous, but I’m definitely getting a bit more attention than normal. Overall, it’s fine, except for one thing.
I had a friend I considered a kindred spirit, named “Anna.” Anna and I had a lot in common and a ton of inside jokes. We hadn’t been friends for a long time, just a few years, but I thought we were really close. She was always so thoughtful, which I appreciated. Anna and I have the same chronic illness too, which is how we became so close in the first place. Mine is very manageable on a regular basis. I have to put some time into managing it every day and have the occasional flare, otherwise, I lead a fairly normal life, with a full-time job and some time for hobbies. Anna, however, has another health condition that makes her health issues much less manageable. She is on disability and works a little, but has to take a lot of time to manage her illness. I’ve always known her illness was more difficult on her, but I never really saw it affect her. Then, one day a couple of years ago, we were talking about something I considered completely benign (animal migration in our area), and Anna blew up on me. She misheard what I said and would not accept that I had said something different. She said some nasty things and told me she didn’t want to be friends anymore. I cried on and off for days. Finally, I moved past it.
Now, after I’ve become almost famous in my city, Anna has come back. She said that when she had started a new medication (which I remember being true) her flairs had different symptoms that she didn’t recognize at first, one of them being mood swings. She said she has gotten on a new medication and has gone back to how she was before. She said that she had wanted to reach out to me for months, but was too ashamed after her, in her words, “completely erratic behavior” and took seeing me online as a sign that she should reach out. Everything she says sounds genuine, like the person I knew, but I just can’t get over the timing. All of a sudden, in my 15 minutes of fame, she reaches out. I’m not getting any money, which I’m pretty sure is clear based on what happened. A part of me remembers how I felt when she stopped our friendship like I had done something horribly wrong and deserved what happened, even though I sort of knew I didn’t. At the same time, I really miss Anna. I haven’t found a relationship as satisfying as the one I had with her. I’ve always had trouble finding good friends and I really miss Anna. I just feel like there’s a lot going on right now and I can’t seem to figure out what is fear and what is true concern. Can you give me any advice?
—Friendly Foe