this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
31 points (100.0% liked)

chat

8584 readers
89 users here now

Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.

As with all communities posts need to abide by the code of conduct, additionally moderators will remove any posts or comments deemed to be inappropriate.

Thank you and happy chatting!

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I wrote the other day about how I'd come across the facebook page of an old friend of mine. After this I felt an urge to google everyone else I'd gone to school with and I found a youtube page belonging to someone named James T______, who had the same very unusual surname of a friend I'd gone to school with. He had a photo of himself, and while I wasn't entirely sure it was him as I haven't seen him since 2006 and this person looked a lot older, he was bald, and James had gone bald last I saw him, so I left a comment on his page asking "Are you James C. T_______ from (hometown's name)?"

I wrote in the disabled megathread about how it was him, and we sent emails back and forth for the rest of the night. I was so thrilled and excited to find him. However it ended with me doing a massive trauma dump on him where I told him about all my health problems, being unable to work, the fact I've become hideously ugly, the fact I haven't seen any of my friends in years, etc.

It was almost a week ago and he didn't write back again after that. At first I was just hurt by this. However as I mentioned in the disabled megathread, I was experiencing some type of religious mania at the time, which I have on multiple occasions previously, and honestly I think i am undiagnosed bipolar and I was having a manic episode. I did all kinds of stupid things during this episode including cutting my hair really short on the spur of the moment with some blunt scissors I found and throwing away some of my books because I thought God wouldn't approve of them.

I think frantically searching for all my old friends and contacting James, and telling him all my problems might have been part of this mania. Now the mania has died down a bit I am so embarrassed at my behaviour I am cringing constantly and wish I could take it back. From my point of view at the time, I was simply sharing my life story with an old and dear friend. But now I see from his point of view he was contacted out of the blue by someone he hasn't seen in 20 years who then immediately used him as a therapist, inappropriately oversharing all of their problems .

I must seem like a really desperate loser to him, reaching out to a long lost person and telling them everything like this. And I am a desperate loser but it's embarrassing that he knows that now. Everyone here at hexbear is so accepting and always willing to listen to my problems, I guess I got used to that and forgot that in real life people don't want to hear it and think you're a weirdo if you don't act like everything is fine all the time.

Why doesn't life have a rewind button?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] plinky@hexbear.net 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

the main reason for apology is that you signal to them that you yourself understand that you might have gone too far and if they contact you, you won't do it again or that strongly, so they have lower expected emotional barrier to communication.