October 18, 2022:
Still, I've always thought there was a weight to that friendship, a connectedness, and key symptoms suggested that was so. She contacted me when her mother died. She contacts me when there are work problems. She's contacted me now in similar context. So that her surprising behavior — expressing enthusiasm for a lunch, then backing out with strange-sounding excuses — hurt me. Where I've responded as I typically do, and as I realize my mother typically did, by backing away, partly from offense, but also largely from fear.