Heck, there is not much more to say than the title. But it has been a constant weight for the last month or so.
No, they aten't dead. They are just given to bouts of depression where they vanish for a few weeks. I was really, really worried the first time it happened, but this is the third, and so I am not exactly leaning on the panic button.
They have a chronic condition that makes them weak and requires lots of rest/energy management, and conversely they are not very good at managing their energy, and where I live, New Year's involves a lot of travel and celebrations and so on, so all of these factors combine to ensure that they'd be out of commission for a while.
I also made a mistake that left them locked out of their apartment for a bit and necessitated a lock change, at the tail end of a bunch of that travel and so on, so I am not blameless; an error on my part meant that they had one last hurdle to leap just when they were probably already running on fumes. I feel awful about it - apologized profusely and reimbursed all related expenses, natch.
Those are all details, though, side details compared to the main one that is the title of this post.
I suppose that I am privately worried that my key mistake plus the long silence equals "they have cut you off, you crossed the line", but there is a remaining bit of sanity that reminds me that given our long friendship that this is probably not the case. Still, silence breeds worry, however unreasonable that worry might be - maybe that's the other thing that I needed to get off my chest.
Anyway, that's basically all. There's not really anything you or I or anyone can do but to give my friend space. I send a little check-in message (along the lines of "hope you're doing ok" or a pretty picture of local scenery/weather) about once a week. Besides that, just have to wait, which I don't like, but it's out of my hands.
I miss my friend.
Thank you, this helps.