Sorry it wasn’t just 10ish years ago, it was actually 15ish years ago. It was maybe 1 or 2 years after we graduated highschool. So, I had a best friend who I met in middle school and we quickly became close. We made up our own language, hung out constantly, when we weren’t with each other we would write each other letters for the next time we saw each other. In our yearbooks throughout middle school and highschool, everyone would always comment about our friendship and how we weren’t ourselves unless we were together. She truly is the best friend I’ve ever had and to this day I’ve never had a friendship with anyone that compares to my friendship with her.
Well, I grew up with a very strict, abusive, conservative Christian mom. It was bad. The abuse was mental, physical and emotional. She also had a problem with anyone I was friends with that wasn’t Christian and conservative. My friend was not. As we got older, my friend was able to go out late, go to parties, go to guys houses, and do normal stuff that late teenagers get to do but my mom saw it as «devil like». She never liked my friend and claimed that she was a bad influence and her ways would send me to hell. I lived in constant fear of my mom. Well, one day, my mom and I got into a huge argument over my friend and she told me that I have to stop being friends with her. For no good reason, just because my mom was concerned for my soul. I, as previously stated, was in fear of my mom, and was working a retail job and in community college and couldn’t support myself in order to move out. So i pushed my friend away, like my mom ordered. I was Young and scared of her and didn’t want to be in any more fear of my mom, so i did what she asked. It broke myself and my friend.
Eventually I got a good paying job and moved out as quickly as I could. My mom did not take it well. There were death threats, a court appearance, and of course I cut her out of my life and have not had a relationship for the past seven years. About a year of therapy and adjusting after I finally moved out, I still couldn’t stop thinking of this friend, so I reached out, profusely apologizing. Thankfully, she also couldn’t stop thinking of our friendship, and we reconnected.
The first couple years kind of felt like new friends, which i guess makes sense because so much time went by without us talking. Both of us expérienced traumatic events during our séparation and it changed us. During our friendship we’ve hung out constantly, taken trips together, and she was even a bridesmaid in my wedding recently. Over the past year, her and i agree it finally felt like our friendship was back to how it was so many years ago. We even started speaking our old made up language again. My husband and her boyfriend adore each other and we always talk about how nice it is to be living a life that we used to talk about when we were kids where we would each be in a relationship and our guys would like each other and we would double date all the time.
So, my concern is, how do I let go of leaving her in the first place? We talked about it, cried about it, she forgave me and understood why I did it, but i can’t stop thinking about how I wasn’t there for her for so many years because I let my mom get in the way of us. She tells me its ok and we can just live the rest of our lives together like we are supposed to but i still get upset thinking of how much closer we would’ve been if we never stopped talking. She knows I’ll never do that again and i know she just deserves more than the world from me but, is there anything else I can or should be doing? She seems to have moved past it but I always feel a twinge of guilt when I think about it.
tl;dr Had a childhood best friend that I abandoned years ago because of my mom and now we are friends again but I cant forgive myself for ever abandoning her in the first place
Comments
Maybe try therapy again for a bit. Abuse and survival come with lots of guilt. You did some important things to get away from your parent, perhaps your first year therapy was focused on that mostly. And now you’re in a new phase in life and getting older, you are finally figuring out what you missed out on cos you had to reinvest in this friendship again. Your friend is okay with it all, but this is you who’s stuck. So check in with yourself with the help of an expert and the life experience you have now and find why it’s still eating at you. There are reasons why you had to go at this all in this way, you would’ve made other choices if there were any.