i miss my ex friend and i wish we could talk again but i dont know if i should

[colugo]

so, for context, im 16. my ex friend is 18 and we were online friends. i met her shortly before i turned 13, and back then i was very purity culture obsessed due to negative things that ive experienced, and she was very open about sexual things with me and our mutual friends. we argued once about something lame, and from then on, everything went downhill. we had like three arguments in the span of 4 months and i, being the hypocritical little shit i was back then, decided to make a really big deal out of the last argument which in my opinion could've been solved very easily.....but whatever.

we decided to make up after a month or so, or at the very least apologize, she kept telling me "we're like oil and water", but really, i felt like she was just vinegar disguising as oil. and i was right. we decided to restart our friendship a few days after that discussion, and it all went really well. she was kind and understanding and all that i wanted in a friend at the time and i felt so comfortable talking to her, she was my first step to embracing who i truly am, she was one of those super cool people that helped me stop being so disgusted with my sexuality, and to 14 year old me, we fit perfectly. i later stopped talking to her as much but we continued seldom interacting, until the next year i noticed she kinda strayed away from me...

she paid more attention to my other friends, she avoided talking to me, she stopped praising my work, she even didnt really like some things that i liked which felt almost intentional, until in october, she decided to almost completely cut contact with me. i felt upset, i tried bringing it up to her, but all i got as a response was something of the sort of "i dont like when people younger than me act the way you do" and "i just feel uncomfortable like you did a few years ago", yet it feels kinda like something specifically against me, because my other friends did the same things like me, and were the same age as me. and now im thinking, could it be because of how purity culture obsessed and hypocritical i was at 13 that she hates me still?? we're just so similar and i think we'd fit together perfectly and i dont even remember the ways she hurt me, but maybe she remembers the ways i hurt her. but i dont know almost anything about it so now i really wanna discuss this all all over again, should i or is this a bad idea? she still has me added on some social media and she said that the end of our friendship is more of a "break", i dont know what to do, i just miss her and i wish i didnt do what i did

[Heather]

Hi there, chloe. I'm so sorry about the loss of your friendship, especially given how important this friend and this friendship have been to you.

Unfortunately, we can't know any more about why your friend doesn't want to be friends with you anymore than you know or than what she has told you (which for sure feels very vague and unclear, so doesn't tell us much). Might it be because you hurt her before? Maybe. But it's just impossible to say for sure, and until and unless she changes her mind about talking with you, I'm afraid you might need to accept that you just aren't going to know for sure. (I'm also not seeing where you hurt her: I see you saying you two argued, but it sounds like that might not be the whole story?)

I believe that when people ask us not to be in contact with them that we need to respect that and not try and push past any kind of boundary they have set with us, even if that boundary causes us pain. I don't think it is a good idea to try and litigate this with her unless she comes to you, asking to be in contact with you again.

I know that missing an important friend can really hurt. Are you allowing yourself some time and space to grieve this loss? A lot of the time, the work there is for us to do in a situation like this isn't to try and repair the relationship, but to do what we need to to let ourselves feel and experience our feelings, and take care of ourselves as we get through our grief. Does that sound like something you can try doing for yourself for a little while to help work through this loss?

[colugo]

whoops i didn't beta read before submitting but i was lowkey a bully like half the time during those argumentsfirst two were bullying on her side and the next two i went and bullied her worse and it was for sexual fanfiction that i did myself at the time too (and still do) and so after resolving all these messy stuff i thought itll all be okay as we're pretty much the same, but i fear years later she could've remembered how shitty i was back then and just made up an excuse to stop talking to meor maybe now she has the same weird shame driven mindset that i used to have when i was 13 but thats a thing i heavily doubt......i often try to not think about it but its probably guilt for my past actions that makes me think about it so much sighhhh

[Heather]

Thanks for being honest and sharing that.

So, you’re saying here that you engaged in a form of harassment with this person, which makes it extra, extra important you honor the boundary they have set and not contact them or try to get them to be your friend. It also sounds like this might not have been something healthy for either of you.

It sounds to me like what might be most helpful for you is for you to access some therapeutic help with these feelings of guilt and these patterns of behavior. Do you have access to any mental healthcare?

That can also help you learn different ways of being with people, so you can start to build new, healthy friendships with better foundations for everyone.

It sounds to me like the best thing when it comes to this friendship is for you to try and start accepting that it’s something you are probably just going to need to let go, and learn to live with how you feel about your part in that. It does make sense for us to feel bad when you do wrong to someone, so rather than trying to make those feelings go away, or get the other person involved to let you off the hook, working to resolve them with a professional would be a much better bet.

Understand what I’m saying?

[colugo]

i understand!! thank you for your advice, really!! and i have family that work with mental health issues so technically yes!

[Heather]

Glad to help.

That’s good news about people in your family system working in mental health. I’d ask someone to help you find a therapist. I think that you’ll find working with a good therapist can help you well with all of this.