I (23F) recently went on a long weekend trip to a countryside cottage with my best friend (21F), and I left the trip feeling emotionally drained and honestly really confused. I need an outside perspective to tell me if I’m being unsympathetic, or if my thoughts are valid.

My friend says she suffers from some mental health conditions, she never specifies them clearly and she has medication for her conditions but doesn't take them. Before we left, she told me she planned to take two beta blockers every morning “just in case,” and that if she had a bad panic attack, I should call our mutual friend, who is also my ex-boyfriend, because he apparently knows how to calm her down. I found this strange. Why involve my ex without asking how I feel about it? And why was she planning so specifically for something that should be unpredictable?

What made it weirder was that a couple years ago, we travelled abroad to an entirely different continent for 7 days and she didn’t take any medication or have any panic attacks, yet for this 4-day countryside trip in our own country, she suddenly needed this elaborate preparation. It felt off.

Everything was fine until the third night. We were watching a musical in bed, drinking tea, and singing along. Suddenly, she got up and said she felt like she was either going to vomit or have a panic attack. She went to the bathroom and called her mum, speaking in her native language so I couldn’t understand. Later, she came back upstairs and said she felt bad but was going to try and sleep it off. She sat propped up in bed while I fell asleep.

I woke up around 2am to the sound of her on the phone again, talking to her mum in the bathroom downstairs. She said she’d been trying to sleep for two hours but couldn’t “turn her brain off.” Then, at 7am, I woke again to her talking on the phone outside the cottage, this time in English. I assumed it was my ex. I didn’t say anything and pretended to be asleep. I pretended to sleep because she’s said before she doesn’t like anyone seeing her having a panic attack or crying, so I thought I would cause her less stress by doing that.

When I got up around 8am, she was already awake in bed, scrolling through her phone. I asked if she wanted tea or breakfast, and she refused, saying she didn’t feel like eating. She didn’t mention anything about the night before. Eventually, she came downstairs, had tea, and she read her book in silence. Later, while watching the rest of the movie and painting, she got another call and went outside to talk again, which again made me suspect she was talking to my ex. I ended up texting him to ask if I’d done anything wrong, because I felt really awkward and unsure of my role in all this. He said I hadn’t done anything wrong and that she was just worried about "ruining the trip".

Later, while cooking, she said I’d been acting off. I told her I was feeling off because she had been acting unusual. She casually brought up that she had almost had a panic attack the night before but didn’t tell me because she didn’t want to ruin the trip. Then she said she was “holding it in” and would let herself fully have the panic attack once she was home in her bedroom, where it’s “safe.” That just sounded so weird to me. I’ve always understood panic attacks as something involuntary, not something you can pick and choose when to have.

She explained she was triggered by thoughts about her degree, new job, and her ex. She also admitted that being in a cottage in the middle of nowhere made her scared, and that she had started imagining seeing a hand on the window. Apparently, she’d been peering out the curtains in the middle of the night because of this. I didn’t even know she was doing that and honestly, I'm glad I didn't because that would have just creeped me the fuck out. It all just seemed like she was creating stress for herself and putting herself in a state of panic.

I’m tired of what feels like performative, self-sabotaging behaviour. From the outside, it doesn’t seem like genuine mental health struggles and it just seems like she wants to have something wrong with her to appear fragile or deep. Maybe that’s harsh, but I don't know at this point. Her behaviour made me feel anxious and unsure of myself. I didn’t know if she was upset with me or hiding something. The secrecy and silence left me walking on eggshells.

So am I the asshole for thinking she’s exaggerating or putting this on? Or is it fair to feel like I’m being emotionally manipulated here?