New Here, Want Advice

the past month ive been ruminating about a time last year where i hurt a friend by unintentionally bringing up a traumatic memory when i was really drunk, enough that i didnt remember it, so i went 6 months without apologizing until i was worried when they werent talking to me anymore. so they told me when i finally tried to talk to them. i apologized and they told me we were ok now, and still want me in their life, but now they stopped talking to me again and its been 3 weeks, and im terrified that i did something again, especially since they stopped talking to me when i made a mistake before, and wont tell me outright. the event triggered horrible horrible guilt over what i did, mostly guilt About the guilt i was feeling, because its not a normal amount of guilt for a regular person, and eventually my compulsions for confessing and ruminating reached a high point. and when they stopped talking to me again they got even worse . they are aware i suffer from ocd and anxiety to an extent (we've been friends since we were teenagers) so its hard for me to believe they wouldn't do this unless i did something wrong again, especially due to the events of my past mistake. lately ive been wondering, 'have they found out my abnormal reaction to what happened ?' 'did a friend who knows about it tell them?' ive been avoiding asking them if i did something wrong again, because i dont want to make it a habit since i can fall very deeply into that hole of asking for reassurance and i feel even regular reassurance, without the ocd, im the last person who deserves that right now. im scared they somehow found out about my compulsions (which isnt entirely irrational) and i feel the need to apologize to them again. ive been having panic attacks about this. i feel like no matter what i do i cant fix our friendship, and its going to end badly. i feel like a terrible friend, and im too mentally ill to have friendships. i don't know what to do.

(Post also goes into topics of moral scrupulosity and a mention of abuse.) - Hi, so I’m not here to seek reassurance—although I understand and acknowledge my obsessive-compulsive tendencies are feeding into this and my anxiety around it—but I’d really like other people’s input on this. I had a lost a friendship a month ago. It was over Discord. I am very active in fandom, and was in a character role play server with other adult fans for a little over a year. I had met this person in said server, who would go on to be my friend. We became very close, to the point where we both shared our mental health-related struggles (on my end I shared that I have both autism and OCD). I expressed that I wanted to do more stuff in my real-life and build a career in the arts for myself on several occasions and the high-energy atmosphere was generally overwhelming to me. I communicated this with them and other server members. The server I was a part of has high standards for in-character role play. Many of the writers in there are very talented, and are able to write practically novella-length responses to each other. This response length is normal and high literacy is expected. I’ve been doing this hobby in different fanbases for over 10 years, and I’ve noticed that as I’ve gotten older I’ve had less and less energy for longer responses. I had a hard time accepting this until very recently, because role play is a lot of fun for me and my people-pleasing tendencies makes me want to write longer and longer responses for them. I want to continue doing this hobby, but I just don’t have the time, energy, or dedication to it like I used to have. So, back to my friendship with this other person and I: we had a role play with our characters going, and I’ve been growing more and more distant from the server. I want to emphasize: I wasn’t distant for any kind of negative reason. I still liked all of my mutuals and friends on there, and talking and exchanging banter when I could, but my general interest was waning. This wasn’t due to any member of the server; I had no personal qualms or gripes with anyone to cause this distance. It was a combination of my interests changing at that time and wanting to put my focus toward other things. I hadn’t responded to my friend’s role play exchange at this point in time for around three months. I hardly ever have a gap in responses like that. Again, it was a combination of all the factors I listed before that contributed to it. I was so sure I’d be able to muster the energy to respond, and I’d assure them I would before, but it never happened. This gap in response time had hurt them. I apologized to them one-on-one about this, and we had a nice heart-to-heart about it. I was so scared that they’d take my distance and lack of socializing in the server as malicious, but they seemed to understand that all of it wasn’t intentional. I had thought we had come to a greater understanding, learned what I could do to be a more attentive and better friend to meet their needs, and could move on from this as stronger friends. Two weeks pass, I’m not very active in the server again, but I made an effort to reach back out to them one-on-one and give them an update on my side of things. I had more time to sit with my thoughts and assess how I want to put myself out there on the server again, or even if I wanted to, still a bit intimidated by it and throwing myself in, being as insecure as I am. I had a better understanding of my new relationship to role play as a hobby, and explained to them that it’s changed, alluding to how I couldn’t output as much as I used to. I was given a very short response, essentially telling me that they’re sorry to hear that and hope I find what I’m looking for. I felt my gut twist up at seeing this, because of our previous conversation from the beginning of the month made it sound like we were on good terms. I then go back into the server, out of our private correspondence, and see a vague post being made by them a minute or two after our exchange. They said that the person they were venting about and being upset with had been victimizing themselves and called their actions abusive. I took this to mean, based on the vagueness and timing of the post, that this had to be about me. I am extremely sensitive around the subject matter of abuse, and I spiraled immediately. I didn’t talk to them after this, thinking that if they really perceived me this way, that I don’t want to do more damage than I already have, despite me really wanting to explain myself. It took me a couple of days to ground myself and assess the situation, but I found it in myself to finally leave the server. What held me back was the fear that I’d be retaliated against privately by other mutuals from the server if they had seen my departure. This didn’t happen. I haven’t heard anything from these old friends and mutuals since me leaving the server. It’s been a little over a month since this happened, but I’m still guilt-ridden, confused, hurting, and conflicted. I’m a whirlwind of doubt, uncertainty, and shame. Does any of what I described here sound abusive? Was I abusive in this dynamic? Was I in the wrong on all of this? Should I reach back out to them and apologize? And if so, how? I don’t know if I want to talk to them again after this, either. Does that make me selfish? I’m at a loss of what to do and how to perceive it all. Thank you for reading.

Super triggering set of events that’s been unfolding for some months now. I’m going to try and not seek reassurance but grounded advice or support is appreciated. A couple months ago, I had a close friendship with a female friend who was also new to town and we had a nice friend group. I developed feelings for her, articulated that to her, and she kind of breadcrumbed me until there wasn’t much of a friendship left unfortunately. I had a conversation with her about the impact that the situation had on me and the toll it took on my mental health. I was calm but assertive and was proud that I stood up for myself. This was sad but hey that happens sometimes as you’re growing and making new friends/trying to find your people. I took space this summer from that group and it was awesome. I felt so much better, my ocd symptoms decreased, I met a bunch of new people, things were good. I am now trying to jump back into my grad school community of students and I had felt a weird tension between me and some subsets of people. Yesterday I was told that the people she is friends with say that I am “unsafe to be around” and that I “blew up at her.” This hurts for a number of reasons. All I did was say that she hurt me by not communicating. I was vulnerable and I feel like I’m getting ostracized and dismissed as a nut case. I never ever spoke ill of her to this community. I kept my opinions to myself and tried to move on. Add on the harm ocd/real events ocd/ relationship ocd and I truly feel at my lowest. There’s certainly times where I have let my emotions and ocd dictate my reactions to situations like this in the past, but from the beginning of this one I made it a point to notice what was coming up and calmly respond with action based in my values. I am super proud of how I handled it and stood up for myself. Idk I’m human and I understand that everyone is entitled to their thoughts and feeling but this just feels messed up and disrespectful. Trying to get this out here because it’s hard to talk about rn