During my afternoon walk with Alex and Linley, I started talking about the rumination I was having during my morning walk with Linley. I couldn’t stop thinking about some harsh realities with certain friends. I couldn’t stop thinking about the radical acceptance I’ve been working so hard at in therapy. I couldn’t stop thinking about the radical honesty I needed to communicate with my friends, and myself. Boundaries. When to throw in the towel when I recognize patterns in certain people.

The version of me that knows the truth can see that I gave it my all with my brother, my ex, former friends, other family members and people in my life. The version of me that knows the truth knows that no matter what I would’ve done different, I probably still would’ve been lashed out at by certain friends, questioned by others, and judged by many people in my life. No matter what, I couldn’t have changed their views of me or the outcome of our relationship now.

The version of me that struggles with radical acceptance and honesty believes that it’s all my fault. Someone I had set boundaries with lashing out at me is all my fault. My ex leaving me is all my fault. My brother’s and my lack of a relationship is all my fault. My family’s judgment of me is all my fault. My friendships of ten plus years ending is all my fault. My not fitting in at certain workplaces is all my fault. You see the pattern here…

How can I work on coping with the fact that people have hurt me? All I want to do is blame myself. How can I realize that some relationships weren’t meant to last? All I want to do is reach out to Alissa, Danielle, Jaclyn, Dani, Terry, Brandon, Cass… but I know if I did, I would either be treated horribly, gaslighted or completely ignored.

I wish I’d learned how to communicate my feelings more effectively and in a timely manner, instead of telling Danielle “I don’t know what I did but just know I’ll always love you and you have a special place in my heart.” She probably thinks I ghosted her after ten years of friendship; what I really did was shield my pain because she did something that felt really unforgivable to me. But after four or five years of not speaking to her, who felt like a sister to me, does still eat me alive at times. It’s like that with quite a few people in my life, from my past.

But again: it’s “all my fault” and I carry all the weight and responsibility of others. It’s as though them hurting me is something I deserved, something that was my fault in the end.

How can I heal? How can I move on? My OCD and anxiety would love to know.

P.S.: I know deep down that I’ve never “thrown anyone away.” In fact, I held onto the pain and hurting for so long, that when I finally did say how I felt, friendships were ruined. But Brandon, a friend of over ten years, said this to me in the last message he’d ever sent me. When I go through a hard time, sometimes that sentence tears at me. ☹️

P.P.S.: I also know deep down that someone who would speak to me like this at all a) didn’t like that I had boundaries and/or said that I needed space while I was going through my divorce and b) doesn’t really know me like I had thought he did. In our last year or so of friendship, I constantly felt like my feelings were minimized and no matter what I said I had to walk on eggshells. So when I’d moved back to Michigan around the time he had also moved back, I couldn’t be around that or hear those things during my divorce finalization. Before that, Brandon had always been such a loving, caring friend, but something had changed when we were both going through our breakups. We couldn’t help each other the way we had before. And I have to accept that.