Showing up for a friend when you’re at your lowest takes a kind of strength most people don’t talk about.

This teen left a mental health facility for a weekend pass just to be at her best friend’s birthday trip, traveling three hours by train alone to get there.

Since money was tight, she brought a handmade gift: pottery, a card, and a book with sentimental value (because expensive wasn’t an option when you’re recovering in a hospital).

But when she presented it in the hotel room with the rest of the group, her friend looked visibly disappointed, made eye contact, and moved straight on to the next gift without a single word.

Two years later, she still hasn’t handed over the Christmas present sitting in her room for fear that she’ll be humiliated again.

Keep reading for the full story.

AITA for giving my best friend an insufficient gift for her 18th birthday?

My best friend (19F) and I (18F) have known each other for 13 years now.

The event I’m talking about was her 18th birthday almost two years ago.

She planned a weekend trip to a big city 3 hours away from our hometown and invited her closest friends, including me.

But unfortunately, this just wasn’t a good time for her mental heath.

At that time I was dealing with a lot of mental health issues like depression and a severe case of anxiety which led to me having a permanent stay at a mental hospital for treatment.

The trip was planned right about the halfway mark of my stay there.

She knew her plans had changed, so she tried to be as communicative as she could with her friends.

I wasn’t sure if I was able to come, as the hospital where I stayed only allowed patients to leave from Friday around noon until Saturday evening.

I told her that instead of me driving with the rest of the group earlier, I would be taking the train by myself and meet them in the evening.

So eventually the time came to give gifts.

After I arrived we spent the evening in the city shopping.

The whole group eventually sat together in the hotel room and we gave her our gifts.

Now, as I was staying at the MH, I really didn’t have the resources I would’ve normally had, so I did some pottery, made her a card and got her a book that I knew had sentimental value for her.

Since money wasn’t an abundant resource for her, this was pretty much the best she could do.

Because of my mental situation the last few months, I kind of forgot about her birthday until about 2 weeks prior, which eliminated the possibility of planning something bigger.

(Also important to note is that I am poor, so I pretty much only gift gifts with sentimental and not monetary value, so it also wasn’t an option to buy something online.)

She wasn’t proud of this gift, and apparently her friend wasn’t either.

I was already feeling extremely bad about my gift but told myself that I know her as one of the most kindhearted people and that I knew she appreciated sentimental gestures a great deal.

Nevertheless, as she saw my gift she just looked extremely disappointed, looked me in the eye and without saying a word she just went to unpack the next gift from her other friend.

I was extremely embarrassed and sad and went silent for the rest of the trip.

This situation really had an impact on her, even years later.

Since then I’ve always been on edge if the topic of exchanging gifts comes up in our friendship, which of course happened a few times over the last 2 years.

It’s gotten so bad that we still haven’t exchanged our gifts for Christmas 2 years ago, as I kept making excuses that it “hasn’t arrived yet” (I bought her a custom blanket with an inside joke printed on it) because I was so scared that I would see that reaction again.

The friendship was still pretty rocky.

We’ve had a lot of problems during our friendship, due to her being very resentful and still bringing up stuff from 10 years ago that happened as we were children, and me having a constant underlying guilt every time we spent time together because of that.

It’s extremely draining and this gift dilemma just adds up to my exhaustion.

Now I really want to know if I’m in the wrong here or if I’m overreacting big time, please help me.

Never Miss a Story

Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.

AITAH?

This friendship sounds like it’s causing a lot more stress than joy.

What did Reddit have to say?

Not all friendships are made to last forever.

This commenter doubts this friend really has the best intentions.

There’s no sense in beating herself up over something that happened years ago.

Her friend demonstrated that she wasn’t really the most quality friend either.

This woman left a mental health facility on a weekend pass to show up for someone who barely acknowledged her the entire trip.

Whether her “friend” chose to acknowledge it or not, the gift she brought took more effort than anything money could buy, but still, it wasn’t enough.

Even 2 years later, that look of disappointment lives rent-free in her mind.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who was stunned when her friends finally admitted the reason for their falling out.