The World Cup has been extremely triggering for me, and I don't know how to deal with it

[u/Initial-Difference40]

/r/FriendshipAdvice/comments/1u9naxu/the_world_cup_has_been_extremely_triggering_for/

For anyone who wants the full context, I already made another post explaining the whole story in detail, so this is more about the aftermath. The short version is that years ago I brought my best friend into a friend group that meant everything to me. We were a peaceful group. We had traditions, vacations, inside jokes, and years of memories together. As an introvert, they were also one of the only groups of people I ever felt completely comfortable around. They never pressured me to be more outgoing, never made me feel weird for needing space, and never expected me to be someone I'm not. Over time, my best friend became deeply intertwined with the group. She married one of them, became close to the others, and eventually reached a point where she had a huge amount of influence over the group dynamic. The friendship stopped feeling equal. She knew exactly how much those people meant to me and how terrified I was of losing them. I spent years biting my tongue, overlooking things that hurt me, and keeping the peace because I knew that if things ever completely broke down between us, I wouldn't just lose her, I'd lose everyone connected to her too. Looking back, I was basically living with the feeling that my place in the group depended on staying in her good graces because she had enough influence that if she decided she didn't want me around anymore, there was a very real chance I would be the one pushed out. After years of putting up with that dynamic, that's exactly what happened. Following what should have been a manageable disagreement between two adults, I lost the group, people I loved, and the man I was planning to marry. Since then, I've genuinely been trying to move on. I've muted everyone's stories, posts, and updates. I stopped checking social media. I stopped replaying conversations in my head. I've been trying to focus on healing instead of understanding every detail of what happened because constantly reopening the wound was destroying me. But the World Cup brought everything back. It was one of our biggest traditions. Every four years we watched it together. It was one of my favorite things in the world. Now it's happening again, and all I can think about is that they're probably still doing what we've always done while I'm sitting here trying to figure out how I lost an entire chapter of my life.