When I was 14, I got into a relationship that lasted for years. Let’s call the boy Tom.

For a long time, Tom and I were in a normal happy school relationship. However, when I was about 15/16 I started getting panic attacks caused by arguments we’d have and it turned toxic from there. Loads of painful things happened over the years following – only ending about a month before I turned 18. We broke up and got back together, broke up again and reconnected 8 months later. For the longest time I thought that I was a victim and he was an awful abusive person but now  I look at it and see that… it was all me. I was terrible. So many bad things happened to me since but I now think of it as Karma for the ways I behaved. I betrayed him, didn’t let him have a life, made him feel bad about himself, was desperate for his attention and I punished him over and over for the things he did that hurt me. The last time I ever saw him he told me I disgusted him, he was shaking with fury. We never spoke again and I cannot get that out of my head, I even dream about it at night.

This story with Tom has taken over my life for years and I don’t want to be obsessing over it for any longer. But I feel so much guilt and sadness as I’ve slowly grown up to see with new perspective what my affect on him must have been. I’ve lost the victim mentality that was stopping me from blaming myself.

I have changed and developed so much and would never act in those ways again and I try not to think that I am (or was) a horrible human being – because I was only a 16/17 year old girl who had no idea what she was doing, and who felt very afraid and confused. However I feel so much remorse that I feel sick and I want to make up for it but I don’t know how and my deepest fear is that I’m a toxic person. You know those posts that say “Remove toxic people from your life!”. I worry a lot that I am the toxic person.

I definitely couldn’t or wouldn’t contact him to apologise, in case that’s anyone’s suggestion. That would put me and bad memories back into his life and the least I can do is respect his wish to try and get over the whole thing.

I just don’t know how to deal with this feeling.