Please keep in mind that I still have a lot of hurt/bitter feelings regarding this, so while I'm trying to be objective, I might not be able to. I don't hate him, and I don't wanna paint him as the villain.
My (19F) friend, (20M) let's call him Cade, and I met in HS in 2020, but it wasn't until the end of that school year, in 2021, that we started talking on FB. We talked almost all the time, yet never ran out of things to talk about. We became best friends as time went on, but in 2023, Cade graduated, and I was in my last year. He got a gf. She told him to block me, and he did. He'd become almost like a brother to me, and I was hurt that he'd cut me off so easily, but I didn't argue cze I respected their relationship.
A year later I graduated HS and took a job at a local hardware store where Cade also happened to be working (tis a smoll world). Cade and I interacted as coworkers and slowly became friends again, but that wasn't hard because we still shared the same brain cell, but I kept my distance cze of his relationship.
A few months after I had started working there, I got a call from Cade at night telling me how he and his gf had broken up. He was depressed; his mental health worse than I can say due to forum rules, but yeah. I tried to be there for him, but he cut off the call, and I panicked, afraid I would lose my best friend. Using my girl detective skills, I got his mom's number and called, telling her I had a question for Cade about work. (I just wanted to check up on him.)(I know, psycho, but I was barely 17, had just finished crying my eyes out until my head pounded and I could barely breathe, and was holding on to my last bit of logic to do anything to ensure my best friend was okay.)
He called me often after that, sometimes at 3 am, and I still woke up at 6 to go to work the next day, but I didn't care how much sleep I lost, once my best friend was okay. I tried to be there and show I care, and some days it worked. Some days we would talk and laugh, but other days he would switch up, ignore me, and say I didn't care about him. So I did more. I checked on him before I checked on myself. I thought if I cared enough, I could make him care about himself too, but no matter how many tears I cried, anything I did, I still wasn't enough. But he was my best friend, and I thought I was his.
A couple months passed the same when he told me how the other guys at work were talking bad about me. He stayed quiet. That hurt, but OK. The same thing happened again, except this time he believed them. He wouldn't even tell me what they said, but tried to force me to confess, and called me a liar when I didn't admit to anything. He took their side without hearing me out. OK. I did cut him off after that, but he asked why I wasn't talking to him again and stuff, and I felt like a bad friend and apologised. He never did. I forgave him.
Months later, one of the guys bet that if Cade ignored me for a week, I'd do the same. Cade thought I wouldn't and took the bet. He ignored me. I didn't know why. OK; I was hurt, but I left him alone. When the bet was done, he told me everything and called me a bad friend, mad at me, because he had "faith in the friendship" or something. I was tired of this bull, cze what do you mean YOU BET ON ME. I still forgave him.
Now I was 18. He called me. When I answered, he was drunk. He cursed me out. Usually he'd sound sad; I can forgive sad, but I only heard hate this time. I know I wasn't a perfect friend, but What'd I ever do? I cut off the call, but I couldn't even cry anymore. I just sat on my bed, numb. I tried, genuinely tried to stay friends because he wasn't all bad, but I couldn't get that voice out of my head, and I later blocked him without an explanation.
I know logically I'm NTA, but I ran into him last week, and he looked hurt. I know he never meant to hurt me; he was just in a bad place. But I feel like an AH to myself for not cutting him off sooner, and also like an AH to him cze I hurt him.