I am really lost right now. I’ve known my “best friend” for 5 years. We’ve been having a lot of hard times in our friendship - he’s struggling with depression and anxiety. I’ve been in love with him for a few years now, we tried to get together several times. Since he wasn’t comfortable with this (he was very scared of not being good enough), he decided to stay friends (I was fine with that). My therapist suggested that he has BPD, which would explain some issues we’ve been having. 

I almost always send the first message to him, ask to see each other, how he’s feeling, etc. Sometimes he’s doing “fine” for a few months and then he’s really struggling with his mental health and will ghost me for months. Then, he comes back saying “I am so sorry, I was dealing with my mental health” and we would start talking again. 

I used to feel so sad and get angry at him when he was ghosting me, because I felt he was forgetting about me and never cared about me or our friendship (which I value a lot, he’s one of the rare people that I could stay / talk with for hours without getting bored.) After reading a lot about BPD, I decided to stop sending him messages / telling him that I’m angry when he did this, and rather left him alone and sent him a message a few weeks later to check on him. I felt it really improved our relationship. 

The thing is, I’m still very in love with him (he doesn’t know that, and I don’t want to bother him anymore with my feelings) and I feel he‘s been less caring about our friendship during the past few months. I’ve asked him to see each other several times - he told me “I’ll tell you when I’ll have some free time” and never contacted me for saying when he’ll be free. Also I’ve lost my dog 2 months ago, I was devastated - he never tried to comfort me or asked me how I’m doing. It hurt me a lot and I was so disappointed / angry / sad with him. We haven’t talked since and I didn’t told him how I felt towards his behavior.

I really miss him and our friendship right now and I’ve been thinking about ignoring my feelings and sending him a message. I’m still mad at him but I’m more worried about his mental health since we haven’t spoke for 2 months. On the other side, I feel that if he’s not sending me anything, he doesn’t want to speak with me.

Do you have any advice ? I don’t know what to do anymore (should I definitely stop talking to him ? Should I explain how I feel about our friendship ?) and I don’t want to hurt him or be toxic to him. 

I hope my english is fine and that I don’t come across as someone bad