Over the last few days, I’ve become reluctant to hang out with my friends. To all intents and purposes, I’m an extrovert, and I love being the center of attention. However, when I was invited to a sleepover at my closest friend’s house, I was dreading going for some reason, even after I got there.

When I got there, I was very quick to retreat into a shell of self-isolation. I don’t think I talked to anyone substantially with the exception of one friend at the sleepover. Having said that, the only things I really talked about with her was her new boyfriend and how much I didn’t want to be at the sleepover.I was hoping I’d be able to kinda keep a low profile on the issue of how uncomfortable I was, but apparently it wasn’t working. Within three hours of arriving, I was getting irritated. Within six hours, I went on a hunger strike. Within twelve hours, my closest friend was asking me if I was okay, if I wanted to talk about anything. Without really thinking about it, I told him I was not okay, and that I didn’t want to talk about it, because I didn’t want to cause a fuss and that it wasn’t really the right time to talk about it. As of that point, I was pestered by him constantly – he kept telling me to talk to him, to eat, etc etc, which only resulted in myself getting really, really irritated. From that point onwards, I literally didn’t talk to anyone – I just sat in a corner in silence, doing something or other on my phone. 24 hours after the beginning of the sleepover, I left the house, having not said goodbye to anyone.

I feel really, really bad for how I behaved on the sleepover, and I’m worried that I ended up dampening the mood of it, even though that was counteractive to my intention. The way I see it is that, regardless of how I handled the situation, someone was going to end up worried, angry, or hurt. I think I made several people there worried, I made myself angry, and I’m worried I hurt my host.

Since then, I haven’t wanted to talk to any single one of them, nor do I want to. I have kept entirely to myself, not even talking to my aforementioned ‘confidante’. At the same time, however, I feel that I owe my friend an apology. My issue is that I don’t know if I should apologize to him and give a full reason as to why I’m not feeling great, or if I should just act as if it never happened.

As I think it’s relevant, I’ll mention that I’ve felt really down over the last three or four weeks. I’m eating less, sleeping less, and finding that, if I’m not actually sad, I’m either irritated or indifferent. I’m scared that it could be a form of depression, but I don’t want to label it as such without being entirely sure.

What should I do?