User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail Chapter 419: The Message of Fire, Review/@comment-4933386-20150207121341/@comment-7418318-20150207135715

Oh that with the one year isn't all that unrealistic.

Imagine you had a friend and for personal reasons didn't contact him for a long time.

When you realize how long it's been, you feel guilty for letting it all slip, but at the same time you wonder why he didn't contact you either. And this reluctance will only grow over time. "Will he be pissed for me not contacting him?" "Didn't he contact me from his end because he doesn't want to be my friend anymore?" "What if something happened to him, how will I handle that?" "If the friendship just slipped away this easily once, won't it happen again later?" and on and on it goes.

I'm not making this up either. This actually happened to me once and by the time I finally forced my doubts down and tried to call him, his phone number was no longer active and I had no other way of reaching him. Looking back it seems such a stupid waste, but that's how it was.

So for me Lucy's behaviour makes a lot of sense here. She is afraid, but still can't get herself to act due to all the doubt and fear. And realizing that makes her even more frustrated with hers inability to act, as we've seen at her little outburst in the bathtub in the previous chapter.

But luckily for her Natsu gave her the little push that was needed to finally get into motion and put the sad stuff behind her.