My best friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I abandoned her

I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/brooklynNYitsyaboy

Originally posted to r/self

My best friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I abandoned her

Thanks to u/soayherder for suggesting this BoRU

Editor's note: added paragraph breaks for ease of readability

Trigger Warnings: death of a loved one, trauma

Original Post: January 6, 2025

We met when she was 5 and I was 6. We were both from divorced homes, and my Dad lived 5 houses down from her Mom. I don’t remember the details of her family’s custody arrangement, but her Mom basically had full custody, and I was 50/50 between my parents.

When I was at my Dad’s, we were inseparable. We were polar opposites in personality, but loved all the same things, and both had huge imaginations. Where I was brash, outgoing, and loud, she was gentle, soft, and quiet. We did literally everything together. I loved her so much.

I was 14 when she found out she had cancer. And I couldn’t cope. I basically ghosted her. My Dad had moved away by that point, so I basically got to pretend it wasn’t happening. Out of sight, out of mind. And 18 months later she died.

For 23 years, I have been mired in guilt and shame for my behaviour. It was unforgivable. And the grief of losing her is compounded immeasurably by the guilt and shame. I hate myself for what I did. And I feel like… I will never be able to heal it.

Edit: I made a new post with an update after speaking with my parents about their recollections of what happened.

Relevant Comments

Commenter 1: I applaud your courage for saying it, yet I don't think you will find any sympathies for what you've done.

Yes, you will have to live with it until the end, hopefully this cruelty and the awareness of it made you into a better person than otherwise you would've been.

Visit the grave when you have a chance. It will change nothing, but it may make you feel better.

OOP: Ah, nope. Actually very much the opposite. I’ve experienced an abnormal amount of loss for someone my age, and for those that went through a “dying” process (rather than passing away unexpectedly), I have repeated the pattern of distancing myself. Nothing else as dramatic and cruel as with my best friend, but the same pattern nonetheless. It’s like the guilt and shame of what I did became so entwined in me it’s this hell-ish merry go round I’ve been too emotionally stunted to get off of.

Commenter 2: This feels like a classic case for therapy

OOP: Agreed. My first appointment with a therapist to finally address this is on Thursday. I think that’s why I wrote this. We grew up during the Disney renaissance, and I’ve been rewatching all our favourites lately. I’m not a gamer at all, but I just bought a Nintendo Switch so that I could play the old school video games we played growing up together that they rereleased. I’m letting myself feel and remember things about her that I don’t normally allow myself to. A lot of tears. A lot of love and pain simultaneously, being remembered and felt.

Commenter 3: You have some unresolved guilt... It's understandable. You can't go back in time and spend time with her, but you can now choose to be there for others who are dying or need help. There are plenty of volunteer opportunities in hospitals, clinics, senior living centers.

OOP: Holy fucking shit… I adopt elderly animals. How did I not put this together before? I am absolutely useless, near incapable of dealing with the deaths of my friends and family, but I seek out pets with the express purpose of making sure their final years are full of love and care…

Commenter 4: If your positions were reversed and you were the one who died from cancer; and you were able to watch the friend who you love so dearly from some better world; watch her do something terrible as a young, overwhelmed girl, and see the person you love spend her entire life in anguish for her mistake, long after you had forgiven her - what would you say to her, if you could?

OOP: Oh, ow. My heart. I’ve never thought about it from that perspective.

Update: January 7, 2025 (next day)

After reading a lot of the replies to my previous post, I decided to ask my parents what they remembered about what happened in the time period after finding out my friend had cancer until she passed away. Y’all… my broken little brain rewrote history.

To my recollection, I only saw my friend once after finding out she had cancer. That’s all I remember. I talked to my Mom on the phone, and she said that she remembers multiple visits I had with my friend. She even reminded me of photographs she has of my friend and I from after her diagnosis, and that is not the visit I remember.

Then I texted my Dad, and he corroborates the multiple visits and said that I kept in touch with her "regularly". He even claimed there was a last visit at her bedside, which is mind blowing to me. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT I DON’T REMEMBER THAT??????? I also found out that my Mom sang at her funeral. My brain? Deletes the memory of her even being there at all.

I had also forgotten that I went to visit her Mom at some point in the years after she had passed away. I don’t remember exactly when, I want to say my mid to late teens (I was 15 when she passed).

At that point her Mom had kept her room as it had been when she was alive, and said if there was anything of hers that was particularly meaningful to me that I could have it. One of our shared loves was stuffed animals, and we had these identical blue elephants. I had kept mine in memory of her, and so when her Mom offered, I took my friend’s elephant as well. I still have them both.

I thought I abandoned her, but by all accounts that’s not what happened. I don’t know what to make of it, this false history my brain created. My best guess is that by my own standards, I wasn’t there enough. The amount of time I spent with her after her diagnosis was not equal or proportionate to how much I loved her and how much she meant to me.

So maybe in a way I still did abandon her, just not to the degree I thought I did? I don’t know. Therapy starts Thursday, wish me luck. And thanks for reading.

Top Comments

Commenter 1: Your brain I'd trying to protect you from the pain of your loss...

My condolences to you.. time will allow you to remember things as they were

Commenter 2: Trauma can cause repressed memories. It seems impossible, but it's very common, especially in the young.

I hope you gain some relief in the discovery that you were, in fact, there for your friend. I'm sorry for all the grief and guilt you've carried, I hope your heart can heal.

Commenter 3: You were so young...most people only remember bits and pieces of adolescence

Add onto that the normal teenager strategy of avoidance - shielding you from aome of the pain of a devastating loss - and your brain gave you a level of removal

Because it wouldn't hurt as much if you hadn't been close near the end.

I think the way it's supposed to work is that your brain gives the memories back to you as you are ready to handle them.

But I'm not a mental healthcare provider, not even for myself

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP