I feel guilty for 13 years

@idkwhttoname

Hi there! I read your post and it seems like you suffered a long time because of a mistake you did in your past. You already realized how harmful rumors can be and you do feel guilty of it. It isn't something we can scrub off from our past so easily but in everyone's life, or in most people's life, they have done mistakes they might even be terrified to speak about and feel guilty for the coming years. That is really sad but also a relief that we aren't the only ones who made such a mistake.

You mentioned that this event happened when you were in elementary school and this might have been so difficult for you to deal since students of elementary school are very young in age. It is very much possible that you might have not been able to assess the consequences of that. But I am so proud of you that you gathered up the courage to apologize to her. It shows that not only you acknowledged the fact that it hurt her and might have created misunderstandings for others, you also owned up to it and confronted her. For someone so young, it is so impressive in fact such a strong point of this situation that you did the right thing at the end.

She stayed angry at you for a year, but this is something not in your control. Events has consequences and an apology doesn't make it easy to forget everything all of a sudden. She took her time and now when she might have decided to move on, she is your friend again.

It has been 13 years since then and I can see you are finding it difficult to move on. But maybe it is your time to forgive yourself. We hear a lot about forgiving others and yet rarely talk about the even more difficult task to forgive ourselves. The mistake sometimes might not align with our values and who we think we are, and we punish ourselves so much...sometimes even overdoing it. She took her time to forgive you or at least move on. What about you? How are you going to let it go?