u/Still_Angsty

Hi all, I got two concussions last year and the second one left me quite disabled. However I never had any behavioral issues. It was all just fatigue, horrible head sensations and 24/7 pain, brian fog, autonomic issues, sensory sensitivity. If anything ! was less angry than I was before because I just didn't have the energy.
I still have all those problems, none of it has gone away, but now after a year of living cooked up unable to do anything (for awhile I was entirely bedridden couldn't even talk/walk/eat), 1 am suddenly so triggered and angry all the time. Never at people, and I have no violent instincts. But just at
*situations* Like unjust medical bills. Or our refrigerator breaking. Maybe frustrated is a better word. It makes me want to shout, and scream, and thrash around. I never would, instead | just sit there and chant over and over that I wish I was dead and then sob and blow money on DoorDash that I don't eat and make lots of Reddit posts about random crap. Or if I'm around people I just bottle it up completely.

I remember when I was a kid I was a little like this. I remember one time at age 12 I wailed on the couch for an hour because I came home to discover that someone had drank my chocolate milk that I'd bought specifically to get me through my homework. So like I've definitely never been a chill person. But this feels so much worse. Because I'm still sick, and my body has no energy to get the anger out. I can't run around the block, and can't go into the garage and sing as loud as possible. I can't throw fits like when I was a kid. It's the most horrible feeling in the world and I've never had it this badly even when I was a kid. It makes me want to stop existing, I just can't stand it. Anything but this.

Some context for this is that my friend is trans (so growing up we were both girls) and identified as a gay man for several years before this. So needless to say it caught me by immense surprise.

This is someone who I have long considered the platonic love of my life. We have genuinely been best friends since we were three. They are, to me, my soul sibling. The idea of kissing them, or having sex with them, makes me nearly gag. It’s not because of my sexuality, I am bi/pan. But it just feels so viscerally wrong, like doing that with your sibling, or your child. I always thought that our bond was deeper than that. They were my safe person. The one person I could be close with without ever fearing romantic feelings developing. Now without that safety I have no one like that in my life. I feel like part of me has died. Like I’ve been living a lie. When he confessed, he told me that he’d felt this way for \*years.\* Since \*high school.\* I can’t handle it. I wish I loved him back. I love him so much and I’m both angry at him for feeling it and angry at myself for not feeling it back. This legit feels like having your sibling tell you they are romantically in love with you. Your sibling who you are incredibly emotionally close with, whom you have told so many personal details or your romantic life to. No matter how I try I just cannot bring myself to understand how it is even possible for him to feel that way.

It makes me feel like, he doesn’t really now me. All this time I thought he knew me on this deeper level but he just saw me as someone to potentially make him feel good. I know I’m being irrational. I \*know.\* I don’t need to be told that these thoughts are cruel, and unsympathetic, and that people cannot help who they love. That he is suffering far more than I am. I know. I would never say any of that to him. I was very nice. I said I didn’t feel the same, I apologized, he said it was okay, and that he still wanted to be friends. But I feel like I’ve lost him. He feels like a stranger now. I still show up for him but I feel different, like I’m putting on an act. I don’t feel comfortable talking about my sexuality anymore, or being physically close like we used to (he is the only friend I have EVER felt comfortable having any sort of physical affection with).

I don’t understand what went wrong. I don’t understand why I can’t want him the way he wants me to and I also don’t understand how he could possibly love me that way. I’ve been in love with friends before, I understand the feeling. But this is different. I’ve never known life without this person. They don’t feel just like a “friend.” They are family in the deepest sense. I just feel so icked out and so guilty, and I don’t know how to ever feel okay over it.

Tl;dr, my best friend of 20 years confessed he is in love with me, and I cannot look at him the same because I always saw him like a sibling, and am seeking advice on how to emotionally handle it.

It’s me, I’m the useless one. It’s so freaking stupid. I love them more than anyone. They’ve been my Person since we were four. It would so magic, so poetic, to love them like that. But I don’t. I never have. In fact, they are, and I mean this literally, the *only* friend I have ever had who I did not ever think of romantically. That is what I liked about our friendship. It was the only simple thing in my life. It was the only touch I could ever have without wishing for more. It was the only guaranteed stable through line in my life.

It would be a revelation, to love them. But I don’t. I cannot. It would be like loving myself romantically. They are my soul sibling. It is a love that feels deeper than romance to me. When they confessed, I felt like I was talking to a stranger. I almost felt betrayed. Like how could you corrupt this thing we had that was more important than anything. How could you cheapen what we have with something so trite as romance. It’s not their fault, I don’t hold ill will over it. I just hate myself for not feeling the same. I’ve tried. I’ve tried over and over again. I can’t do it. It makes my skin crawl. Why does it make my skin crawl to think of being in romantic relations with my favorite person ever, who is gorgeous, and kind, and knows me better than anyone. Why can I access those feeling for literally everyone, even all my other childhood friends, but not them. It feels like such a cosmic cruelty. Me and this friend both fell profoundly chronically ill in our 20s, and sometimes I think it’s somehow my fault. Like if I had just loved them, like I was supposed to, it wouldn’t have happened. But I couldn’t. I just can’t stand it. Like I said, useless.