How to heal from guilt and become better when you can't tell anyone
If anyone has any advice please let me know, I am feeling consumed more and more by guilt every day and I don't know how to fix it. Sorry this might be a bit long but I feel like context is important. I am a 19 y/o female, I've always been pretty socially awkward and extremely insecure, but thankfully I have always had amazing friends. As a child I was always quiet especially at home, never really expressing myself because my parents never rewarded that and it always seemed like they loved me more if I was pretending to be something I'm not. Going through high school I always struggled with depression and anxiety and was medicated for these issues, and while these medications helped I always felt weirdly repressed, I never had any sort of rebellious phase or really explored my identity in high school, I think out of this fear and insecurity. I started college this year, and met a couple of amazing friends that I became close to very quickly. They're both so vibrant and passionate and have such distinct styles, and I really admire their strong sense of identity, but pathetically I think it also made me insecure about myself. I felt so empty and like I had no identity and knew nothing about myself compared to them. That's when I started lying. It was really small things at first, just inconsequential stuff to make myself seem more interesting. One specific lie was that I had more experience with boys than I do, everyone was talking about past relationships and I pulled something out of ass to cover for my embarrassment and insecurity about never receiving attention from guys. There was one other particular lie that I don't even want to write out here because its so messed up and its so ashamed and I have no excuse for telling it. I know I should feel guilty and I do. My friends at home are more similar to me, pretty sheltered and inexperience as well, but I just feel like such a child around my college friends which I think motivated me to start lying to build a sort of new persona for myself. I know this is all pathetic, and not an excuse, and believe me I feel so guilty about it I can barely function. I know I deserve to feel that guilt, but selfishly I can't bring myself to even think about telling my friends because I couldn't bare to lose them. I don't know if they would fully not want to be my friend if they knew because technically I didn't do anything that actually harms anyone else, but I know what I've done is so strange and pathetic that they would look at me so much differently. I have stopped lying fully in the last couple months and it feels a bit better, but the ones I've already told are still there. I want to be better, I have started trying to fix my insecurity that led to this by exploring my identity and my interests more so I feel better about myself. I know it makes me selfish for not wanting to tell the truth about the lies I've already told, but I wouldn't even know how to begin to explain myself. Has anyone else dealt with a similar situation before and knows how to move on from this and become better? Thank you for reading.