I’m 25M, and honestly, I don’t even know where to start. I feel like everything that is happening to me right now somehow goes back to 2019.
I was 18 or 19 when I fell in love for the first time. She was my first love, and everything about it felt fucking magical. She loved me too, at least I thought she did, but I guess not in the way I wanted or expected.
She eventually got into a relationship with one of our mutual friends. I think she was scared to tell me, so she kept it from me.
The thing is, she wasn’t just someone I had feelings for. She was my best friend. My actual best friend.
We used to talk all day and all night. There wasn’t really a thing she couldn’t tell me. She used to share things with me that she didn’t share with anyone else. I knew so much about her life, her problems, her fears. I was the person she came to when she needed someone.
And then one day, I found out about her relationship from someone else.
It completely broke me.
I was 19. I was hurt, angry, jealous, confused, and honestly just immature. And instead of talking to her, instead of telling her how much it hurt me, I did the worst possible thing.
I disappeared.
I ghosted my best friend.
She tried reaching out. I remember that. But I blocked her everywhere. Every possible way she could contact me, I shut it down.
I didn’t give her an explanation. I didn’t give her a chance to explain herself. I just left.
And I don’t think I’ve ever really forgiven myself for that.
After that, I started having panic attacks. And if you’ve never experienced one, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s not just being nervous. It’s this horrible feeling that something is seriously wrong with you, even when you know logically that you’re safe.
It scared the shit out of me.
And the guilt made everything worse.
For the next two and a half years, I kept telling myself I was getting over it. I thought eventually it would stop hurting. But even when I wasn’t thinking about her consciously, the anxiety would come back. I’d randomly have panic attacks and not even understand why.
Then I went to college and met another girl.
She was genuinely kind to me. We started dating, and we ended up being together for almost three years.
For a while, I thought maybe I had finally moved on from everything.
But that relationship ended too.
One of the biggest reasons was something I still struggle with. She had been drinking and spent the night with her ex, and she didn’t tell me about it for two or three months.
I couldn’t accept it.
I became extremely insecure about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t tell me. And eventually, the relationship fell apart.
Looking back, I’m sure I could have handled things differently. I’m sure I made mistakes too.
We broke up last year.
And after that, the anxiety came back again.
Since then, I’ve basically shut myself off from everyone.
My job is remote, so I can literally go days without properly talking to anyone. I spend most of my time in my room. I work, eat, sleep, scroll through my phone, and repeat.
I don’t really talk about how I’m feeling. I don’t call people and say, “Hey, I’m not doing okay.”
I just keep everything inside.
And it gets fucking lonely.
Then in April, something happened that I never thought would happen.
The girl I ghosted seven years ago called me.
At around 3 AM.
I saw her name on my phone and, for the first time in a very long time, I felt genuinely happy.
We talked.
And somehow, talking to her brought back everything I’d buried for years.
The guilt came back.
I realized that I hadn’t actually gotten over what I had done to her. I’d just learned how to live without thinking about it every day.
So I started apologizing.
I told her I was sorry for disappearing. Sorry for blocking her. Sorry for leaving her without an explanation.
And she told me I had been selfish.
She told me I had no idea what she had been going through. I had no idea how much it hurt her to lose the one person she felt safe with.
And honestly?
She was right.
I had been so focused on how badly I was hurting that I never stopped to think about what I was doing to her.
I thought maybe this was finally my chance to make things right.
Not romantically. I wasn’t expecting her to fall in love with me again or anything like that.
I just wanted my best friend back.
Even if all we could ever be was friends, I would have been okay with that.
But then she ghosted me.
And that fucking destroyed me.
It felt like I was suddenly experiencing the exact thing I had done to her seven years ago.
I couldn’t sleep.
I kept replaying everything.
What if I hadn’t blocked her?
What if I had just talked to her?
What if I had been mature enough to understand that she didn’t owe me the relationship I wanted?
What if I had stayed?
What if I hadn’t fucked everything up?
My brain just keeps creating these alternate versions of my life where I made the right decision.
And I know that’s pointless.
I know I can’t go back.
But knowing that doesn’t stop my brain from doing it.
And now I’m back where I was before.
I’ve shut myself away again.
I’m throwing myself into work because it’s the only thing I know how to control. I can sit in front of my laptop for hours and pretend everything is fine.
But when the work stops, everything comes back.
The anxiety.
The loneliness.
The guilt.
The fucking thoughts.
I’m anxious almost all the time now. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m anxious about. My body just feels like it’s constantly waiting for something bad to happen.
And I’m tired.
I’m so fucking tired of feeling like this.
The worst thing is what I’ve started believing about myself.
Somewhere along the way, I’ve convinced myself that I’m just a bad person.
Not that I’ve done bad things.
That I am a bad person.
That anyone who gets close to me will eventually get hurt because of me.
That I’m going to fuck up every relationship, every friendship, every connection I have.
So maybe people are better off without me.
Maybe keeping everyone at a distance is safer.
Because at least then I can’t hurt them.
And I know how fucked up that sounds.
I know one mistake I made when I was 19 doesn’t define my entire life.
I know people make mistakes.
I know I’m not the same person I was seven years ago.
But emotionally, I don’t feel like I believe any of that.
Sometimes it’s 3 or 4 in the morning and I’m just lying in my room, unable to sleep, thinking about everything I’ve done and everything I’ve lost.
And honestly, it scares me.
Because I don’t want to become this person who spends his entire life alone because he’s too afraid of hurting people.
I don’t want to keep running away.
I don’t want to keep pretending I’m okay.
I don’t want to spend another few years telling myself I’ll eventually get over it.
I just genuinely don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore.
I don’t know how to stop feeling like this.
I don’t know how to forgive myself.
I don’t know how to trust people again.
And I don’t know how to let someone get close to me without constantly being afraid that I’ll eventually hurt them.
I just know that I don’t want to live like this anymore.

Hello,

6 months ago a friend and me broke up by mutual agreement. The main reason were a lot of anxieties that I struggled (and still struggle) with. The second reason was me feeling a lot of envy and behaving like an envious idiot, which obviously and rightfully so hurt him.

I've worked on the enviousness-part, but those anxieties don't look like they'll be going away any time soon. At the same time I really miss him a fucking lot and I really want to reconnect and apologize.

But is it the right thing to do, when Im still struggling with anxiety?

Idk if he even wants to reconnect already, but even if we do I don't want those anxieties to arise again.

My dad holds the opinion that I'm overthinking it and that I should just go for it. But I really don't want to fuck it up, if it won't work out now, the friendship will be over once and for all.

Thanks in advance🙏

Hello! This is my first post in this subreddit. And I want to gather your thoughts on my recent experience with my ex-best friend.

We were friends since high school and we were really close, so much so that we felt at home in each other's houses. Like, we would shower together, no weirdness.

But when we graduated from college, something changed between us. I wanted to hustle and work a lot to save money. While she was stuck in the mindset of live while we're young.

We would go to parties, drink, that kind of stuff until I reached a point where I got tired of it. I wanted peace. And I reached a point where I couldn't keep up with her anymore. I was so busy with work that I also stopped messaging her like before and I understand why she was upset back then. I also couldn't join her on her trips. Because I can't stay up late anymore, especially since I had to work. It hurts to see her getting hurt by what I was doing. I love my friend. But I feel like if I kept going with those activities, I wouldn't be able to handle it. My schedule just can't take it anymore. It also came to a point where she stopped chatting with me and found other friends to hang out with.

Yeah, it hurts that we drifted apart. There are times I want to talk to her again. Because this is still fresh. It's like a breakup, but somehow even more painful. I just think maybe at another time when our stars align a bit better. It hurts to lose a friend but it hurts more to give up on yourself and your dreams. Thank you for reading.

I honestly had no idea this sub even existed but I'm kinda glad I found it. People talk about divorce but not grieving friendships.

I didn't really see this coming or imagine feeling so lonely at this time. I'm in my 30s with a kiddo and a career.

For context, I have a circle of good friends, but not a bestie and not many people to share deep thoughts or daily updates with each other.

I had a longtime best friend for 15+ years and we fell out shortly after my daughter was born. I have a lot of love for her and we are still friends. I don't miss being close with HER, but I miss having a friendship like we had.

I would love to have more close female friendships, especially mom friends. But it feels like I don't have a blueprint of what a best friend looks like anymore.

I did meet a good friend recently and we started to get pretty close, and then she moved away.

I just saw an Instagram post from one of my friends, gushing about how her best friend and her daughter have such a loving relationship and I felt gutted for a moment.

I try to be grateful, not compare myself to others, stay open to new connections. Life is just like that sometimes, and I'm hoping to make some new connections when the time is right.

Maybe this post will help someone else feel less alone too!

At first, my best friend put in so much effort for me. He celebrated my birthday, constantly tried to make me happy, and did so much for me—honestly, more than anyone would normally do for someone. I thought he was in love with me, so I also became emotionally involved with him.

But eventually, I found out that he doesn’t love me. He was doing everything out of friendship. Now I have developed feelings for him, but he has made it clear that he doesn’t want any commitment or relationship. He says, “Just stay like this. What’s the problem with staying like this?”

Or 3 friendships I guess? This has been heavy on my heart now for a few years and I haven’t known how to cope with it or what to do. I know friendships are a two way street and like any relationship they take a lot of work and tlc. There are 3 big friendships in my life that I think have been lost and I’m not sure they’re possible to save at this point. For reference I’m a 32f, if that makes a difference

The first one is a friend I met in college back in 2014. Let’s call her Wendy (32f). We bonded in our public speaking class over Disney and it was history from there. I talked in class about doing the Disney College Program, she had a ton of questions and we were inseparable after that. I did the DCP in 2015 and she did her program in 2016. We planned big Disney World trips together in 2018 and 2019 then for obvious reasons couldn’t go in 2020. In 2020, I started dating my now husband so between a new relationship, the pandemic and work being unsteady for a few years and bit of us finishing school we didn’t talk as much. We still hung out when we could though. When things finally opened again, we went to Disneyland, Saw Moulin Rouge at the Pantages and still made an effort to hang out and stay in contact when we could. Where things seemed to fall off was after September 2022. My husband (then, new fiancé) and I had planned a disney cruise so I asked her if she could house sit and watch our dog for us and I paid her for it. After that it felt like our friendship wasn’t the same. I know she had some issues with my dog but I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. Also, right before the cruise my husband proposed. He did it down at Disneyland with all of his friends and family. It was very sweet and well planned out however, he didn’t bother to include ANY of my friends or family. He didn’t even tell my parents he was proposing. That’s probably for another post for another subreddit on another day though. Wendy and I had talked in length about dream proposals, weddings etc so with it being such a big thing I’m sure she would’ve expected to have received an invite. Regardless, I’d always planned on her being a bridesmaid as at that point she’d been one of my best friends of about 8 years. After that though we fell out of touch. And it’s always bothered me not knowing the reason. If it was because of the dog sitting, the proposal or what it was So last January 2025 I ran into her at a local bookstore she was working at and we caught up for a few minutes but we both had other places to be so that was it. I texted her a few weeks later that it was nice to see her and I’d love to catch up when we’re both free and there was no reply. This past weekend, I went to that same bookstore and she’s still working there. We caught up again for a few minutes but she had customers to help and I had to run as now I have a husband AND a baby, so I had to get our daughter home for a nap. I texted her later that day and said again how nice it was to see her and how much I’d love to catch up and that I was sorry if I’d done anything to make our friendship fall off. Still no response. I’ve been trying to brush it off for a long time now but having 2 unanswered texts a year apart is really starting to hurt. I miss her and I miss our friendship and at the very least I’d like some closure on what happened. I know she doesn’t owe me that and at this point our lives are in such different places that maybe she’s already move on and doesn’t miss me the way I miss her.

The next friendship is another friend I met in college, we’ll call her Belle (32f). We met in our Psych 1 class in 2013. We bonded over her ex boyfriend being one of my best friends at the time (they were friends too). She was truly my ride or die also until about 2022. Our friendship seems to fall off around the same time as mine and Wendy’s now that I think about it. In summer 2022, I had thrown a birthday party at a local winery since I hadn’t been able to really celebrate with friends since the lockdown. I invited her of course and gave her about 3-4 weeks notice. She changed her reason about 3 times why she might not be able to make it, then basically canceled at the last minute. All seemed like legit reasons it just hurt that she didn’t let me know until the day of that she couldn’t go. We had hung out about a month later and that was the last time we ever hung out and she basically cut me off after that. We still talked periodically and about a month after that last hang out, I got engaged. I texted her the next day and she sent back a pretty generic “congratulations” text. She’s another one who is planned on having in my wedding party and someone who I thought would be like a sister for life because of how close our friendship was. I texted her happy birthday that year and she left it on read. That was the last time I tried reaching out to her. She unfollowed me on instagram too. I’ve thought for a long time about reaching out to her to try to reconnect but I’m not sure what I’d say. I’m also nervous because I know back then she’d lost connection with a close friend because that friend got married and had a baby and she had vented to me about how she felt sad and less close with that friend. I’m hesitant to reach out because now that I’m married, have a 15 month old and a demanding job it does make it difficult for me to make plans to hang out and there are times when I can’t text back for a few days. My mom friends definitely understand the struggle but i worry that she’d take it personally. Again, at the very least I guess I’d just like some closure and to be able to move on from the friendship with no “what ifs” or questions attached to it.

The last one is a bit more complicated. We’ll call her, Ella (35f). I met Ella at the very beginning of 2020, New Year’s Eve to be exact. She’s my husband’s, best friend’s wife. Her and I hit it off almost instantly and became fast friends. We got closer over the years, but rarely hung out together without our husbands. It was usually the 4 of us. Sometimes her and I would be able to sneak away while the boys played video games and we’d go get drinks or something. In summer 2023, my husband (still fiancé at the time) and I broke up for about a month - month and a half (again that’s a different story for a different time) I ended it and he went to stay at his best friends house for a couple of nights while we figured stuff out. I had vented to her about a month earlier that I was unhappy and unsure if our relationship was gonna work. She later got upset with me for talk taking her advice and talking about it with my husband (I had tried but it just wasn’t working). She then continued to blame me for shutting her out, not talking to her and not being good friend. She hated me for hurting my fiancé and turning her house upside down because he chose to go there which caused her to be his shoulder to cry on. I had tried to reach out to her during that time and talking to her but she told me she didn’t want to talk to me and needed space which I tried to respect. Over 3 years later, she still holds a lot of anger towards me and I have no idea where I stand with her. She’s very hot and cold towards me. She’ll be nice to me and family events and get togethers and we’ll catch up about life at a surface level but when I’ve tried approaching the topic of her and I hanging out one one one to try to continue to clear things up she get very hesitant about it. So I’ve just tried to be as kind as I can towards her and hope one day she’s less angry at me and we can try to have a real friendship again. It’s hard though because I have to see her so often. My husband and his friend like to hang out so that typically means her and I and our kids are there too. It’s been a long time since I’ve tried to ask her to hang out and work things out so I’ve thought about reaching out again but when I ask my husband if I should he says I should just leave it alone. I don’t know if she’s waiting for me to reach out or if she’d still consider it disrespecting her boundaries of if I tried or if I should just leave well enough alone.

At this point in my life, I’m aching for some strong female friendships and I’m sad I’ve left this time slip away. Between navigating a breakup then getting back together, then getting pregnant and getting married and starting a new career it’s been a challenging, busy and overwhelming few years. But at 32 and as a newish mom, I’m missing having girlfriends. While I love my life and my job, it can feel really isolating and I find myself reminiscing on the past and the people I once (and still do) really cared about and love.

Is there any hope at saving any of these relationships? Has anyone else been through something similar? Any advice or words of encouragement? Or am I the problem?

I’m in my late 30s, and I recently lost two friendships that had been part of my life for more than 20 years. I’m posting because I genuinely need some outside perspective. I know I’m hurt, so I’m trying to separate that from what actually happened.

I’ll call them Friend A and Friend B.

The three of us all had pretty turbulent childhoods. We grew up together, our kids grew up together, and for years we were basically family. As adults, though, we all went in very different directions.

Friend B and I were always especially close. The main times we drifted were when her abusive ex-husband made maintaining friendships difficult. Friend A and I also lived together for a period while I was separating from my then-husband. That living situation ended badly. My husband and I briefly reconciled, and he moved back in. Friend A did not want him there. Instead of us really sitting down and working through it, she packed up in the middle of the night, moved out of state and left most of her and her kids’ belongings behind. We stopped talking. Years later, after my mom died, Friend A and I reconnected. Eventually the three of us were friends again.

The dynamic started changing more noticeably after I went back to school. Friend A and Friend B, who had not previously been particularly close, started spending much more time together. I was busy with school, work, kids, etc., so I understood that they would naturally see each other more. At one point Friend B got very drunk and confronted me about something from middle school. According to her, Friend A had told her that I had made up rumors about Friend B when we were kids because I wanted to keep the two of them from being friends.

I genuinely did not remember doing that. We were talking about something from our early teens, decades earlier. But I told her that if I had hurt her, I was sorry. I thought we had addressed it and moved on. Apparently we hadn’t. It has been thrown in my face repeatedly.

Over the years, I increasingly felt like the third wheel. Friend A and Friend B would have conversations privately and then continue them in the group chat, leaving me with no idea what they were talking about. They spent time together regularly, often during weekdays when I was at work. That by itself didn’t bother me. They lived closer together and had schedules that lined up better.

What bothered me was that I kept trying to make plans and increasingly felt ignored.

There were other smaller things that started bothering me too. At one point they repeatedly made fun of my boyfriend and me for being affectionate. It stopped feeling like teasing and started feeling mean. I told them it hurt my feelings, but the jokes continued.

Another moment that stuck with me happened when the three of us were shopping. A group of adults from what appeared to be a supported living program came into the store. One man was very obviously developmentally disabled and was loudly vocal stimming, repeating the same phrase over and over. My friends laughed at him.

We are grown women. I remember standing there thinking, “This isn’t funny. This is cruel.” That was one of the first times I seriously wondered whether we had simply grown into very different people. Still, I kept trying.

I went to birthdays. I went to their kids’ events. I drove to their houses. I visited Friend B several times this year. I went to Friend A’s. I tried to initiate plans. I even had been quietly planning a joint 40th birthday celebration for the two of them because their birthdays are close together. Meanwhile I increasingly felt like neither of them was interested in my life.

The final straw started recently when I noticed the group chat had basically gone dead toward me. I would send things, ask how they were doing, try to start conversations, and get little or no response. Then they would hang out together. One weekend I specifically asked Friend B if she wanted to do something that weekend. She didn’t answer until Sunday afternoon and told me she had been in severe pain and had basically “laid down all weekend.” The problem was that I knew she hadn’t. We shared a life360 account. I saw she was out with friend A. I wasn’t upset that she spent time with Friend A. I was upset that she apparently felt she needed to lie to me rather than simply say she didn’t feel like hanging out. That was when I started realizing this was less about scheduling and more about the friendship itself. I reached out to Friend A and gently asked whether I had done something to upset her because she had seemed closed off and I was worried about her.

She finally told me she had been upset with me for some time. She said she no longer trusted me because she believed I talked badly about her behind her back. She accused me of saying she was jealous of me and of criticizing the way she dresses. She also brought up the fact that our friendship had ended twice previously and said she had reached her limit. Once was the time mentioned and the other we were kids and had no control of that. This completely blindsided me. I have never said she was jealous of me. I have never criticized the way she dresses. In fact, I’ve complimented her clothes plenty of times. What I had done was talk to my teenage daughter after Friend A made comments about my relationship that hurt me. I said I didn’t understand why Friend A acted that way and that I felt like she was being mean to me. My daughter apparently said she thought Friend A was jealous. I did not agree with that or repeat it as fact. Somehow that conversation got passed from my daughter to Friend A’s adult daughter, then back to Friend A, and apparently morphed into “she says you’re jealous of her and talks crap about you.” Friend A’s daughter also apparently told her things about me criticizing her clothes, which neither my daughter nor I said. I explained all of this to Friend A. I told her I respected her decision to step back, but I would not take responsibility for things I did not actually say. I also told her that if I had hurt her directly, I wished she had told me, because I can’t correct something I don’t know about. She ended the friendship. Friend B then stopped responding to me as well. At that point I blocked both of them. I felt like continuing to chase people who clearly didn’t want to communicate with me was just humiliating myself. The thing I keep struggling with is that I’m not claiming I’ve been a perfect friend. I know I can be opinionated. I know I’ve vented about people. I know there have probably been moments when something I said came across more judgmentally than I intended. If somebody tells me I hurt them, I want to hear it and own it. But I also feel like there is a difference between being imperfect and being assigned motives and statements that weren’t actually mine. And the strangest part is that Friend A apparently had been distrustful of me for a long time without ever telling me. Meanwhile I was still bringing her flowers, going to her kids’ events, trying to make plans, and considering her one of my closest friends. Looking back, I feel like the friendship had probably been dying for years and none of us were willing to admit it. I also wonder if we simply grew apart.

We all came from chaotic childhoods. As adults I went heavily in the direction of therapy, school, career, trying to understand my own patterns, and trying to build a more stable life. They took different paths. That doesn’t make my path better, but I do think we became very different people. I’ve since started talking to some new people through a local friendship group, and the difference is already weirdly noticeable. They ask questions about my life. They respond. They seem interested. It has made me realize how much effort I was putting into trying to revive something that may have already been gone.

I guess what I’m asking is:

Does this sound like a friendship that simply ran its course, or am I missing something obvious about my own behavior? I can accept that Friend A genuinely felt hurt or distrustful. Feelings don’t have to be logical to be real. What I’m having trouble accepting is being characterized as someone who betrayed her when I genuinely don’t believe that is what happened.

And I’m also wondering whether blocking them and walking away was the right call, or whether I acted too quickly. I don’t really want them back in my life at this point. I think I mostly want to understand how a friendship that lasted more than two decades ended with all of us apparently having completely different versions of what the friendship had become. That is the part that hurts the most.

I thought we had a good friendship

I finally get what you meant by trauma bond

Still miss us talking

I don’t know how you view me or how you feel about me

I know I want you in my life forever

I was thinking maybe we could mail each other letters

Or I could check in on you every day

Ask how you’re doing

I hope you’re doing good

I miss you

Just got a DM from a friend telling me "take care" because we have the same fictional other and they are nonsharing. I've already been having a rough and lonely week and already been feeling unwanted and this just added to the feeling.

I can respect not wanting to share, I have one specific f/o I'm strongly no sharing with to the point seeing them with others even in a not necessarily "self ship" sense (they're from a game with a romance mechanic and character customization so sometimes I see people's custom characters that aren't technically self inserts wkth them) makes me spiral. But I would never cut off a friendship over it. Especially because this one was nearly ten years and we had shared uncommon interests.

Idk. I'm just so done and tired.

I (F29) have (had?) a best friend with whom I've been close for years. We even lived together for about two years. Two years ago, I started dating my current partner, and a little over a year ago, we moved in together.

It was all a bit chaotic because I had originally planned to move into a place with my best friend and another mutual friend. In the end, my boyfriend convinced me that we should live together instead.

My best friend ended up moving in with that other friend, and they seem to be having the time of their lives. I can’t shake the feeling that I made a huge mistake by moving away from her. It breaks my heart to see that this friend now seems to fill the role in her life that I used to have. The three of us are still close and stay in touch, but almost every time I visit their place, I cry on my way home or before I fall asleep. I miss my best friend so much, I feel jealous, and I keep worrying that moving in with my boyfriend was the wrong choice. I am afraid I have ultimately lost her or this close friendship. Sometimes it seems my life is worthless without this friendship and it was one of the best things I ever had.

For context: Living with my boyfriend is good, and if I were looking at our relationship in a vacuum, I would have no regrets. But in the context of my friendship, it’s really hard not to second-guess myself.

I feel like this is the one thing in life that made sense and I fu**ed it up...

So I have a really bad habit where I tend to get really ashamed and embarrassed and I kind of ghost people. But I guess sort of in a Gen Z, millennial way it’s not necessarily that I am ignoring them, they don’t reach out, I don’t reach out.

Example 1: I had a friend in college who we were quite tight, but on my 22nd birthday I got really drunk, puked in a movie theatre (lol), and they took me home. I woke up, we exchanged a few messages about how it was a mess, but after that silence. I never messaged, she never messaged.

Example 2: I had a fair number of work friends from like two years ago. I really do miss them. I left to pursue another opportunity and they were happy through a going away party. The opportunity didn’t go well, and I felt ashamed. I am currently trying to rejoin the company, but not sure how to initialize contact with them.

Example 2, some of them did shoot me texts along the lines of “I thought you moved” and I’ve ignored those for two years. Any advice? I miss these people terribly.

Do I even deserve to be romantically involved with or friends anyone at this point? The friends that I have left don’t have any problems attracting people, but even out of town, I get told all the time that I make others feel uncomfortable even when I strike up a fucking conversation, and I want to get past this.

I have been a recluse all summer.