💔 Found out my best friend has been talking behind my back for years, still processing it

How do you stay friends with someone who's been quietly talking about you for years? I've known her since school, close enough that she was one of two people I'd call in any real emergency without thinking twice, day or night, no questions asked. Found out last month, through a mutual friend who let it slip during a completely different conversation, that she's been making small unflattering comments about me to a wider group for what sounds like years now. Not one big betrayal. Just a steady drip of digs about my choices, my relationships, things I only ever told her in confidence over the years. I confronted her directly, over coffee, both of us tense before either had said a word out loud. She denied it first, then admitted some of it, called it normal venting everyone does about close friends occasionally, like it was nothing at all. Maybe that's true for some people. Doesn't feel true for what I handed her over the years, all of it, every single detail. She's shown up for me during real difficulties more than once, drove three hours once without being asked twice when things were bad. Remembers small details about my life most people wouldn't bother tracking, birthdays of people she's never met, the name of a dog I had as a kid. We haven't fully stopped talking, mostly because I don't fully know what I want yet, and pretending otherwise would be its own kind of lie. We still have a group trip planned for next month with three other people, booked and paid for months ago, so I'll see her regardless of what I decide. That's the part that makes this messy, not clean at all. Two true things about the same person, sitting right next to each other, neither one canceling out the other.

A steady drip of digs is harder than one big betrayal, because you cannot point to a single day.

Found out something similar through a group chat screenshot that was clearly not meant for me to see at all. The timeline of years stung more than the comments themselves somehow, knowing it had gone on that long without me noticing. Took months before I could be in the same room as her without replaying old conversations wondering what had been said behind my back.