Hi Elsa,

I need some advice about a friend. She's been my friend for about three years. We met in Mexico when I was teaching English there - she is Mexican. We met online; I was the one who wrote to her because her personality was bubbling over on the site where I found her profile. She sounded like so much fun!

When I met her, I was slightly disappointed in her behavior. She came across as bored, straight-faced, and like she was hiding something. I thought she didn't like me, but she kept calling me. Whenever we would chat online she would go back to being very bubbly, but in person she was always the same: dull, uninspired, off-putting.

I talked to her and learned that she wasn't happy to be in Mexico. She also mentioned her family sometimes and I got the impression that she didn't have the best relationship with either parent, who also got a divorce after that. She didn't reveal a whole lot to me about that.

Still, she was there for me in Mexico, and I was there for her. When I left Mexico, we kept in touch. We kept in touch almost every day. She was trying to get out of Mexico and move to London to do photography, and I was always supportive of her. Whenever I went online, she was there, and our conversations had a great amount of energy.

About two months ago, she finally moved to London, and I was so happy for her. She arranged to come to visit me in New York to pick up a computer that she had had delivered to my house. When I heard she was coming to New York, I was so excited! She had driven me around Mexico and hosted my boyfriend and me on a recent trip there, and I was looking forward to repaying her the kindness.

What started out as a very exciting visit ended horribly. She came to New York mostly interested in shopping, and she was more moody than I had ever seen her before. I asked her what was wrong, but she told me nothing. She was short with me whenever I would talk to her and gave me the cold shoulder in my own house! She did things like insult the food I'd prepared, tell me there was nothing to do in New York after I bought a magazine of about 1000 events happening here, and talk down to me when I tried to give her advice about London. She also listened to me talk a little about my boyfriend and offered no comment or anything about the guy she was dating in London. I was so angry with her by the time she left that I almost threw her out the door on the way to the airport. However, I had been through this one other time with another difficult person, so I decided to try it another way.

I took her to the airport and we went inside together to wait for a little while. I was hoping she would open up to me, but she didn't. She was cold. I finally got the nerve to ask her what was up, and she suddenly started crying. She told me that she was upset about her childhood and everything, and that she knew she had been difficult but that it wasn't intentional - just stuff she had been working on. I was shocked that she was telling me so much. It caught me so off-guard.