Just over two months ago one of my cats got really ill, he was found to be anaemic and after a couple of weeks of treatment from the vet there was nothing they could do and he had to be let go. He was only 8 years old, our other cat is 13 and I never dreamt for a second that anything would have happened to him. He was fit and healthy, happy as anything and in the space of two weeks he was gone.

I was there went he was let go at the vet, I went to every appointment and the night before he died he slept with me on my bed, I arranged him being cremated and have a photobook of him and his ashes in a sealed box (casket - hate the word casket) on my desk. My friend and I are really close, but we’ve had problems in the past with arguments, for around 4 months we hadn’t had any major problems, just a week every so often where we’d talk less. Immediately after my cat had gone I confided in her that I wanted some normality, I wanted her to be there for me and to try and keep me in a good mood so I didn’t dwell on what had happened. For two weeks it was all good apart from my own brief lose in mood and the occasional emotional breakdown with grief. After those two weeks she just seemed to lose interest in speaking to me, she never asked how I was, didn’t ask about our new kitten that we got and when I did try to speak to her I was told I had “other friends” and to speak to them. I struggle with relationships and friendships because I’m autistic, the grief I was feeling was compounding the regular struggle I have with my emotions as well as everything else. Since the first two weeks we’ve argued more, I’ve lost my temper a few times and ranted at her but each time after I apologised, I tried to make amends and it seemed no harm was done. But then last week she was rude and insulting towards me and we haven’t spoken since.

I don’t know if my feelings about all this are being compounded by me still grieving. I miss my cat every single day, I’m worried for our other cat’s health in case something happened to her as well as how she’s coping with the kitten we’ve got (all seems fine but in the 6 weeks I’m on about it was a big worry), I have stress with uni and other things going on. I totally understand that my friend is busy, she has work and a life of her own but it’s felt like every time I’ve tried to speak to her she hasn’t been interested, she’ll leave my messages unread or ignore them without and answer, if she does reply I won’t get a full answer but a few words that don’t address what I’m saying. When she has spoken to me she’s gone on about other people and other friends, appearing not to give a second thought about me yet in her own words I’m meant to be like family to her. My other friends haven’t asked how I am, or like the friend I’m on about, about our new cat. My mum is almost always focused on my sister, my niece and my foster brother. My other friends will join parties on PSN and just leave without saying bye. I unloaded everything on my friend about three weeks after our cat had gone in one big rant, I was in tears after and I got no response, no kind of reaction from her, nothing changed.

I can be hard work as a friend but I don’t feel I’m asking that much, the one occasion where I actually *needed* my friend to be my crutch and to support me, to be a figure in my life that I could speak to openly and it’s felt like she hasn’t been there. I’ve had apathetic, short, uninterested responses. Then she was rude to me when I asked her something related to research for university and claimed I was pestering when I wasn’t. I made a comment that we’re meant to be best friends and she responded with “says who?”.

I keep looking back over the messages and it hurts. Someone I’m meant to be able to rely on just hasn’t been there, multiple people haven’t been there and I just don’t know if whether she speaks to me again or not that I can keep being friends with her. A similar thing happened to her years ago, her friends weren’t there for her and I thought when it happened to me I’d be able to rely on her, that she’d show some empathy and she just hasn’t.

Maybe this is all just grief talking, taking over what’s going on in my head but deep down I don’t think it is all grief. I feel like I’ve just got a shitty friend and now my eyes are finally open to it. She doesn’t care about me or want to be a friend to me, she wants me when no one else is interested or good enough for her, she had a new person to fawn over and I got sidelined and insulted when I questioned the change and got wound up. I feel like I’m just her punching bag, something to toy around with when she’s bored and I don’t want that anymore.