u/Daminosssss

I'm 21M and honestly don't know where to start with this, so sorry if this is a mess.

There's this girl, 22F, who has been my best friend since we were about 16. For the sake of the post I'll call her "M."

When we first met, I was honestly kind of an asshole. I wasn't necessarily going around trying to hurt people, but I was cold, sarcastic, constantly making fun of people, and generally didn't care much about anyone. I also wasn't really comfortable with affection at all.

Then M. started doing this weird thing where she'd just randomly hug me.

Like, we'd be walking between classes and she'd just come up behind me and hug me. Or she'd see me in the morning and immediately go "there's my favorite person" and hug me. The first few times I basically stood there like a malfunctioning robot because I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do.

Eventually she told me something along the lines of, "You know you can hug me back, right?"

So I did.

And somehow that completely changed me.

I started becoming affectionate with her too. We'd tell each other "love you" all the time, send stupid memes, sit together during lunch, that sort of thing. But it was always completely platonic. She sees me as a little brother and I've never seriously wanted anything romantic from her.

She's basically my sister.

The problem is that I think I got way more emotionally attached to that relationship than I realized.

She's genuinely the first person I've ever felt completely safe being emotionally vulnerable around. I've never really been a huggy person with anyone else. I've never had another friendship where saying "love you" felt normal.

A couple years ago she started dating her current boyfriend. I actually really like the guy and think they're good together. I was happy for her.

But I did notice I felt jealous.

Not jealous in a "I want to date her" way. More like this horrible little feeling of "things are changing and I'm losing my place in her life." Looking back, I think I was terrified of losing the affection I'd gotten so used to.

Fast forward to recently.

I've been doing pretty badly mentally for the past month or so. Instead of dealing with it properly, I started dumping basically everything on M.

I'd send her these enormous messages at like 1 AM. I'm talking walls of text. I'd tell her about everything I was feeling, what happened that day, why I hated myself, etc.

She rarely responded.

At the time I took that personally and thought she didn't care anymore.

Now that I've actually thought about it, I realize how ridiculous that was. She has her own life, a boyfriend, university/work/whatever, and I was basically handing her a second person's emotional workload every single night.

Eventually I snapped.

I sent her some genuinely awful messages.

I told her she was a terrible friend. I told her my mental health problems were basically her fault. I told her meeting her was one of the biggest regrets of my life.

I don't even know why I said those things.

They're the opposite of how I actually feel about her.

She was probably the person I cared about most in my life, and I managed to weaponize that closeness against her because I was angry and overwhelmed.

She told me she needed space.

She said she still respects me and considers me a friend, but that she doesn't feel comfortable being affectionate with me anymore.

And honestly, I understand.

I've apologized multiple times since then, but she's basically stopped responding to me. If she sees me in person, she keeps her distance.

I know I need to stop contacting her. I know she asked for space. I'm not going to chase her around or have other people contact her for me.

But I'm absolutely devastated.

And this is the part I feel stupid admitting.

I don't just miss her. I miss being loved by her.

I miss the random hugs. I miss her calling me an idiot and then immediately saying she loves me. I miss being able to tell her stupid things about my day. I miss knowing there was one person in the world who I could always go to.

I've basically spent the last few days alternating between feeling guilty and wanting to somehow go back in time and undo everything.

I know I'm not entitled to her forgiveness or affection. I know she doesn't owe me friendship just because we've known each other for years.

But do you think there's any chance of repairing something like this if I genuinely give her space and work on myself?

Or is this one of those situations where I've crossed a line that can't really be uncrossed?

And if I should just leave her alone indefinitely, how do I actually deal with losing the only person I've ever been this emotionally close to?

I don't want to make her responsible for my mental health anymore. That's probably the biggest thing I've realized through all of this.

I just wish I'd realized it before I hurt her.

I know Reddit usually hates posts where someone says "I was mentally unwell so I did something terrible," because mental health isn't an excuse. And I agree. I'm not trying to excuse what I did.

I just genuinely want to know what I should do now.

TL;DR: I've been best friends with a girl for years and she's basically the only person I've ever had a deeply affectionate, completely platonic relationship with. I became extremely emotionally dependent on her, dumped a ton of my problems on her, and eventually lashed out and blamed her for my mental health. She asked for space and doesn't want to be affectionate with me anymore. I've apologized, but she's avoiding me. Is there any realistic way to repair this, or should I accept that the friendship may be over and leave her alone?