Hi there, I'm 24 y/o, some events happened almost 10 years ago, yet still scar me to the point where I think about them far more than I want to, and recently it's gotten so bad that I'm procrastinating so much. (I'm self employed btw).
BACKGROUND
- Not sure if I would call myself shy, but have always been more of a listener/ thinker around strangers/ school, but definitely an alpha around close friends.
- I went to a strict religious school that I very much HATED, I didn't have anyone you would call a friend there and the teachers were not friendly at all. I remember my confidence was so low, but one day I got the courage to casually start negging a girl outside of class, she was going along with it, to only then be caught and told off by a teacher for appart bullying in front of everyone... I think that was my first and the last flirting game I had at school.
- I used to lay and cry in bed dreading school the next day, but fortunately I developed good relationships with some people round my area, one of which became my best friend (now ex best friend - lets call him Mike), who I used to see pretty much every day after school and did everything together.
SITUATION
- Mike and I shared 8 years of friendship where we were literally like brother, I was the older and he was the younger. However, Mike had some tendencies to disrespect me around his other dumb-ass friends whom he wanted to impress. I just closed an eye on this, but this got more annoying when we started to hangout with other people including girls and he started to put them before our friendship and try way too much to get the girls interest in him - i.e. by embarrassing me in some racial way (I'm not UK born).
- I didn't have much interest for the girls in our social group, at the time I had ambitions for a footballing career that Mike was always doubtful about, which didn't bother me that much because I knew he was kind of jealous about it.
- As our social circle grew, Mike, and another "friend" started to act bitchy by purposefully not inviting only me to events and hangouts, shortly after everyone from the group stopped communicating with me, including a girl that I developed a crush for. I felt like I just lost a popularity contest. Then my friendship with Mike and the rest of the group stopped, nothing was said, it just ended like that with no contact.
At the time I didn't care because I had other ambitions in life and I didn't want to drawn in to bitchy and disrespectful social groups. The problem sunk in a couple months later where I still had 2 years left of school and realised that I have no other friends... I went from going out each day socialising and being the alpha male of the group to complete isolation at home and misery at school the next day. The flip from extrovert to introvert came so hard that to date those 2 years were one of the hardest and saddest of my life.
I feel like the isolation took a huge beating on my self-esteem and school magnified the social anxiety that to this date I have doubting thoughts that I will ever make a trustworthy friend or a social circle. Although, pick up has helped with my relationship with women (I now have a long term girlfriend), I still feel emptiness and betrayal by my ex best friend. Additionally, like now, I get drawn too much into the nostalgia about the good times being extraverted and hiding the reason for the breakup. Resultantly, I feel guilty and think to myself that I should of acted differently on the situation.
[Side note: I tried to contact my Mike many times to at least gain closure, but he doesn't respond.]
I just don't know how to deal with what has happened, so that I can re-gain the full self esteem I had 10 years ago and eliminate the anxiety and frustration of dwelling on past which causes me to procrastinate and not be present in life.
|