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I never have spoken about this to anyone, really, itīs just one of the things that happened in the last 3 years that really crushed me and I felt, in therapy, that other and more powerfull or recent events needed to be discussed.
Today, I noticed though how much I am distached from losing my best friend about 1 and a half year ago.
I got the idea, that maybe, if I could see that it really wasnīt my fault or my PTSDīs or my not coping well with my mental difficulties or my drawing inwards, emotionally,
but maybe, something that was nooneīs fault and would have happened anway, even if I was doing well, only maybe not as rapidly.
I think there are some very wise people here with more life experience and I thought I could share here, even if itīs not directly PTSD related.
I feel that relieving myself of the "guilt" of being responsible would help me feel better about myself.
Well, after my main traumatic event, I started to focus very much on success and I also became anorexic and basically cut off my feelings for myself or anyone. I moved to another city and I moved back in the year afterwards. I still had my friend then and she expressed worry about me and I remember that really touching me.
Still, I couldnīt talk to her about my trouble, because I couldnīt talk to anyone, I didnīt even realize myself what was going on. I was that much cut off from myself.
It was only another year later, that things started to change between us, a lot more.
She went away for a while in a student exchange programm and made new and other friends, which is natural of course, but another friend of me and her visited her and said she had changed a little in that she had picked up smoking and sort of didnīt much care about her, while she was visiting only about her "new" friends.
I said then, that she had always been very much eager to fit in and to
adapt to her social surrounding and weīd see how it would turn out when she got back.
That year, I started to study at college and she started an apprenticeship in a firm, I feel that changed her very much too.
I felt us growing more and more apart. Me feeling more and more miserable about my own troubles (unresolved grief, anorexia, my mother and siblings etc)
and she becoming more and more adapted to a certain hapitus this job seemed to require, or I donīt know.
I donīt know if itīs me. But she seemed to me to get more shallow and patronizing. Sort of "fake" and not really honest with herself or me.
I didnīt feel a connection anymore.
I donīt know if itīs because of my lack of emotional openness at that time or her adapting or becoming the person she just meant to be? I donīt know.
I also felt neglected because she started to spend more time with friends from work than with me, which would have been ok, I guess, but I also just didnīt feel like our friendship meant much to her anymore.
It was especially shattering for me when she "couldnīt make time" for my birthday, which had always been important to her the last 20 years we knew eachother (we got friends as children).
Somehow the warmth I sensed from her, a certain gentleness or compassion before were exchanged for shallowness.
After the thing with my birthday I finally realized, also having wanted to try talking about my motherīs alcoholism and having her not really react to it, that she had changed and that she had grown into a different person, that maybe, this was good for her, finding the place in the world she wanted to be in, but it wasnīt good for me, because I needed something else from the people around me.
I decided to break our friendship off then.
She was very offended by it, also because I had done it in writing because I couldnīt bring myself to say these things in person.
I wasnīt angry or offensive in my writing.
Still, also the fact that she just responded in a "fine by me" fashion, not calling and wanting to make up or something, crushed me a little.
I still feel pain writing about this.
Well, this has been the longest post, if youīve read this far, thank you for your attention.
I just wanted to ask you guys, what do you think? Donīt you think this could have happened either way, even if Iīd been doing fine psychologically and so it really wasnīt so much my fault?
Maybe only then Iīd not have needed to cut her off at once (so I wouldnīt hurt so much from it anymore and start healing and grieving her loss).
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