Obsessive spiraling thoughts about an ex friend
I will try to keep this as short and cohesive as possible but please forgive if it isn’t. I’m also not the best writer so please excuse rambling sentences, misplaces commas, etc. My wife (27) and I (25) had this friend for a while before we moved away, she was much younger than us(19 I believe at the time) and for a while I think we kind of looked at her as a young sister which is great because we’re both the youngest in our families so it was a nice dynamic. We mostly spent time at our house at the time and even took a 3 day trip to the Smokey mountains. It was a very short lived friendship but it felt very special, a kind of friendship I’ve never had before.
I can go on and on about this specific event but I will keep it pretty vague and to the point if you would like further details feel free to shoot me a DM. Basically I decided to take magic mushrooms one day when we were all chilling in the house. Obviously in hind sight this was a horrible idea, if you have never taken a psychedelic substance there are a few basic ground rules people should follow so they don’t end having a bad trip: don’t take it a whim (plan, plan, plan!) and don’t trip around people who have never tripped and don’t know what it’s like because they can say or do something minor that can throw you into a nasty head space and your trip can turn real bad real fast. Well that’s exactly what happened. She made a comment that was objectively kind of rude but she was just trying to be funny but that sent me spiraling and all of this trauma got unleashed that had been hiding in my mind for years. Memories of being sexually abused as a child, old insecurities and self worth issues I had thought I had gotten over, and the early death of my father. I have no idea why what she said triggered all of these things to come up but they did and my mental health took a hard dive. It’s been a little over two years since that trip and it still feels like it happened yesterday. After that day I just couldn’t see her the same way she became a trigger for me even though it wasn’t her fault I’m the one who stupidly decided to trip on a whim in front of someone who’s younger and didn’t know anything about the effects of psychedelics so I’m aware it’s completely on me.
I did finally talk to her about this (over text and not in person another ridiculous mistake) and at the end of the day it ended up with us deciding we just couldn’t be friends anymore. Meanwhile, my wife and her still remained close and would go to concerts together and then when we moved to another town she just stopped talking to my wife and they had a falling out (somewhat related to what happened with me and her but a few others thing too) so she’s no longer in either of our lives.
Again I left out alot of details just for the sake of the length, but I’m willing to fill in any gaps if it helps with feedback. Even though I have virtually no connection with her and we don’t really have any mutual friends she will pop on my social media sometimes and whenever I think I put it behind me it sets me right back where I was two years ago. To make things worse I recently started writing and preforming music as a cathartic way to express my feelings about everything and started playing gigs which helps but some of the venues I play I found out from another source that she frequents quite often which always sends me great anxiety when this is the one area that I feel like is helping me deal with this shit. I don’t know how to move on. I currently have no health insurance so I can’t get on meds or talk to a professional and I really wish I could just hate her honestly it would be so much easier to deal with anger than deal with hurt. I have so many mixed emotions towards the whole situation: anger and resentment for what happened to me, guilt and shame for how I handled the whole situation with her, and grieving a lost friend. There are days where I think about reaching out to her but I just can’t I know for a fact she feels really awful about the whole situation and I don’t want to bring her down with me.
Again I apologize for the messy writing I can’t sleep and it’s four in the morning and I just needed to express my feelings openly somehow. Any advice would help or just some overall feedback. Again I’m aware it’s my fault at the end of the day with the mushrooms that was very irresponsible of me so I just ask to not harp on that. Thank you ❤️