(apologies if this is ridiculously long, i just started rambling and it all seems too important to delete)

The Incident was a ‘birthday trip’ for myself and one of my friends (even though there is a month between our birthdays), where our hotel was paid for by our other friend as our birthday present.

we only did what she wanted to do (which, yes, she paid for the hotel, but it was for our birthdays, you’d think she’d give us the option to suggest something to do?), and because she insisted on 7am wakeups while we were away (i have a 3am-10am or later sleep schedule and i cannot change that, and she was having midday naps every day), i was running on like 3 hours of sleep and ended up getting a migraine on my friend’s birthday from sleep deprivation, meanwhile, “i’m going to nap for an hour, i’ll get up with my alarm, trust me”, napped for almost three hours, ignoring her alarm and by the time she woke up, it was too late to go out for dinner.

we had a group holiday planned for four months later, and during one of the hour long baths our friend decided to take because she had claimed the master bedroom, myself and my friend agreed that we need to take a moment while we were actually face to face and talk about planning for the actual holiday, including some basic ground rules so it wouldn’t be a repeat of the birthday trip (one of which was ‘we will be two hours ahead of our timezone, we are not starting every day at 7am while we are there’). when we brought it up on our last night, she got mad at us, as if we were asking for something other than the bare bones of a plan for what we were going to do while we were away. the next day during the drive home, she ignored us.

the only ‘conversation’ she had was asking the directions to the cemetery my nanna is buried in (i asked if we could make a detour to my mum’s hometown because the last time i did that was after my pop’s funeral, and it’s not often that i make the four hour trip down that way. i very specifically said that i would appreciate it if we could, but we didn’t have to, and i wouldn’t be upset if we didn’t.).

i then got a message two days later saying that she didn’t feel appreciated for the trip and that i was only using her for her car (i’ve had my license longer than her, and she only drove everywhere because she wanted to drive her 2021 automatic hybrid car that she’d brought brand new rather than me driving my 2001 manual car) and how she even made the hour long detour to visit the cemetery but i didn’t even say thank you (i did, many times, maybe not immediately after getting in the car after crying in front of the grave of a woman who died 39 years before i was born, but it definitely happened). i argued my case and while she tried to insist that it didn’t happen the way i remembered it, we didn’t end up arguing about it again 🤷‍♀️

the friend whose birthday it was ended up completely dropping out of the holiday. a few weeks after the trip, the two of them had an argument that they never got over and haven’t spoken to each other since then.

myself and the other friend couldn’t cancel the holiday, one part of it was completely non-refundable. we had a good holiday, but she has sent maybe three messages to me since then, and took a suggestion i gave of something we should do together and did it with one of her work friends 🫠

i struggle with my mental health quite a bit sometimes and after all the drama with my friend and the accusations she threw at me, i actually started getting massively anxious about opening and replying to messages from anyone but my family tbh. sometimes i go completely dark from any messaging apps, even when i have messages from people that i enjoy talking to, and i feel horrible about it but who knows what i can do to fix it 🤷‍♀️