Guy friend trouble!! Guys AND girls-please answer!!!!?

I'm a freshman in high school and I've been the best of friends with this guy since 8th grade. Not a very long time but we got very close very fast. He was the sweetest thing up until recently. He said something very hurtful to me so I got mad and didn't speak to him for a while. He apologized profusely but i continued to ignore him. It wasn't until he sent me a 5 page long text explaining why he had been acting like such a jerk that i spoke to him. He had good reason to be upset and stressed out, but I told him that i was still very hurt so I stayed away from him for a little while longer. About a week later I attempted to talk to him about what he told me in the text and he acted like a complete jerk (this was in person and he was with his brother and his friend). He said that his other friends got him through it and he didn't want to talk about it anymore. That was fine but I don't understand why he is being do distant towards me. It's as if he doesn't care about me anymore and he has changed a lot. He actually started laughing when I asked him to be there for me. After that we didn't talk for about three days but then he just texted me randomly. I took that opportunity to tell him how much he'd changed and how I didn't like how he was treating me. He said that he hadn't changed and that he was just stressed out. I can understand that but after a year of friendship he has hurt me multiple times and I'm afraid if I just let things go back to normal, I will get hurt again. I love him to death (in a platonic way) and he is like my brother, I tell him everything. I want things to go back to how they were last year but I'm really not sure if they will. Ladies, is this just a phase teenage boys go through? Guys, did you try to act tough when you were in high school? What should I do?