Dear rainyhollow233:

My advice is to forgive yourself for being young and human.  You are carrying a very heavy load called “the past.”  Set it down.  Reliving it over and over will not change it.  You are not a bad person.   You did some things that were not skillful and you realize that.  You are wiser now.

In any relationship the “me” and the “mine” and the “you” and the “yours” have to yield to the “us.”  When the space between two people, the “us” is not cared for, things fall apart.

From what you wrote, neither of the situations you describe were built around two people working on “us.”  Again, this does not make you a bad person.  Do not let what happened imprison you.  I promise you I have done things very similar to what you describe.  I would go back over the events and back over the events and every single time I relived the mess I’d made, I felt worse.  For me, the only way out was to set all those thoughts down and forgive myself.  I did that through meditation.

If you haven’t come across the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, you might check them out.  The head monk, Ajahn Braham has a lot of youTube videos and his meditation instructions are the best I’ve come across.

You deserve to be happy, to be free of pain, and free of suffering.

TJ