Sharing Our Innermost Thoughts

I have a friend who recently went through an extremely bad break up with the girl who has practically been my sister since nursery. This happened during the lockdown so I tried reaching out to the friend through instagram because i knew the break up was hard on him and he does’nt really have any friends. His family life is one big mess, with his parents both engaging in affairs with other people and not really caring about whatever the hell is going on in their children’s lives. so I used to text with him regularly, trying to help him. He was in a really bad place in the beginning…and didnt care much about whatever I said as long as he was the one talking. So i did exactly what he wanted from me, i listened. It was fine at first, but then he started calling regularly to vent. His break up was the only thing we talked about and i still listened, even though I hate phone calls and used to hesitate every time before picking up his call. We eventually learned to have normal conversations whose main topic wasnt his break up…and thats when i thought we were becoming friends. But a few days later, I slowly started realizing that friendship wasnt all he had in mind. He started dropping these little hints about how important I am in his life, how different I am from others and I realized what was happening. I was there to help him through every stage of his break up and somehow he had confused that support with romantic feelings. I wasnt sure how to deal with this, so I stopped responding to his texts.
I made excuses, told lies, and and realized from his reactions how dependent he had become on me. I had to create distance, fast and thats exactly what i did. But then he got into drinking and drugs and got a new girlfriend who was clingy and wanted an extremely physical relationship. He broke up with her after a week or two, made the wrong kinds of friends and started gaming and betting. We still talked and sometimes he would call me totally drunk.
But then on his birthday, he insisted we meet. I intentionally dodged his calls all throughout the day…and finally picked up in the evening when he announced that he was in the neighbourhood and i ‘was’ going to meet him. He didnt even give me an option and I felt forced into this situation because i really didnt want my mother to know. We met, talked for a while, he smoked and told me the perks of doing drugs, and forced me to stay out later than i could. On my way home, my mother saw him, and interrogated me. I had to lie…and turn it all around on her and I felt so guilty.
I was so angry at him. I started responding to his texts a week or two late but he still found the opportunity to tell me that he loves me. I told him that I could only see him as a friend and nothing else, but it didnt seem to matter to him. A few days later he told me this sad story about his home and told me that we had to meet. Like last time he didnt really give me an opt, so i invited him to my house because i really didnt want to feel guilty again. During this visit he told me he loves me again, and said that he is being forced to shift to a different state because of his father’s transfer by the end of next month. I told him how sorry I was, but I didnt really believe him. It wasnt the first time he had built up a sob story for me. Next month came and went, but he didnt leave, said they were going to wait till the end of his school year. I didnt believe him.
Then the stories started. The stories about his family. His father abusing him. His mother blackmailing him. He would spend nights at a station drunk and incoherent. He smoked so much that he developed some kind of a disease. He told me how he had attempted suicide twice, how he took 3 sleeping pills at once and it still wouldnt work. I tried so hard to reach him, to help him quit, to convince him to get help but I realized he didnt want that. He doesnt want to be helped. He just wants me to listen. He enjoys it, enjoys my concern.
One day he called me at one in the morning, saying that he just had a seizure and was being hospitalized. He said that he was ure he wasnt going to make it this time, that this was it. I didnt know what to say, so I didnt say much. He texted me that night saying that he loves me, and i am the most important person in his life. When I didnt answer to his calls the next day, he called the only friend I talk to and asked her if she had heard from me. When I called that friend, she told me that he was at home with a broken ankle from playing football (his story). She could hear him playing on his computer. That was the last straw. That was the day I broke all contact with him, blocked him from my phone and social media accounts. He called me several times, texted me, called my friends asking about me and even persuaded one to put me in a conference call with him and then ask me what is wrong.
Its almost been two months now. I feel so guilty sometimes for blocking him out of my life, its something I have never done with anyone. But he made me feel so trapped, so suffocated and i knew it wasnt right. He was using my friendship to garner my sympathy, to guilt me into maintaining contact with him. It wasnt a friendship. It was a burden. And he was using it for all the wrong reasons.
Maybe some of it was my fault, maybe i should have left him to deal with his breakup, maybe i shouldnt have been so involved, maybe I should have a stayed away. But he still is a human and I feel so guilty for just deciding one day to get him out of my life like his girl frnd did. Thats the part I feel most guilty about. But I do know that i do not regret my decision. I know now that he will never do anything, he would have just continued making up stories and lies to get my attention. My head hurts sometimes from thinking about this, and my fingers are definitely hurting for typing for so long. But for anyone who stayed till the end, I am really grateful. I needed to say this, needed to get this out of me. I needed him to not be the secret i carry around anymore. And i needed to get this guilt away.

I wish he allowed me to help him, I wish he allowed people to help him. I dont know…he has the rest of his life infront of him and he is just throwing it away.