Friend group excluded me (24m) for 3 years, I just learned why and it’s stupid. How do I move forward?

TL;DR: One friend was embarrassed about one inconsequential things and stopped talking to me out of shame, thinking wrongly that I’d be mad at him. Other friends misunderstood and assumed I did something bad, until I became a pariah from my friends for 3 years.

For context, I (24m) am a very emotionally fragile person because of a long history of emotional and physical abuse at the hands of my junkie mother (my dad was in prison my whole life), I was never allowed to have friends as a kid and teenager, and I was kicked out of my mother’s home at age 17 when I came out as gay. I was a homeless college student when I met… let’s call them Ron (best friend, 24m), Neville (24m) and Seamus (24m). We quickly became inseparable friends, and our whole extended social group was derived from us being a quartet.

I will tell you the events in chronological order, although I only discovered a lot of it years later.

I invited the three of them to stay at my place, I was out for a hour while they were chilling inside, and when I come back, suddenly Ron is very agitated and storms out; Neville angrily tells me that I should be ashamed of what I did before storming out too, and Seamus is as lost and confused as I am. In truth, Ron got high on my weed stash and ate an entire dish of lasagna that my then-bf had cooked for me. Ron felt ashamed of himself and left, thinking that I’d be angry at him for it. He talked to Neville in vague terms about why he was so anxious, and Neville misunderstood it to mean that *I* did something that hurt Ron, so Neville got really mad at me.

For days afterwards, I tried to get in touch with Ron, but I discovered I was blocked on social media and my phone, thus cutting off means of contacting him. I showed up at Ron’s apartment, and he was inside since he car was there, but he willfully ignored me ringing his bell. I had no idea what could have caused it, and I was getting really sad and worried. I had no idea, but Ron was feeling embarrassed about his outburst and about storming out and ignoring me, so he clamped down because, as he’d explain years later, he couldn’t bear to face me after he treated me so poorly. He “was in too deep” in acting angry at me, so he felt like it’d be embarrassing to reconnect with me, so he kept the charade up because, by his own words, he’d “have felt like a fool” if he admitted there that I was innocent of wrongdoing.

Afterwards, Neville contacted me, he said that he knows I’ve been “harassing” Ron and that Ron wants nothing to do with me ever again and that if I don’t stop trying to contact Ron, Neville will report me to the police. I backed off and apologized, and from that point on I never had contact with Ron again. I’d see Neville sometimes, and he’d talk to me, but always being vaguely hostile towards me. Seamus was the only one who was still being friendly to me, but we rarely saw each other because Seamus was mostly just hanging out with Ron and Neville. Our entire social group, 20+ people, classmates and buddies, all seemingly shifted away from me overnight, and even though they were rarely explicitly rejecting me or being hostile towards me, I was never included in anything and suddenly nobody at all was ever checking up on me or available when I contacted them. I’d learn much later that Neville had taken it upon himself to gossip to all of our mutual friends that I did some unnamed but unspeakable act to Ron, and then I harassed poor Ron, so everyone was seeing me as some kind of villain because of a sick game of telephone. Neville really put efforts and enthusiasm into poisoning the well for me and framing me as some inhuman monster, and to stonewall any attempt from me to contact anyone close to Ron.

I started becoming seriously depressive. I had no close friends left, and the few people still on speaking terms with me made it clear that they believed Neville, and they were never particularly enthusiastic about talking to me. I went from being surrounded by people I loved and who seemed to love me back, which was the basis of my mental wellbeing after my mother kicked me to the curb, to being essentially a pariah. The depression made me a lot less fun to be around, a lot less motivated to go out and interact with people, I even got so low that even my boyfriend broke up with me suddenly because I was “not the same person” that he started to date anymore, because I was constantly sullen and sad.

My mental health took a nosedive, and so did my grades. Then the sars cov event happened, and the social groups that were already solid solidified even more online, while I was alone at home, with not a single person willing to talk to me online or on the phone except Seamus maybe once every other month for a little “wyd”. Mid-2020, Seamus finally told me that it’s just not fun to talk to me anymore so he intends to never contact me again. I mean, who cares that I’m desperately lonely and shunned by everyone important to me, right? What matters is that I am a ray of sunshine despite my depression in order to entertain Seamus, RIGHT??!

I tried so hard to make new friends, but now I had a “reputation”, and I was honestly so emotionally damaged that I couldn’t even be a fun person to be around at all, no matter what. Because of what happened and how I was suddenly rejected by all the people I loved overnight, I started getting extreme physical reactions to being around people and being anxious to make friends. I joined a D&D group outside of college, but I had a panic attack mid-game and they kicked me out. I tried to be active in a cultural neighborhood group, and they were nice enough to wait until my SECOND panic attack, a week in, before also kicking me out.

Anyway. I dropped out of college because depression just did not allow me to THINK, ever, and it destroyed my health. I spent a year in therapy, which cost a fortune and wiped out my savings, so I found a shitty menial job to just barely keep myself financially above water. I started drinking and smoking weed and tobacco to extremely unhealthy degrees, because it was the only thing that could give me anything resembling positive feelings anymore. Every waking moment, I was haunted with the question “What did I do to Ron to deserve this?”

Since the day of the lasagna incident, my ONLY request towards Ron, Neville and Seamus was that I wanted one conversation to clarify things and allow me to apologize if needed. That’s all. I spent three years desperately holding onto that one wish, just one discussion. Neville rejected it explicitly many times, Seamus always changed topics when I asked if he could argue on my behalf to Ron and Neville, or even just pass them a note from me or something. I just wanted to talk.

I have some knowledge about one embarrassing thing Ron did a long time ago, and I finally cracked two days ago. I had been plagued with thoughts of just, ending my life, ending the pain. So, I contacted Neville and I made a threat: Either Ron, him and Seamus talk to me, just once, just one fucking talk to finally get closure, or I am going public with the info and shaming Ron to everyone he knows. I got cursed out and called all degrees of evil, but eventually Neville agreed. Yesterday evening, I finally saw Ron for the first time in THREE YEARS. The three of them were visibly angry at me and unwilling to actually talk, so I said, the threat was a bluff, of course I’d never do that, but I need to talk. Neville and Seamus still hated me for it, but Ron immediately relaxed, and Ron was the one to just, say it. Right there, as if it weren’t the cause of infinite suffering for years; he just said “hahah anyway, that little misunderstanding that one time, sorry if things got a little out of proportions, but it’d have been so awkward to admit I wasn’t mad at you but just worried you’d be mad at me hahaha”. Just like that. Even Neville was floored. And so, we finally talked, and it took all of 5 minutes to understand that it was a dumb fucking misunderstanding that could have been solved with one conversation. One conversation that I begged everyone to have, and that everyone told me to fuck off about.

Neville is still hostile to me, especially for the threat to get the conversation and the, ahem, “harassment” of wanting to talk to Ron in the week following the lasagna incident. Seamus is neutral and friendly, and Ron went from “no contact at all” to being the one super excited to spend time with me, enthusiastically telling me that we need to “catch up” and “make up for the lost time” and he keeps blowing up my phone with offers for plans we could do together, either just Ron and me or the four of us together. Ron acts as if the past 3 years did not happen at all, and he seems carefree about what I went through.

I tried to explain to the three of them what I had to live through, dropping out of college, losing my bf, all my money, my will to be alive. Ron was vaguely sympathetic but went straight to “whatever, just put this behind you and let’s go back to being best friends!”, and Neville shut me down a couple times by calling it “whining” and saying that friends are not responsible for their friend’s well-being. I have not been able to sleep all night after our meeting, and I took the day off work to focus on thinking about this. Emotionally, I’m wrecked. The source of all this suffering, which crippled my self-worth, ruined my financial future, ruined my education, ruined my couple, destroyed my confidence and my ability to trust other people… all that was Ron being unconcerned about the consequences of his thoughtless actions, and Neville choosing to make a villain out of me based on false assumptions. I keep thinking about all the sleepless night spent crying to myself, all the panic attacks, all the pain and anguish and fear I went through, and all I can think about is that Ron caused all of this, albeit without understanding how much pain he caused, just because he felt “awkward” about admitting fault, so he preferred to bury his head in sand and pretend the problem that was destroying my life just did not exist, when he had to power to solve that problem by saying a few sentences at any time. For. THREE. **YEARS.**

Ron, Neville and Seamus never had to suffer, because they had the same friend group, they never had to ponder whether their friends betrayed them or spend months being haunted by thoughts about trust and how trusting people is just a self-inflicted vulnerability. They never had to drop out of college or lose their future prospects. They never had to deal with the panic attacks or the existential dread I lived through because of them. I am a reasonable person, when everyone around me seems to agree that I am the bad guy, I naturally conclude there’s a reason why everyone is against me; so I was accepting the idea that I WAS bad, and since I had no idea what exactly triggered that hatred from everyone I loved, then it meant that I could never trust myself. Obviously, just trying my best to be a good person and a good friend leads to everyone hating me, so instinctively I started being *terrified* of interacting with people, because I was afraid of me, being an accidentally evil person, hurting people I cherish.

I genuinely do not know what to do moving forward, so I ask for advice. How could I possibly approach being reintegrated in that friend group after being vilified for three years. Ron never tried to be hostile to me, it was news to him to learn that Neville was actively trying to sabotage me, Ron just thought that I didn’t want to hang out with them and that I had moved on, after the initial incident of him being too awkward to face me. He did not spend a moment of those three years contemplating what happened to me, he just focused on living his best life. But that right, the right to just live your life carefree, was robbed from me. Sure, by accident, but it was robbed from me by them.

I spent what’s now most of my adult life so far being in a hole of depression and despair and wishing nothing more than to mend the bond between me and Ron. Ron was my “best friend” before the incident, and I was desperate to just be on good terms with him, even if we never talked or hung out – I just wanted to end the endless pain pouring out the scar left when Ron went away. But now, I learned that there was nothing to fix, Ron just didn’t care enough to reach out for me or worry about me ONCE. And sure, he’s being all nice and friendly now, but I do not know how I could possibly just overlook the past three years. My therapist, when I could still afford one, thought that I had developed PTSD relating to social relations due to the lasagna incident. And the very same people who caused that PTSD are now expecting me to just… get over it and act as if all that time that I spent suffering, and which they spent enjoying themselves without caring about the pain they caused me, just didn’t happen. I spent all that time dreaming of reconciliation – if I had found a genie, my wish for those three years would have been “make Ron talk to me, just once.” And now that it came to pass, I don’t feel healed at all. I feel empty. It feels weightless, and so much of my demons are quiet now suddenly, but I also feel… anger? Hatred?

I have been thinking about my options. Do I want to go back to these three like before? Or, could I expect that, now, I will stop having panic attacks when I interact with new people, which would mean that I can go out and make new friends? Even if I make new friends, there’s the question of how to handle Ron, Neville and Seamus, what to tell them, how to move on.

Can you help me please? I feel too emotionally tired to do this grueling emotional labor alone…