I went to uni as a 'mature' student, although still only early 20s and whilst there met a similar aged guy who became my best friend. We saw each other through all sorts of life traumas and I thought we would be friends forever. In our final year he developed some mental health issues and started to criticise me constantly. Although I tried to be kind and understanding, it damaged my self-esteem and, to my shame, instead of just stepping away I ended up regularly lashing out at him, followed by lots of apologising because I knew it wasn't the right way to deal with the situation.
Towards the end of our final year our friendship collapsed and he quickly found another best friend, whereas I've found it difficult to develop close friendships since. After uni he moved to another city and we had no contact at all.
2 years later, last weekend, I run into him in town and we ended up spending about an hour chatting. He has just moved back to the city i live in, is still best friends with the person who 'replaced' me, and generally seemed to be back to the person I first met. I was still very wary of him and felt I had to tread carefully, and whilst he acknowledged that he'd had a horrible final year at uni, he didn't bring up our falling out and I only made subtle references to it.
My issue is that I have lots of happy memories of being friends with him and part of me wants to try and rekindle the friendship. But also I realise that I am possibly hankering after the happy memories of my youth and that I should maybe just leave things in the past.
I'm after some opinions about what others would do in this situation.