Sometimes you don’t realize a moment mattered so much until years later.

Imagine you had plans for lunch with a few friends, but another close friend was really upset and needed emotional support. Would you cancel the lunch plans to stay with your friend? Or would you invite your friend to go along, and if she refused, go anyway?

In the following story, a university student finds herself in this situation and ends up dealing with drama for choosing the latter. Here’s what happened.

AITA for not staying with my friend when she was upset?

I (19F) had this friend (20F) in uni, and we were close for a while until she, like… stopped coming to classes a lot, so we didn’t get to hang out much anymore, and I didn’t really see her for long stretches.

Anyway, this was during our exams. And we were sitting together in the morning when studying, and she’d been off the entire time, and when I finally looked up to see, she was crying.

It took me a while, but eventually she told me she was having some personal troubles with someone in her life, and it was upsetting her. And so I comforted her and reassured her and told her to stop talking to this person if they were having such an effect on her health.

Trying not to be rude, she invited her to lunch.

And then after the exam, I had this like week-old plan with a few mutual friends to have lunch together. And I was actually in it because tbh I’d had a pretty rough month due to a lot ot stuff. So I had been looking forward to forgetting about it all and relaxing a little. It’s not an excuse, but just what was going through my head at the time.

So, I asked my friend to join us. And I said it’d get her mind off things. And she said no and that she was going to the library. And I was like you sure? And she said, “Yeah, you have fun.”

So I was like, “Okay.”

Each time she saw her, something was off.

And then I saw her around a few times during the day and she seemed a little tired. But I figured it was just the stress and everything. And later I felt bad, like maybe I should have stayed, so I went up to her to ask her if she was okay and apologize, and she was like, “It’s fine.”

I still felt bad, but what else could I do?

And then, anyway, fast forward a year later, we were out getting lunch and walking back to uni, and I was telling her about something my ex-friends did, and she just, out of nowhere, said, “But isn’t that what you did to me?”

She was shocked by what she heard.

I stopped, and I was like, “What?”

And then she brought that incident up, and she said, “You left me to go to lunch even though you knew how upset I was. So why are you complaining?”

I said, “But I asked you, and you said no.”

And she said, “Yes, because you know I don’t like imposing on other people’s plans. But you saw how upset I was. How upset I was the entire day. But you just wanted to enjoy yourself.”

Now, she wonders if she really was wrong for it.

She went on to say how I was a really selfish person for leaving her when she needed me. And how would she cancel all her plans to stay with me if she thought I was upset?

And my mind really blanked out so I didn’t say anything after that. And then we went back. And she didn’t bring it up again, and neither did I, but it hurt a lot.

I didn’t mean to make her feel abandoned, but if she needed me to stay, then she should have just asked me, I think. But then again, as her friend, I guess I should have noticed? Idk.

AITA?

Eek! It’s easy to see both sides of this, but maybe it would’ve been better handled back then.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit have to say about this.

According to this person, she’s a big girl.

Yet another reader who thinks she should’ve spoken up.

Here’s an interesting thought.

For this person, she did nothing wrong.

Her friend needs to grow up and learn how to communicate, so this is on her friend.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.