When you least expect

Well I decided it was best not to just turn up on T's parents' doorstep. I don't want to cause conflict between her and her mum. I did however take a train up to her town today. I texted her as I set off saying I was on my way and did she want to meet me for a coffee at one of our favourite coffee shops. No reply.

I arrived at the station hoping she might me there to meet me. She wasn't. I phoned her and got her voicemail and left a quick message saying I was headed to the coffee shop if she was free to join me but that it was ok if she couldn't. I almost set my phone not to show my number in the hope that she'd pick up and I'd get to speak to her, but decided that her not answering because she knew it was me was marginally better than her answering then putting the phone down when she realised it was me. I heard nothing from her. I sat in the coffee shop nursing a coffee for just over half an hour, took a slow walk back to the station, then let her know I was off home and that I hoped we could speak soon.

Part of me is wondering whether my voicemail should have been more "emotional", apologising for hurting her, telling her I was missing her and asking if we can sort things out, but I would have felt odd and perhaps a bit needy leaving that as a message. She may of course have been busy, she may be not in the mood for not answering her phone to anybody. But whatever the reason for her lack of response today, the fact remains that I have heard nothing from her since last Monday.

I now have no idea what, if anything, to do next. I have various options spinning around my head, but all have drawbacks.

I could do nothing and just wait for her to be ready to get back in touch with me. This has worked previously when she has been avoiding contact, but those times she wasn't talking to me because of issues going on in her own life. This time she is angry at something I have said so it may be different. Plus I am not sure I can just wait it out.

I could contact her to say I understand she needs time with no contact from me and that I will give her space and am here when she is ready to speak to me again. This still seems a bit open ended.

I could tell her how much I miss her, how I want to be able to talk to her again, to have long, hilarious phone chats with her, that I am sorry, and that I want her friendship. I have though tried this before and I ended up feeling more hurt and getting angry with her because I was still being ignored despite baring all my emotions and telling her how much I cared.

I could be brutal, which is the option I think my friend E would prefer I took. Her take on things was that I have the patience of a saint. I do feel that my patience is wearing a little thin and occasionally this week I have felt like emailing her to tell her how much what she said hurts, how she can't just say that out of the blue then disappear, that if I was using her I would not have stuck by her and supported her through everything that has happened to her over the past year or three, that I am tired of her going AWOL on me every few months, that I find it more and more stressful each time she does it, that I am not unbreakable as she seems to think I am (she always marvels at how strong I seem when there are all sorts of issues going on with my family).

But I worry that that would hurt her and that it seems put all the blame on her. Am I justified in losing patience with her? Should I put some of the blame on myself?

Hopefully she will get back in touch over the next few days. If not I really don't know what to do for the best. And if she does get back in touch I am not sure I can just go back to being friends without discussing what happened. I also might need to tell her that I can't cope with her disappearing regularly. We'll see what this week brings.

My friend T seems to have fallen out with me and stopped talking to me because I told her I probably couldn't go to a concert with her. I haven't heard from her since Monday and I don't know what to do about it.

The full story is this. It goes on a bit so feel free to ignore, I just feel a need to write it all down. T and I go to a lot of gigs together. It's what we "do" and what we are known for among my friends and hers. We went to a concert a few weeks ago and had a brilliant time, so much so that we booked to see the same artist later this year at a venue a flight away from where we live. We also booked the flight.

We have quite few concerts arranged for the coming months. We (in our separate homes) watched something on TV over the weekend about one of the bands we're due to see and it really whetted our appetites. After watching, T tried to track down tickets for another venue for this band and thought she found some good ones, I asked where she'd found them.

Next day she emailed me sounded pretty excited to say she'd found some really good tickets on an ebay type site, more than face value but not extortionately priced, and said she was thinking how great it would be to go.

I had overnight thought about whether I would want to go and whether I could go, and realised I have hardly any free weekends between now and August. I need to fit in meeting up with an old friend (actually my longest standing friend - I've know her since we were 5) sometime in one of those weekends, and the weekend of this new concert was one that Oldest Friend had mentioned she was probably free.

I replied to T saying I didn't think I could commit at the moment to another weekend away, as I needed to organise seeing Oldest Friend and that weekend was a possible date for the meet up. I did say if I ended up being free that weekend I would let her know (the concert tickets are not likely to sell out over the next couple of weeks). I went off to a meeting at work and returned to find an email from T telling me not to bother and saying that I have no idea how I appear to use people. She also made a comment that she was sure it would have been a different story if it was one of my favourite bands.

I felt sick and almost burst into tears at my desk. It really hurt that she would be that cold, short and angry with me. I replied immediately saying I had no idea I came across that way and asking her why she thought that. I apologised that my email may have seemed a bit abrupt (I was not having the best of days at work and was in a hurry to get to a meeting when I wrote it). She didn't reply.

Next day I texted her to tell her I'd put a cheque in the post to pay my half of our latest concert booking. Her reply just said OK, and that I could have the recently bought tickets and to let me know what name to change her plane ticket to (she knows my other friends aren't really into concerts so I don't know who she thought I might get to go with me). I texted that I didn't want to go with anyone but her and that I was still confused about what she'd said about using people, and asked if we could at least talk. I have heard nothing from her since.

I have told my Best Friend and another friend the story and both have said to just leave her, not contact her and she will forget this and get back in touch. This isn't the first time she has stopped talking to me and on previous occasions she has indeed got back in touch eventually. The other times however she hasn't accused me of using people. It hurts to be accused of that and I spent most of the day she said it trying to work out what I'd done. Best Friend however reassured me that I am not using T and that she is overreacting. She pointed out that I am entitled to say no to invitations and that T doesn't own me.

T does have very low self esteem and I wonder if it was me saying I needed to arrange seeing Oldest Friend before I could commit to the concert is what angered her. Did she feel like she was second best? I do know that none of my other friends would have reacted like that to what I said.

If she does get back in touch I am not sure a simple sorry will be enough this time, I think we would need to talk about why she said what she did. And if she doesn't get back in touch then we have the practical problem of a whole lot of concerts booked together and we will need to sort out what will happen to the tickets.

I have to confess that there is a part of me which wants to email her to tell her exactly how this has made me feel and to remind her that someone who was using her would not have given her the support I have given her over the past year or two.

If I don't hear from her in the next week I will need to decide what to do as our next concert is soon. Do I continue to ignore her and just accept missing the concert (which we've both really been looking forward to)? Do I contact her to ask if she wants to go to the concert? Do I ask her to please just talk to me? And what if she continues to ignore me?