I’m 19(f) and one of my close friends is 18(f). We’ve known each other since highschool but really got close during my gap year.

She truly is a very caring person that I love deeply but she’s become so anxiously attached to me that I dread having to see her.

She doesn’t give me a moment to breathe and when she does after I beg I feel guilty for it. Sometimes it feels like she’s my gf and not my bsf by the way she expects me to act.

I set several boundaries with her a week or two ago during my exams like she can’t spam call me in the mornings if I don’t pick up just because she wants to talk and she can’t constantly be “testing me” to figure out if I still like her and want to be her friend.

I was very blunt which made me feel guilty but for the first time she kinda respected it and didn’t spam me or do anything to distract too much from my exams.

I can tell she’s trying but she has this gf who really struggles with anxiety and I think it’s really rubbed off on her. She’s described her OWN gf as “one of those feral kids who weren’t socialized properly and doesn’t know how to speak or communicate” to me. Deadass.

Ever since they’ve been together we can’t even go out in public anymore without them almost having a “panic attack” and then guilting me for not being more sympathetic that walking through a Walmart can be stressful for some people. Even though this was never an issue before, in fact I was the shy one and the reason we’re even friends is because she was so outgoing.

I constantly feel like a villain for not being able to accommodate her needs. I love her but she is not the same person as she was when we became friends. She’s so extremely scared of being judged or people leaving her that she suffocates the people she loves and is extremely negative towards everyone other than her few friends and gf. So hates everyone and hates that people also don’t like her more.

I can tell she’s struggling and believe me I’ve been trying for months now to help but I’m scared that she’s only growing more anxiously attached to me from it and I’m not even helping her at all if anything making it worse somehow. I understand what it’s like to feel this way about someone but it’s unhealthy to be this obsessed regardless if it’s out of love or not. It’s only making both of our lives hell with me trying to just get a minute to myself and her doing everything she can to not let me.

I’ve told her before that she needs to stop acting this way in order for us to have a healthy friendship several times before and it just doesn’t seem to be getting through enough to make any real change in the dynamic.

I know ghosting is immature but I feel that I have tried to tell her before that this was a friendship that should no longer continue and she talked me out of it.

So AITAH for ghosting her?