Winding Road, it sounds as if this person needs some help that you can't give her. I think if you truly want to separate yourself from her, you have two choices. You can either do it bit by bit and just not be available to her as often as you usually are or you can just not talk to her at all for a while. Either way, it's going to hurt both of you. I feel for you.

The friend thing in general can be nuts. I had a friend who, almost a year ago, completely attacked me out of nowhere, accusing me of wanting to end our friendship. She dissected an entire weekend trip and made everything I said and did be about her. She took the most innocuous stuff, like me not wanting to sit in the sun all afternoon, as a personal attack on her. She laid all of this on me via email and when I said she was being unreasonable (yes, an error on my part) she told me that I was the unreasonable one and she had more important things to do than talk to me. It was a bizzarre, bizarre exchange. Since then I've barely seen or heard from her. When we're with mutual friends she's syrupy sweet, but every time I've tried to invite her to hang out, she comes up with a reason not to, although she claims she's completely forgotten about being upset with me.

So...some people just go off the deep end. We wish there was some way to handle it, but I'm beginning to think it's better to back off and save yourself, as harsh as that sounds.