Drowning in Someone's Storm

Drowning in Someone's Storm

May 17 , 2025. By Eden Sahle ( Eden Sahle is founder and CEO of Yada Technology Plc. She has studied law with a focus on international economic law. She can be reached at edensah2000@gmail.com. )

Friendship is supposed to be a two-way street; a bond built on mutual respect, trust, and support. But when that dynamic shift, and the friendship begins to resemble unpaid emotional labor, it leaves you drained and quietly resentful.

A few years ago, I found myself caught in such relationships; friendships that masqueraded as closeness but were, in truth, one-sided dependencies. Three years later, I’m still somehow the villain in someone else’s narrative.

Just last week, someone I met casually mentioned that my former friend still feels sad about how things ended. Apparently, she also continues to blame me. That revelation stirred a familiar cocktail of surprise, frustration, and a quiet kind of sorrow.

On one hand, I struggled to comprehend how someone who so thoroughly exhausted me could feel wronged. On the other, it reminded me just how easily people rewrite stories in their minds when accountability is too painful to face.

My former friend, older and confident on the surface, remains committed to seeing herself as the abandoned one. It is easier than acknowledging how she drove me to the edge. She was beautiful, well-off, impeccably dressed, always driving the newest car. People gravitated toward her. But up close, I saw someone else entirely.

She was deeply insecure. It was not occasional self-doubt, it was the backdrop of our friendship. At first, I thought she just needed support. She had been through a breakup; I assumed she was navigating a rough patch. But the pity party never ended. I came to realize it was not a phase, it was her identity.

Every conversation revolved around her sadness, her heartbreaks, her failures. I tried to uplift her. I poured time and energy into being her emotional scaffolding. Eventually, she burned every other bridge, and I became her only friend. Then came the favors.

She started leaning on me for help with her work. What I didn’t see at the time was how easily pity can be weaponized. I kept telling myself this is what friends do. But months turned into years. I was writing her reports, meeting her deadlines, and living on her responsibilities.

Even my family began to notice. “You’re being used,” they warned. I did not want to hear it. I made excuses for her. But deep down, I knew they were right.

When I finally began pushing back, gently, respectfully, asking her to take more responsibility, she cried. She accused me of lacking empathy. Suddenly, I was the adversary simply for encouraging her to take responsibility.

So, I stopped calling. I stopped checking in. I began protecting my peace.

Eventually, she reached out again. Not to mend things. Not to ask how I was. She needed help with another work project. When I said I was unavailable, she was offended. She stopped talking to me.

Weeks later, she messaged to say she had lost her job. Before I could even express sympathy, she hit me with blame: “If you had helped me like before, I wouldn’t have been fired.”

No reflection. No ownership. Just blame. And to my surprise, I absorbed it. I carried the guilt. I mourned her job loss, even though she did not depend on it financially. It took me weeks to realize the only thing I had done was draw a boundary. And that should not be a crime.

That should have been the end of it. But life has a strange way of circling back. Just when I thought I had finally closed that chapter, she reappeared, reaching out as if nothing had changed. She insisted I was still her only real friend.

And there it was again, the pressure, the guilt, the sense that I was being emotionally blackmailed into re-entering a space I had outgrown.

Difficult friendships rarely announce themselves as toxic. They are not loud. They are not violent. They are fragile. Constantly breaking. Always in crisis. And slowly, without realizing it, we become their life raft. We stop swimming for ourselves just to keep them afloat.

Psychologists say people pleasers and high-empathy individuals are especially vulnerable to these kinds of dynamics. They mistake guilt for love, exhaustion for loyalty. Over time, the toll is real; burnout, compassion fatigue, and deep emotional resentment.

Walking away does not feel good. It feels selfish. Harsh. Even cruel. But it’s necessary. Studies from the University of California, Berkeley have shown that people who remain in toxic friendships report higher anxiety, lower self-worth, and even poorer cardiovascular health.

Leaving that friendship was one of the hardest things I have done, but also one of the most liberating. It taught me that someone else’s crisis should not rob me of my peace or dictate the course of my life.

We can still love people, from afar. We can wish them healing without sacrificing ourselves. Because friendship should uplift, not exhaust. It should challenge, not crush. And sometimes, the most compassionate thing we can do, for them and for ourselves, is to walk away from someone who only sees our worth in what we can give.

Some people are always looking for a lifeboat. Freedom is the quiet decision to stop sinking with them.

PUBLISHED ON May 17,2025 [ VOL 26 , NO 1307]

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