#And for the past year I've been mentally separating myself from... him? Like obv i cant but I've forced myself to stop caring abt his healt

[chutiyaaa]

Death mention or w/e

[traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors]

tw for mention of stalking

hi, i hope this is okay to send. its okay if you don't really have an answer to how i'm feeling i just kind of need this off my chest bad ough

back a few years ago i really hurt someone i cared about, like really bad. i didnt understand the full weight of the situation bc im not great with social cues due to how my brain works and he had said things were okay between us (which i don't blame him for, i think he just wanted things to be okay too), and things just got worse from a variety of things ive come to realise were bc i was coping poorly with a friend of mine at the time traumatising me in the months leading up to him and i both going our separate ways for his mental health. obvs that's not an excuse and i don't try to justify my actions with that, it's just... the only reason i can explain why i acted, really. i still take responsibility for it happening regardless.

its been a while since then and i still struggle to see myself as a different person from then, and processing the traumatic incident that predates it is... a lot to deal with, and its taking a long time– especially since the person who did this went out of her way to stalk me & tell people i wasn't actually regretful for my actions at all at every opportunity she had while i was trying to improve myself and heal from what she put me through.

since the incident with him happened, i've been too scared to get close towards others out of fear that it'll happen again. i know people change and that people i've known since then say i'm much different to how i was back then regardless of my healing status, but... i still have that nagging fear that i'm just bound to screw everything up again. maybe its just cause i live with myself, but it feels like im just the same person i was.

there's people i really care about and love talking to, but i just get distant whenever they express they consider us close and it sucks because i feel like im just being flaky and a bad friend and arguably worse than i was in the past. i don't really know what to do anymore, i just want to be normal.

It makes sense that you feel like you're the same person you were even though other people say you seem really different. People's innate personalities, values, and beliefs very rarely change when they're an adult, and that's the part that you yourself are most likely to notice and respond to. But people's behaviour can change drastically as they heal from trauma and learn better coping skills for life, which is the part that affects other people, and what they notice. Just because you have the same personality and feel like you're the same person, doesn't mean that you will act the same way as you did in the past. Your personality being someone who doesn't want to hurt other people is the same now as it was before; you didn't hurt someone on purpose. But your coping skills (social skills, trauma processing, healing) are apparently noticeably different, and that's what will prevent what happened before from happening again. You can get close to people again without hurting them.

You can take your time in processing your trauma. There's no timeline for it, and it's okay that it's taking a long time, especially if the person involved is continuing to make things difficult. And it's okay to be scared when getting close to people because of your past experiences and regret over your past choices. But when you feel ready to open up and let people get close to you again, it sounds like you've changed in ways that will allow you to have normal healthy connections with others.

- Mod Allison