Let me preface this with a bit of background info: this is about my ex-best friend (let's refer to them as EBF going forward) who I've known since middle school and who I ended up living with all 4 years during college. EBF and I were great friends all throughout middle and high school, but once we started living together, our friendship started becoming a bit toxic. I started feeling like I was constantly walking on eggshells around her and like I couldn't ever express my true self, and I began to notice that being around her more often than not left me feeling confused, down on myself, lesser than, like I was an inconvenience, etc. Eventually it got to the point where being around her started to become extremely uncomfortable and was impacting my self esteem and overall mental health, and as a result I started actively avoiding her as much as possible.
I'm not sure if living with her and dealing with all this toxicity perhaps left me with some sort of trauma/ptsd, because even in the years after we stopped living together, I'd still get uneasy and have this sort of negative gut reaction whenever we'd hang out. Even just seeing her posts pop up on my social media feed would make me feel really uncomfortable and sometimes give me flashbacks of that time. Over time, I sort of started distancing myself from her, and then eventually once covid happened I took advantage of the situation and finally cut her off for good.
It's been probably 3 years since we last talked, and I was fully convinced I'd never speak to her again. However, today I was listening to an old band we both used to like, and in doing so it brought back a lot of the good memories I have with her. For the first time in a while I found myself smiling while thinking back on our friendship, and for some reason this thought popped into my mind that I should reach out to her to see how she's doing. It was actually kind of surprising because I realized I no longer seem to have that same uneasy feeling when I think about her, like I have somehow healed over these past few years and no longer hold the same resentment towards her about what happened. At first I thought maybe it was just the nostalgia getting to me, but idk for some reason I really do think that my feelings and perspective on this situation has shifted, if that's even possible?
One thing I also want to mention is that another one of our mutual best friends who I am still in frequent contact with has told me before how she also feels that EBF can be kinda condescending to her too sometimes, and how she's considered living with her before but doesn't think she'd ever be able to actually do it because of how draining EBF is to be around. My brain is telling me this is a red flag and that I would be better off not re-opening that line of contact with EBF, but the forgiving/optimistic part of me wants to believe we could be friends again, even if we only talk occasionally.
I guess the reason I made this post is because I'm not quite sure what this means or what I should do moving forward. I do still have love for EBF and care about her and hope that she's happy and doing well. I do want to text her, but I'm just not sure if it's the best/smartest idea because I think I've finally healed and I don't want to potentially re-ignite those bad feelings and/or subject myself to any further trauma. It's like on the one hand I'm open to giving our friendship another chance, but at the same time I don't want to unnecessarily bring someone back into my life who might potentially do the same hurtful things as before. So I don't really know what to do.
What do y'all think I should do? Has anyone here been in a similar situation before? Any tips/advice would be very much appreciated.
Tldr; I've been thinking about getting back in touch with my ex-best friend who I was in a toxic friendship with (which ended up significantly impacting my self-esteem and mental health for many years). Reason being is that today I happened to listen to an old band we both used to enjoy and it brought back a lot of my good memories of us together and made me realize I no longer hold resentment or any negative feelings towards her or the situation anymore. I do still love and care about her despite everything and would like to get back in touch with her, but I also don't want to potentially re-ignite the issue or cause any further trauma. What should I do?
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