u/Honest_Specific7922

Long story short, my old family friend/cousin (we’ll call her Louise) asked me to be her maid of honour. We’d been close friends for all our lives and at first, I was so happy to be asked (at least I thought so at the time).

The problem was, there’d been drama between our families for decades. I didn’t know a lot of the stories behind it all for much of my life and it never really affected things between us… partly because we were children and then went off to college to live separate lives. There were also many periods of time where things were much better between our families - in fact not much happened at all for 15-20 years.

About 6 months before Louise’s wedding, I went through a huge healing phase and had a lot of realizations about my life in general. I also came to learn more about the family drama, which turned out to be worse than I thought (my auntie being physically abusive to my grandma, her and my uncle conspiring to steal $10,000s from her, verbally abusing my mom, drink driving putting my cousins and other people’s children at risk etc).

Things blew up between our mothers and for the first time, Louise got involved. She said a bunch of stuff to my mom that was hurtful and unnecessary.

I started feeling really anxious and guilty about going to the wedding after what Louise said, especially knowing my mom wasn’t invited and that I’d be around family members that I now knew these truths about.

I asked if Louise could at least apologize for getting involved and saying those things to me about my mom (as we’d both agreed not to for the sake of our friendship) and she doubled down, saying all these profanities about my mom to me.

I sent a long message about not attending the wedding, blocked her and haven’t spoken to her or her family in years.

Especially recently, I’ve been feeling really guilty for blocking her abruptly like that and feel it was immature and cowardly, regardless of what the situation was. I wish I’d been more direct about not feeling it was right for me to attend the wedding, but then leaving the response up to her rather than just blocking her.

At the time, I was so devastated about uncovering all these truths and the harm caused to my mom + grandma that I didn’t wanna face it, as I knew our friendship couldn’t possibly continue and the thought of that broke my heart. I almost wanted to pretend none of it, or our friendship, ever existed. I can’t imagine the pain and shame it caused her for her wedding and I wish it all could’ve worked out differently.

What would you do in this situation? Part of me feels like it’s best to leave things for good, as she was supportive of people who’ve caused so much hurt to my loved ones (even if she didn’t know the truth). But another part of me feels like I owe her an apology.

My life (in a basic sense) is sorting stuff out for my cat, working from home, scrolling on my phone and sleeping. I don’t even get ready properly a lot of the time, often having to force myself to brush my teeth after a day or 2.

Occasionally, I’ll see a friend or my family, but it never feels fulfilling. I’ll think about going to hobby classes or groups but I don’t feel truly motivated to because I know I won’t feel anything much from it.

People at work ask me if I’m going on holiday this year, and I make up some reason why I’m not, because it’d be a waste of money for me to go on holiday. The last holiday I went on with anhedonia was mildly enjoyable at times (in a cognitive sense), but I didn’t get enough out of it to warrant spending that kinda money.

I’m coming up to my mid-30s and am concerned that I’m not living much of a life. I can’t consider things like dating, children etc. for multiple reasons, but one of which is that I don’t feel attraction and wouldn’t feel fulfilment out of either of those things.

Anyone else?

My 6 month old kitten had cat flu a couple of months ago before I got him. He seems happy and playful enough, but I noticed he breathes fast all the time (like a breath a second) and makes noises out of his nose sometimes like he’s congested or breathing harder.

The vet said he seems healthy, but I feel like his breathing isn’t normal. I’d like to help improve his health naturally, but don’t wanna harm him with any MM tools if they’re not suitable for animals.

Has anyone helped their pets here? Thank you!