My hs friend of 10 years and I saw each other yesterday and broke up in a sense. It really really hurt but I felt it coming for the past 3 years. For some backstory, we were really good friends in high school, but I got accepted to a university in a different state I really wanted to go to. I have a chronic illness that I didn’t speak abt much in hs because I wasn’t sure how, I was a kid, and that illness flared up massively in my first year of uni. I wasn’t contacting anyone and became severely depressed. It meant she thought I didn’t value our friendship as much as she did. Which saddened me so so much.
The next year I transfered uni’s to go back home where my specialists, friends and family are. I apologised to her and the rest of my group, later telling them about what happened (I didn’t want it to sound like an excuse and put more emphasis on apologising because I felt so incredibly guilty). But because I apologised so much, it almost felt like it became more and more my fault? I’m not sure if that makes sense. I was so focused on wanting them to know how sorry I was that I felt like I barely brought up what life was like for me at the time. I so desperately didn’t want to make it about me but in hindsight I feel like this worked against me. They knew bits and pieces about my illness from when I’d be absent for a week every month or so in hs but I feel as though because I wasn’t talking about it consistently, they didnt understand fully because its an invisible disability.
After trying really hard to patch things up and rebuild friendships, 2/3 of my friends from that group kinda ghosted me which I understood because it was more or less what I did when I was sick in 1st yr. The other one was open to catching up etc and seemed happy to be around me but it didn’t feel the same and I was aware of that. I think partially because I’ve changed alot and the friendship group was divided.
I learnt alot about the importance of talking about my illness, even casually like “I’ve got another IV tomorrow” etc because thats the stuff i would conceal out of fear that i was burdening them. And I think because of that, I don’t seem like the fun-going easy personality i tried so hard to be in hs. Yesterday, she told me “It seemed like you were forcing deep conversations” and “trying too hard \[to be friends again\]” and I said “I was. I was desperate. I felt like I needed to fix something that I felt I’d broken”. It was so heart-breaking to hear that i was trying too hard. I thought that if I communicated better and organised occasional catchups (like I didn’t in 1st year), it’d show her that I was really wanting to maintain our friendship. So it hurts. They’re all good people, and I don’t villainize them, and I know they don’t villainize me but it hurt so much. It feels as though now I take up too much space to be in their lives.
We said our goodbyes yesterday on mutual terms and the conversation was really cathartic because it provided us some closure (something I didn’t get from the other 2 and made me spiral). I think we both wanted different things. She was never good talking about feelings and wanted to keep conversations light-hearted etc (which is very understandable), whereas I do want deeper friendships. Before we talked, I felt like I was the common denominator between having lost 3 friendships so it felt very much like it was my fault. She talked about how it was mostly time and the fact that now we are different people without the basis of hs to talk abt anymore. This relieved me but its still very hard to not think that it was my fault even despite trying to remind myself there were things out of my control like my condition during that 1st year. I was wanting to post something incase anyone had a similar experience.