I've [30F] become isolated from all my friends [30M][30F]
I'm changing some details for anonymity. My friends shouldn't know my reddit but this story has a lot of identifying details.
I'm 30s, F, been single forever and live in a small town a few hours away from my friends. We all came from the same home town but have scattered in every direction. The closest is a 4 hour drive away, the furthest would be a plane ride away. We mostly stay in touch via discord and gaming together. We live in the states.
About a year ago, my mom died suddenly. It was personally devastating as we were close and it was unexpected. She ran a small business and I ended up being the person to manage all of the fallout. It was traumatising, honestly. I didn't have time to grieve. It wasn't like I'd lost my mom, it was like a local public figure died and I became the secretary and social media manager. People kept messaging me to make a big announcement about her death on facebook. People were coming up to me and breaking down about her, I was comforting other people about it. I didn't feel like I was allowed to grieve. Her husband, my stepfather, is a jerk and was very unhelpful and unsupportive at the time, he started throwing out her stuff after 2 days. My siblings and I ended up hiding sentimental items and heirlooms just so we could save them from the trash. It didn't help.
Mom wasn't the first or the last person I loved who passed away around that time, I also lost a close friend who was my age, my last grandparent, and my beloved pet. It all happened within about 6 months and all of them were unexpected. My performance suffered and I was ultimately let go from my job.
After the dust settled, I didn't want to look at another human face ever again. I only listened to instrumental music for months. I just wanted to be left alone.
My friends did their best, they made offers to spend time on voice calls, I'm sure they invited me to play from time to time. I think I did join in a few times, but most of the time I was so depressed that I didn't really enjoy the company and I'm sure I brang the mood down. I did my best to be light hearted and normal, tried my best not to talk about any of my losses, but the world had no color and I had no laughter left in me. I was basically that meme of the guy standing in the corner of a party saying "they don't know the world has already ended." I declined a lot of invitations to hang. This is on me. There was nothing anyone could say or do to help me.
I happen to have been seeing a psychologist for several years now, due to some other pre-existing mental health stuff. We did discuss how I was isolating myself and how it was what I needed at the time. Over the last few months I'm starting to feel ready to be around people again. I will go to the bar if I'm invited out by colleagues, I attended a birthday dinner for a neighbour, I'm slowly becoming a real person again.
The problem I have is that I am ready to be around my friends again but they're busy doing their own stuff. My psychologist advised me to be the one to reach out and make plans, and I agree that it's on me to make this happen. The problem is that I will ask if anyone wants to game on X day, plenty of notice, and nobody replies. Group chat starting to look like my notes app. I feel like I'm annoying them and I don't want to harass anyone.
I get that I didn't want to hang out for months and people had to do what was right for them. I'm not so arrogant that I think they should drop everything and come at my beck and call, they've all got their own things going on. This is all my fault for becoming so isolated. I recently told one friend privately that I am struggling and they did make an effort to game with me and that was lovely. But that was once, and only after I begged. I don't think it's fair for me to dump any of this on my friends, I don't want to guilt trip anyone or make them feel sorry for me. I've always been a pretty independent person, it sucks to need people, especially when they've got their own stuff going on and I'm nothing but a burden.
I'm going back to my psych soon and I don't want to admit that I've been left on read. I haven't tried hard enough, I guess, I haven't been patient enough.
So reddit, how do I re-kindle my friendships after I went MIA for months? Any suggestions for fun online activities I could suggest. Thoughts would be appreciated.
