I did something horrible and I don’t know how to feel better about it.

[milkyway512]

I feel like a pos. I have anxiety and I’m not sure if this is it playing up, or if I’m genuinely as evil as I feel right now.

I was 17 so still quite young, and I’ve posted this a few times on here before but I saw something that reminded me of her and how she may have felt and I just feel terrible. It was my fault a girl with quite bad anorexia lost all her friends at school. I’d said something about her causing trouble etc and they decided to kick her out of the group. However, her friends meant so much to her and I think having a solid group of friends was part of her recovery. I was feeling better about it, as I thought everyone makes mistakes, but I was scrolling through Instagram and saw a film clip of a film called maleficent where Angelina Jolies character has her wings cut off and it struck me that maybe I did that to the girl, let’s call her Angie, metaphorically. I stole her wings that gave her leverage and recovery.

I just feel like a terrible human being. I’ve already apologised and she said she’s forgotten about it, but as soon as I thought I was over it, it hit me again. There is even a blog she has that ties into what I’m saying just by it’s name, it’s to do with wings.

should I feel as bad about this as I do, or is my mind playing tricks on me again?

By the way, if I wasn’t clear before, what I meant by stealing her ‘wings’ is that I stole her friends, her wings being a metaphor for friends. And she used her friends for recovery and support and I took that away from her in a sense.

You've posted about this many times. You are obsessing about it in an unhealthy way. You need to stop.

Most people do things they're not proud of when they're at school, and most people will unthinkingly hurt others.

The best thing you could have done is apologise to her, that takes courage of the sort you won't see much of in the world. Your apology probably meant a lot to her.

At some point you will need to forgive yourself and continue to endeavour to be a better person and not repeat the mistakes of the past.

Well there's nothing you can do about it now so just try to forget it and move on. Sounds like you are kinder now.

If she was already suffering from anorexia when this incident with her friends happened then it's likely she'd already experienced some other life difficulties that had led her to that point. For all you know her wing-clipping thoughts are about someone else.
Regardless, you've apologised and she has indicated for you to move on. If you bring it up with her again you are doing further damage to her. If you keep obsessing over it yourself you are only hurting yourself.
You need to work on ways to forgive yourself. There is all sorts of information available online to help with doing this.

You're 17 on this thread, 22 on another...

Yea you are a bad person.

devote your spare time to helping other

Some people have the strangest fantasies.

If she’s now 22, then she probably was 17 at one point…

This is about your MH, not hers.

Seek help.

Definitely read it that they were currently 17...it's been a long day!

You really, really need some professional help if this was a long time ago.

You need help of some sort and leave her alone she's done with it as you should be too 💐

In the kindest way, you aren't concerned about her. She has already told you she's fine with it all and it's in the past.

This has become all about you and how you feel about it.

If she were still struggling amd her current struggles were directly linked to what you did, fair enough. But she isn't not struggling. She doesn't give you a second thought in her day to day life.

This is self indulgent navel gazing and you need to stop. When you find yourself thinking about it, remind yourself that she is fine and it's not all about you. Remind yourself that she doesn't give you a second thought. Remind yourself that she has moved on. And then do the same.

If you can't, seek professional help because this is unhealthy. And please do make sure you don't contact her again. Leave her alone.

Look at your first paragraph.

This is 100% your anxiety playing up. You are not evil.

@milkyway512 i did silly things as a teen. Most have. I understand why you’re thinking about it. You apologised and owned it. As a previous poster said, the blogs name is highly unlikely to relate to you! There will have been lots of factors in her life that led to the point of anorexia. She’s fine, she’s moved on. Please give yourself a break.

my post goneaten. But in essence, it happened and you cannot change that.

if you cannot apologise then you need to understand why you did it and learn from it to become a better person.

obessing over it doesn’t help anyone, you or them and keeps you trapped in the past.

You're stuck in the cycle of anxiety at the moment.

You’re reassurance seeing from us. You want us to say it was ok, it didn’t matter etc. But we can’t. Firstly, what you did sounds quite cruel, and you were 17, not seven.

But also, the reassurance you seek won’t be the salve you desire for very long. It wears off and then you need to seek more reassurance. Classic anxiety circle. You need to break it.