Fighting within my circle of friends.

I've got a bit of a situation in the group I hang with. For the sake of not using real names, I'll call the involved parties Brian, David, and James. Brian, who's my best friend, been having a hard time lately. Recently, he finally opened his eyes to what a backstabbing, domineering cunt his fiance was and broke it off. He was completely obsessed with her, so this left him very depressed. There are very few people that he will talk to about his problems and he is incredibly anger-prone when he is depressed, so there wasn't anything I could do to ease him though this, as he wouldn't talk to me. Of our friendship circle, David is the only one Brian will talk to about his problems. She started dating someone else, which is making him even more depressed. Living on a small Job Corps center out in the boonies isn't helping, as we can't take a break from the campus and clear our heads, and we can't avoid her and her new toy.

This situation first went south Thursday when me and another student had words (he wanted me to go do something, and I didn't want to, and had no obligation to). Brian was in the room using a computer and didn't want to hear our disagreement, and went thermonuclear on us, screaming at the top of his lungs for us to shut up. This brought David, another friend of mine who is very close to Brian, into the situation, where he called me an annoying fuck who needed to control my temper and yelled at me to stop making Brian angry. I yelled right back, because Brian losing his temper is not my fault, and I was not going to stand there and take the blame for it.

This pissed him off so much he refused to talk to me until Friday evening, as during the yelling I said "fuck you" and he took this as me telling him I didn't want to be friends anymore. Friday evening we talked this out with the staff member who works in our dorm, and got back on speaking terms. It's a fragile peace, but it's better than no peace at all.

Things were okay over the weekend, but last night Brian was depressed again. Me and James, another member of our friendship circle, were chatting on the way to our respective dorms when we saw Brian. James asked him what was wrong, and he said he was pissed off. James asked him if it was his ex-fiance, and Brian went off on him. James told him he needed to work on getting past what happened, and Brian exploded even worse. James kept trying to get his point across, and Brian's yelling went from his ex-fiance and her new boyfriend to a fiance he had two years ago who died from breast cancer. James and I never knew about this first fiance and never brought the subject of cancer up. James was still trying to interject, and I tried to signal him nonverbally to stop talking. When Brian goes off, responding only makes it worse. Eventually I turned him away towards his dorm.

James ranted about the argument, and about how Brian needs to start being held accountable for his frequent outburts, which I agree with despite how much I love Brian. During this discussion, James said that with his temper the way it is, he may very well hit a woman. I disagree on this point, as the only time Brian ever came close to hitting anyone was after a guy he hated slept with his then-fiance, rubbed it in his face, and then took a swing at him. He's way, way too hot tempered, but I don't believe that makes him violent. James has had people very close to him in abusive relationships, however, so I need to be careful here. I left for my dorm instead of pushing my disagreement with him on the issue of whether Brian is potentially violent.

After the fight Brian was in tears, and I told David what happened with James. David then talked to Brian about it, and got his version. Then David went to James and accussed him of bullying Brian, making James feel very hurt and depressed.

Brian and I have been best friends since before anyone else in our circle arrived at Job Corps, yet he will not talk to me about any of his problems or come to me for help. To him, I'm that funny girl who has humerously nonsensical logic, hilariously unwise or unfeasible plots and ideas, and a habit of doing things on impulse that we all laugh about after. I'm a source of laughter, not a support mechanism, and while I love amusing him, I want to be more than a clown. I want to be someone he comes to when he needs somebody to be there for me, and I'm devastated that he won't let me be that.

Then we have David, who is very prone to getting annoyed and saying very insulting things in response. He also will always support Brian in anything. If any of use has a disagreement with him, we are automatically in the wrong and Brian in the right, no matter what happened, and he'll make sure we know it. This is not make dealing with what's going on between all of us any easier.

I have no idea how to handle any of this. These people are the friends I hang out with every day, and despite their faults and what's going on right now they are good people. I want to find some way to solve this, but I don't know what to do. The only idea I have is to confront David about James, because there was no bullying, but that'll probably start something between David and me, and after Thursday I can't afford it.