TLDR: a series of unfortunate reminders of the past have plunged me into a state of deep sadness and I just don’t know how I get back to the good place I worked so hard to be in.
I’ve been experiencing really low mood for a few weeks now and I just don’t seem to be able to shake it. I’m worried I might be descending into depression, so I’m looking for ways I can snap out of it or at least address the reasons I’m feeling this way.
It all started a few weeks ago when an old ex/friend/FWB of 10 years got in touch asking to catch up while he was visiting my city. I’d called things off over a year ago because he’d started getting flaky. One thing lead to another and I slept with him (I know, I know), he said he would spend the day with me the next day, but true to form, he never got in touch. Unfortunately sleeping with him rekindled my feelings and now I’m having to ‘get over’ him all over again.
So I was feeling a little down anyway, when another friend decided to tell me that she’d heard my ex and ex best friend (who 4 years ago got together immediately after he and I split up, causing a huge sense of betrayal, a significant amount of hurt which involved being signed off work for 6 months and £££ in therapy) are both doing really well and how happy they are. It immediately churned up all those old feelings on top of already feeling down.
Then, just to compound things, I went on a night out with some newish friends when I spotted my estranged sister at the bar. The reasons we don’t speak are long and complicated but the final straw came when she asked me to choose between her and my boyfriend at the time (the ex mentioned in the first paragraph) because he was loosely friends with her awful ex. It wasn’t even about my BF and more the hypocrisy since she was also dating her ex’s other friend! I also found some threads she’d posted about me and I got to see how she really feels about me.
Fast forward to the situation between my ex and ex friend - I had posted on an online forum for support where I was candid about how badly it was affecting me, when my sister posted a long diatribe sticking the boot in. She said some truly awful things including calling me a bad mother and a bad sister, with lots of language that made it clear she was trying to get the posters who’d been amazingly supportive, to turn against me. I had to have the thread deleted.
It turns out our mother, who I’d been confiding in had been feeding back all this information to her so she was able to find my thread. Yet another betrayal and to this day I do not tell my parents anything personal. I’m not close to my dad either but that’s another long story but suffice to say, I’ve long since stopped seeking support from him and barely see or speak to him. On top of that, she’s turned all of our childhood friends against me who have all variously ignored me or been very frosty towards me. After I realised they were there at the bar too but didn’t acknowledge me, I’ve deleted them all from FB which did sting but I realise I’m better off cutting my losses since they’ve picked sides without hearing my side of the story.
Despite all the above, I’ve done therapy, put myself out there, stayed deliberately single and made new friends. I’ve been relatively happy which is why having so much of the past churned up at once has really affected me. I feel so stuck while all these people, connections to my past, have moved on. It’s beginning to affect how I feel about myself. It doesn’t help that I’m realising some of the newer friends are problematic, like the mixed gender group I sometimes go out with. One of the men is outrageously flirty with me even though he has a girlfriend and the way he and the others talk about women, in front of the women in the group is just so disrespectful. I feel like I have to put up with it otherwise I’d be stuck at home with nobody to go out with.
Anyway, sorry for the very lengthy ‘woe is me’ and thank you if you managed to get to this point. If anyone has any words of wisdom, kindness or even a way to snap out of this funk, I’d be so grateful 