I feel so awful about how things ended with my friend. I know that she was probably doing what she thought was right by encouraging me to leave my husband, because after all, I'd complained to her about all the things he did to upset me. But I never meant for her to make the decision for me about what to do. I thought she would be a listening ear and support me while I made my own decisions.

She'd always told me that what she liked about me was my honesty and she thought I was a spiritual person. Yet when she ended our friendship, she accused me of the opposite: saying I was a liar and that I'd endangered her spirituality. She also did the one thing she promised she'd never do: abandon me.

How could things have gone so wrong?

I realize now I should not have put all my eggs in one basket, expecting her to be the sole person to support me in my depression. But she offered to help me, and I thought she was capable of it. I didn't want to spread my "dirty laundry" around the congregation, it was all so personal. I just wanted one friend who could understand, one friend I could trust with my pain and hurting, one person I could reveal my real true self to that would accept me and love me despite it all.

It has left me feeling so broken, even after all this time. It brings back all my abandonment fears from my childhood. Since I opened up fully to my friend and was rejected, it feels like it confirms the worst fears of my innner child: that I am bad and unloveable.