I don’t know how to move on.

Forgive me if this thread turns out long, I need a place to say things I haven’t gotten to tell anyone.

I’m a 27 year old girl and shamefully, my relationship history is very short and very poor. I have struggled with copious mental illnesses (PTSD and Bipolar, major depression, anxiety and CSA survivor) and thus pursuing an actual intimate relationship with me is a bit of a challenge most people do not want to take on. All of the relationships I’ve had in the past were born from circumstance, two mentally ill people looking for something to fill the void but not really connecting. None of them were fully sincere and neither of us opened up to one another. In short, I never learned how to be vulnerable with anyone.

My standards are also a bit high, and I don’t like to date people I don’t know well, and most people don’t have the patience for that, let alone me.

There’s a friend of mine, long distance but we have visited each other more than a few times. We’ve known each other about 4 years now and 10 months ago he admitted he had a crush on me. At first, I was hesitant, I have large commitment issues because of how I fell out of love with everyone in my past relationships, because I mistook adoration for love. I was scared to accept because I didn’t want to be wrong again. On top of that, I had a lot of hangups regarding my self esteem and other mental health issues that just made me not feel ready.

So I thought it over a few days, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized I did like him back, because I couldn’t stand the thought of him with anyone else… So I told him I wanted to be together, but I needed some time to get over my self hatred and guilt/shame, so I could be a better partner before we made anything official. I asked him if he would wait for me and he said yes.

Fast forward to last month and I have made immense strides in my mental health. Knowing he was waiting for me at my finish line, I started to feel emboldened, that there was the start of a beautiful future for me and I’m just about to get on my feet. But just as I start to feel this way, he starts avoiding me… I used to have a lot of horrible trust issues, but I refused to believe it was because of me. He had been very depressed because he was job hunting and it was not going well. I tried to encourage him every day as well as I could because I know the depression it causes me too. He was becoming less and less receptive, all the while I was looking for a moment to properly confess when he was in the mood to hear it… But it felt less and less like that day would come.

Finally, I brought it up and he admitted to me he no longer had feelings for me, and he tried to distance himself to make it hurt less. It shattered me. Me, who had felt like a broken, unloveable person for so much of my life. I had spent so long reassuring myself that he still loved me, all the while not knowing he didn’t anymore. I had been making the stupid mistake of imagining our future and floating plans… But I don’t know. I think my expectations were too high. I shouldn’t have believed that he, or anyone would wait for me like that. What I wanted was impossible.

I have been crying for 5 days and doing little else. I kept hoping I could change his mind by assuaging his fears about the future, insisting I would help him any way I could, I was practically groveling our second conversation… But he really just didn’t love me anymore. I don’t know how to let go of him, he was the first person who actually wanted me for who I was and nothing shallow or transient. I never had anyone treat me so gently and sincerely before. All of our shared friends saw us together and were just waiting for us to announce it was official because it was so obvious. I don’t know what to do. Moving on means letting go of how I feel for him… and I can’t stand the thought of him moving on and falling for someone else, it makes me want to tear myself to pieces. He wants to stay friends because I’m still important to him, but I don’t know… my mind is a mess. The thought of cutting him out of my life kills me, but the thought of him staying in it without me as his partner also kills me.

I’m a terribly stubborn person.

I don’t know what to do, I’ve never had someone care, and want to be cared about so badly. I wish I wasn’t such a broken person. I wish I didn’t ask for more patience than someone could give. It feels like all the self hatred I was trying to unlearn got reinforced in less than 24 hours. Everything I hate about who I am is true.

I wish I never saw something so beautiful, if I stayed alone, I would have never been hurt.