AIBU please Forgive me

[Quetiapina]

Please forgive any faux pas, I’m relatively new to Mumsnet.

Here goes. I was at Teacher Training college with a girl who was a brilliant friend and I thought so much of her. We both had our problems but got through and became successful in our profession. However, I had bipolar disorder and in my early 30s I was becoming very unwell and erratic and went out of my job in a blaze of bipolar glory.

Before getting very early retirement but already very unwell a lot of the time, I was invited to my friends wedding. I wanted to go, I really did but I was just so unwell I couldn’t. It was a formal affair and as far as I remember, it was about 17 years ago, I didn’t even let her know. I wrote some gobbledegook letter and enclosed some feather pens and unsurprisingly to the sane, I never heard from her again.

I have searched for her online, I’ve tried finding her parents address, I’ve asked people who might know people, but to no avail. I feel terrible for letting her down. No one knew my diagnosis, I had been diagnosed at 26 but absolutely refused to accept it. I had had a hard time getting to where I was as a teenage single parent, there was no way some psychiatrist was going to rain on my parade.

Now I am in and out of hospital, which could probably have been minimised if only I had accepted my diagnosis.

I just wish I could find my friend and apologise. Let her know that I was just too unwell to attend.

Any ideas? Comments? Anything?

Ah op that sounds so tough🌺. It’s lovely that you want to connect with her and explain.
No advice but it sounds like you’ve got through a lot.
Really hope you find her.

Oh sweetheart, that's a sad story. I hope you find her but if not , maybe you can seek support to help you to forgive yourself and put this in the past.

Sorry you've struggled so much OP
Have you tried contacting the teacher training college you both attended. Or adding mutual friends on social media?
Good luck finding her.

I lost contact with a friend due to my controlling ex. I have never been able to re connect. She's not on social media and we have no mutual friends anymore. I regret it so much but have no idea how to get in touch.

Sometimes we just need to let people go in life.
However hard it is, wish them well in your head and move forward with your life. It’s very sad, but often we can’t go back. X

Is she on Facebook?

Thank you all for your responses. I’ve looked on FB, tried the old students group or whatever it’s called from Marjons. Tinkerbellone I’m sorry you have lost touch with a friend you valued, and after such a difficult time.

I just feel so sad that my friend never knew that I valued her enough to want very much to attend her wedding, but sadly I was just too ill.

But lowtide and dragonflyflew are right that maybe I have to consign her to the past. And usually I have but quite frequently I think of her and how angry she must have felt at someone important to her simply not showing up to her planned out wedding. And then me writing a stupid letter. Oh well, I can’t change the past I guess. And I lost every one of my teaching friends when I became ill . I’m lucky I have a wonderful set of friends now who understand my illness, mainly because they’ve been through mental illness themselves.

I only say what I said because I’ve been on both sides of this. I reached out to a friend I let down when I was in a dark place and in an abusive relationship. But I realise the damage I had done was too much for her to let me back in.
And a very good friend had undiagnosed bi polar, she sent me a message years later but the damage she had done was too much for me to let her back in.

Life moves on, and it doesn’t always turn out how we thought it would. But it’s great you have a good network of friends now and can be yourself

I forgive you OP ~ its clear from your post that you wouldn't ever want to let anyone down ~ it was just the circumstances in this situation were against you.

It can be tempting to give ourselves a hard time over decisions we made in the past. I'd hope that if you ever did manage to find your dear friend she'd be very likely to forgive you too once she knew the whole story.

Perhaps in time you may also be able to forgive yourself.

I understand how you feel and your desire to find your friend and apologise.

1. make reasonable efforts to find her - social media, LinkedIn, mutual friends. Don't fixate or broadcast Facebook statuses in the hope it will get back to her somehow - just do a reasonable amount of logical looking. It sounds as though you have already done that, so:

2. forgive yourself and maybe do a small, symbolic 'goodbye' to your friend. Write a letter, laying out your apology to her and your good wishes to for her life, then go somewhere and read it out loud as if to her.

Burn the letter (or just chuck it away) and then think of a short way to sum up the relationship that isn't full of self hatred and guilt. Something like "it is a real shame that my illness got between me and that friend. I'm so glad I am now managing my mental health better and things like that are much less likely to happen again".

Thank you so much simplepimple and SendintheArdwolves, what a lovely idea. I’m going to stay in a sea front cottage with my family, I will do it then. Thank you all so much.

@Quetiapina I just typed out like 3 paragraphs of info here and then accidentally reloaded my browser....d'oh! The ultra abridged version: I'm sorry you've had such a rough time in terms of your Bipolar Disorder I am unfortunately familiar with psychiatric doctors as I've had crippling MH issues since childhood. My main issues have always been anxiety and ocd (as well as obsessive/intrusive thoughts), so I really sympathize with your post.

I've done IT work professionally for 15+ years and I've helped 3-4 people track down old aquaintences like you're attempting. I live in the United States though, so I've never used any of the UK searches for this info. I did see that the UK National Archives has a lot of that information easily searchable, since you two attended uni together that's a great start. Here was a guide that offered a basic rundown of searching for records as well as links to record holders outside the NA:

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/education-history-records-held-by-other-archives/

And here is the link that will send you to their internal records - you would probably be best to start searching here first : discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk

If you aren't having any luck on your own with those, please feel free to send me a private message and I'd be happy to lend a hand I know how overwhelming sifting through the sheer amount of record data to find one match can be, it can feel like a needle inside a haystack, except you've got a million haystacks and need to figure out which haystack to search first

ExceptionFatale thank you so much for your information x