Should I Feel Guilty? I Actually Do!

Jess sent me yet another early morning text today. I got it at 8:20am. I have not been answering or acknowledging his attempts to contact me. I guess I am feeling bad about that. I always hate it when Jess has ignored me in the past. It made me crazy with stress and anxiety and effected me deeply. Now, am I doing that to Jess?

Here is what Jess wrote this morning:

Hey--just checking in. Are you ok? The bottom line is that I do love and care about you. Part two is that I don't handle this kind of work stress well. I'm sorry that you got the brunt of that. So I'm worried. Even a blank text would be good. (End of text)

Here is my justification as to why I am not responding. Jess has treated me like shit, worse then shit for the past few weeks. He had told me that he loved me and wanted to be just my friend, but the way he treated me and acted towards me this past month (almost) was nothing close to the way you treat a friend, or a person you love.

I have tried so many times to reach out to him and let him know that I care and love him and hate what is happening to us but instead I got his abusive moods and hateful comments that made me feel like a pathetic loser that was hanging on to someone who couldn't give two shits about me.

Now, I'm staying away. Is it to teach him a lesson? I don't think so, I hope not. Instead, I hope it gives me back a bit of my dignity and drives home the message to Jess that I can't take it anymore and that if he cares about me, he needs to stop his abusive behavior. Something in his texts and phone messages lead me also to believe that Jess is just feeling guilty about that one phone call (Saturday) where he freaked out on me. Something tells me that he is worried that something might have happened to me, perhaps I got sick or did something foolish and he is feeling responsible. Once he hears that I am fine then he will go back to being the same Jess and we will both go back to that vicious cycle of me being pathetic and missing him and reaching out to him and Jess going back to treating me like dirt.

I don't want that to happen. I don't know what to do. I don't know if pulling back and ignoring Jess's attempts to reach out and apologize for that one incident (Saturday) is the right thing to do. HELP!!!