It seemed that to them, our friendship, which had gone on for several years prior such that I think we considered each other best friends, was simply composed of silly inside jokes, and whenever I wanted to try to discuss anything that matters (namely personal issues) they would become silent and awkward, as it increasingly felt whenever I tried to talk about things that true close friends talk about. This happened on many occasions, and eventually it led to me having to pretend to care about and find humor in the same ridiculous in-jokes and never open up about things that were really of concern to me. Also, we both acted like passive-aggressive condescending pricks to one another more than once, which was of course another major factor. Another factor which sounds trivial but ended up being frustrating enough to become fairly influential in my decision as well is that they would constantly try to take from me or one of our common friends whenever they didn't have a lunch (this prompted me to shamefully having to eat my lunch in the bathroom several times after he would "subtly" beg for my lunch, i.e. casting several deliberately obvious glances towards it or even just loudly say "FOOD" out of nowhere ._.) or needed money or something, but whenever I or one of our mutual friends was in such a scenario and nicely asked him for help (plus, we pretty much all had helped him at least once), he would quickly say "Nope." I cannot stand that behavior. Overall, it's kind of sad because we had some great times together and they still have been wishing me happy birthday and things like that since I let the drifting do its work and ceased to care about maintaining the "friendship," but since I'm pretty sure it's over and all gone, I can't say much more than "thanks," and I haven't been telling them such things on their birthdays, which may lead some of you to believe I'm an asshole and a bad friend, but the distance between us seems too great to me to even talk to them too much, and severing what was left of what was between us was the first time I was courageous enough to cut out from my life people who take a toll on my well-being, so it had to be done. Thanks for dealing with my run-on sentences and rambling.