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Coming full circle/venting grounds (TW) (replies welcome)

geolojess April 22nd, 2020

This is me pushing back against the little voice that tells me that I "don't really need to talk about anything or to not share things because they're just little and not worth talking about and someone's always got it worse so why share", so hi, welcome to my venting/recollection space of sorts, where I'll be trying to break that thought train and actually talk about things. Trigger warnings will be for suicide and/or SH.

(TW; suicide) So April 1st marks one year since my life basically turned upside-down. March 30th I went with a friend (J, best friend of 10ish years) to see a play that another friend (M, best friend of 4ish year) was acting in. Cue morning of April 1st. J messages me saying M is in the hospital, then gets told she wasn't supposed to share that information and then can't tell me why M is in hospital. Day goes on, I'm super anxious and worried and have no idea what's going on. Start probing J and C (3rd friend involved in the story, M's secret bf (long story)) for details, they still won't spill. Day continues and by evening I was so freaked out that I started guessing reasons for it. J and C, as I almost hit the nail on the head with one guess, finally tell me that M tried to commit suicide. I can't even describe what I felt upon reading that, maybe a giant combination of shock and terror and horror. I had known her for 4 years and never knew she was even depressed, let alone suicidal. Later I found out that this was because she didn't trust me with that information, saying that I would've tried to help by going to my parents who would've told her parents (she attributed them to being the main cause of her depression, strict christian family with a tendency to favor their son over her). So the rest of April was extremely weird. She got out of the hospital after a week or two, seemed okay, then things started getting weird. She started smoking, dumped C and rebounded with some 18 yr-old (she was 15 at the time) druggie who was also a mental mess, and was just not herself. Normally I would've spoken out against the first two things, being of sound mind and judgement. But boy, was I not of sound mind and judgement. I was constantly scared that she would just disappear one day, and was desparate to not set her off, so I just let her do whatever she picked up as a, albeit unhealthy, coping mech, without saying a word. Already I was emotionally wrapped around her finger, and to top it off some switch in me flipped and I became weirdly empathetic (I was already like normal-level empathetic but this was like turned waaaaay up) so I basically abandoned myself and all my goals in favor of doing all I could to support her. Hadn't even been a month and I was already losing myself.

Cue May, which I actually don't remember hardly any of. The only things I really remember are one day just absolutely word-vomiting all the stuff I had been keeping pent-up for the last month and a half to J and C (M by then had been repeatedly telling us how she wanted to die or who wants me to die or how she (Kinda graphic description warning):

Was going to hang herself but she had her pet rabbit in her pocket and didn't want it to escape into the wilderness and it was awful and I felt sick reading all of it and I dreaded speaking to her or going on that chat and it was just horrible, but we never told her parents or anyone because we were so far under the illusion that it would be a bad thing and it would just make her feel worse so we didn't), and then her coming over that day and (she had been borrowing my phone so she could check her messages) accidently clicking on the wrong notification and seeing all the stuff I said (she might've purposefully scrolled further idk but she saw it all) but I only found out the next day. And then the guilting started. She'd go for a few days, saying how I was two-faced and not helping only making it worse and being a terrible friend and alll that, then pretend everything was fine for a couple days, then would make some snide sharp remark and it would just start all over again. Twice it blew up into big arguments where she proceeded to deny ever doing anything wrong and how we were the bad guys and we should just put up with all of it and it was horrible and (TW: self-harm) that's when I started self-harming, because I blamed myself so badly for causing her more pain. I think I stopped caring about myself at that point. And that's all I remember from May. Don't even remember my 18th birthday really. Kinda sad.

Cue June: (oh at some point in May I found out M had been SHing as well for quite a while, reading that hurt a lot) June 1st: I saw her at a youth group meeting, it was kinda awkward but we made it work since we were in public. Then out of the blue, we were standing off to the side and she just kinda off-handedly flips her pocket inside out and there was blood stains and some part of me just knew that it was because of me and sometimes I wonder if it was a "look what you caused" sort of action, but it was horrible. But I didn't say anything, just sorta awkwardly looked away. First weekend in June we went on a youth trip together, it was actually pretty nice and things felt sorta normal between us. We get home and within two days things go to shit again. At this point I had changed so much personality-wise and behavior-wise that my parents were noticing and they made me cut her off because of how much she was affecting me. This also involved telling her parents that she was gonna run away and live with the druggie bf I mentioned (who also had a very questionable sex-life history). I begged them to not tell that information, believing whole-heartedly that it would make things very worse for her (M had even said if I did that it was just gonna make her want to kill herself more). In the end they helped me see reason and on the 21st I gave the info to her parents and blocked her on most media. Buuut continued to message her off and on trying to make her see that she had hurt us. She never did. She told me I was playing the victim and she would always ALWAYS redirect the convo so that it became about MY mistakes and how I had hurt her and blah blah blah. Every. Damn. Time. It took me a long time and a lot of hurt to see that it was pointless. And it took me even longer to start getting better.

I'm not sure how I put up wiith her so long, constantly being in a state of fear and dread and guilt and fatigue. But I neglected so many things. My goals, my family, J, myself, everything. Everything was put aside for her. I'm still coming back from that to this day, school-wise.

There's still a lot I'm forgetting, I think, but that's the gist of it. At least, the gist of those three months... I still get shaky thinking about it, but less so these days, so yay progress lol. But I still hold a lot of resentment towards her, which I'm not sure how to heal. Guess I'll figure that out eventually. So there, the start of my venting. I think it's gonna feel good to have it all written out in one place. Now to press the "add thread" button without backing out. 3, 2, 1...

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geolojess OP April 22nd, 2020

Admittedly because of the whole mess above I do often think that I was really the bad guy in that situation and that my reactions/actions were wrong and that I had no reason to be so upset and just a whole load of self-validation issues came out of that... which is partly (mostly) why I talk myself out of talking about it, because I wonder if I really have no reason to talk about it at all. And I get afraid of people seeing me as this awful person who did a terrible job of supporting her best friend who was really struggling, because that I know that those actions weren't me, I wasn't me during that period of time and I had no idea what I was doing or what I should do but I don't know if others see that, especially anyone who was actually involved in the situation. I don't want them to see me that way. But they didn't see my struggle they only saw hers, only heard her side of the story, so could only see things from her point of view. It hurts. I know I was just trying my best. I know I didn't do very good. I know that talking behind her back was an awful thing to do in any situation and was wrong. I wish I could've handled it better. But I didn't know. I didn't. So now I wonder if I'm just "that jerk who said awful things about her and was totally unsupportive and just cut her off instead of being there for her". I shouldn't care, but I did like those people a lot, the people from our youth group. But I think they were too wrapped up with her too... what's done is done though, I guess.

geolojess OP April 24th, 2020

How do I let go of this resentment? It's hurting me slowly and I keep thinking back to unpleasant times or certain memories and I let those thoughts and memories spiral until my mood has dropped and it drags me down down down until something else yanks my attention away... I know they will never understand how they hurt me, how what they did hurt me, or how much they hurt me, they will never truly see or acknowledge the wrong in what they did and I know this and yet I just can't let go of the resentment and move on from the past. I wish I could explain it to them but they either just wouldn't see reason and make excuses or they'd twist my words and make it my fault again. I want closure that I'll never get. I just want them to listen for once, for one to see how their actions felt like a betrayal to all they had said to me and how the other took advantage of my kindness to the fullest extent and was a hypocrite. I want what I'll never get... but would that really give me peace of mind? Would it really let things move into the past? Probably not, neither of them know how to let things go so it wouldn't last. So I need to figure out how to create my own peace of mind. How to let it go and move on on my own. Just don't know how the hell to do that yet.

geolojess OP April 27th, 2020

Sitting here doing my weekly habit review and wondering, why am I even doing this? I forget to work on half these anyway. Slip-ups feel like a bigger deal than they actually are. I feel like there's no point to doing any of these. I dont even feel like doing any of them. I know I should, and kinda have to if i like feeling good, but I can barely get myself to do some of them. It's not even lack of motivation at this point. Idk what it is. I dont like it. When did I become so lazy?

geolojess OP April 29th, 2020

Tired of this and I feel like nothing is working. Managed to force myself out of bed when I woke up instead of laying there for an hour but it was hard. Why is it hard? Why is concentrating hard? Why is doing basic tasks hard? Why does it all seem so hard? Why does none of this make sense? Why is nothing working, or rather why can't I seem to do the things that will help? I'm just so tired of this...