I dream about an estranged friend every night. It's been a year since our fight. Is this normal?

About a year ago, I had a bad fight with my best friend of 15 years. We’re both in our late 20s and experiencing some life transitions. Both of us had complex dating histories. I had been in two abusive relationships and she had a long string of “Mr. Wrongs” that didn’t work out and left her with low self-esteem and feeling unloveable and hopeless about relationships.

When I finally met someone worthwhile, she took it hard. It brought out a lot of bitterness and she became hypercritical of me and my relationship. Things came to a head when I told her that my partner and I were looking at engagement rings.

She was very snide to me about my good news and just couldn’t be happy. I tried to take it in stride but it hurt. It didn’t help that she was also backed up by another single friend in this behavior—someone else with a long history of dysfunctional, dramatic relationships who is also very bitter about love. They kind of ganged up on me and I felt isolated in our social group.

I tried to put this aside and I went to visit her, hoping that it would help her to see that just because I’m in a serious, marriage-minded relationship doesn’t mean that our friendship isn’t important. It backfired terribly. She got drunk and we had a horrible argument after she behaved really recklessly at a bar. She said some really unkind and disrespectful things to me and crossed the line when she badmouthed my partner, who had always treated her like a friend. I left the next day and went very low contact with her.

We didn’t speak for months until we tried to email back and forth a bit for some kind of reconciliation. It didn’t work. She blamed me for her bad behavior and accused me of lying about the things she said/did that night. She also got the aforementioned friend on her side and basically ran a gaslighting campaign to smear my character.

My crime? Standing up for myself and my relationship in the face of her nastiness and disrespect. She offered no apology for how she treated me and dug her heels in about being “right”. She also has a long history of psychiatric illness. Her father killed himself and she’s been hospitalized for suicidal depression at least once herself. Unfortunately, many people see this as her “get out of jail free card” and it’s rare for her to be called out on her bad behavior because of it…

The falling out happened a year ago and the email exchange was about six months ago. I’m still really sad and hurt about what happened and not sure how to deal with it. Every time someone in our social group posts a photo with her, my stomach turns. We had such a great friendship before this happened, with so many positive memories. I miss the way things used to be but she’s angry at me for standing up for myself and I’m just too genuinely hurt by her. I dream about my ex-friend almost every night. We were like sisters from the time we were 12 until age 27 and now I lost my best friend and I’m not even sure what I did wrong except fall in love and stand up for my relationship.