Me [31 M] with my friends [28-32 M/F] 5-20 years, I ruined my personal relationships during a time when I had a brain tumor. I am healthy now but the damage cant be undone. I don't know how to move forward given the things i've done.

I was diagnosed with a brain tumor in my frontal lobe about 3 years ago. For a good chunk of the year prior to my diagnoses I behaved in ways that resulted in almost everyone in my life cutting me off. I was vengeful, malicious, angry and just mean for no reason. I did not have a ton of friends but the 12 I had at the time were basically my family. I grew up in care so i had no actual family but I met most of my friends in college and we were very close. Over the course of about 9 months though, i managed to completely ruin all but one of those relationships to the point where everyone completely hated me.

For context of the type of person I became: I got kicked out of my friend's wedding (where i was a groomsman) after trying to sleep with his wife during the reception. Then because I felt that I was the one who was wronged (horrible, i know) I made a fake video of her 'cheating' and emailed it to his entire family a month later. And to top it off made some bots to spam her social media (she is a professional youtuber so this actually impacted her career) with claims that she was a cheater and worse.

And this is not the only horrible thing I did during this time.

It got to the point where no one in my life would have anything to do with me. I got fired from my job for my behavior. I got kicked out of my apartment. I was basically exiled because of who I had become. The the only person who stuck around did so because they knew me the longest (we were in a home together as kids and wound up going to the same college) and recognized how extremely out of character I was behaving. He eventually forced me to have a scan (not by choice of my own, but after i was hospitalized due to a fight I started) which revealed that i had a grade 2 tumor in my frontal lobe.

I was treated and am now fairly healthy again. Since being treated my personality has mostly returned to the person I was prior to having the tumor and my horrible behavior has subsided.

During the time I had the tumor, I did not recognize that my personality had changed and was not able to recognize just how horrible of a person I was being. I believed that I was in the right even when I did things that any normal person could see was completely wrong. I was honestly, a huge piece of shit.

Looking back at the things I did now I am able to see just how terrible I was. Since being diagnosed/treated I have tried to fix some of the damage I caused by my behavior but I am not sure I can. Most of my friends still hate me. Even though I have been told that the tumor likely impacted my personality during that time, they (understandably) cant separate the person I was during that time from the person I was before/am now. Most of my friends have been willing to meet with me to hear my apologies/ accept the things I have offered to try and make up for what I did to them but they still dont want to try and have a relationship with me again. They say damage was to bad to ever undo.

I know that I need to accept this and that they are right. If i were in their shoes i know i would feel the same way. I am trying to give them space and accept that there is a huge chance that none of these people will be willing to be in my life ever again but I am having a very hard time with that. I am also really struggling accepting the fact that, I was that type of person. The way i think now i cant believe that i was capable of that level of cruelty. I sometimes feel like i don't deserve to have another chance. Tumor or not at the end of the day, I am the one who did these things. The tumor may have impacted my self control but it didn't give me the ideas of what to do to begin with. I did that on my own.

I dont have anyone to speak with about this. My one friend keeps saying that it was the tumor and that i should just forgive myself and move forward. But i don't know how to do that. Should I should keep trying to repair my relationships or just accept that I burned them and can undo that? Any advice at all is appreciated.

TL;DR: a brain tumor reveled just how awful of a person I am. now that i no longer have the tumor, i dont know what to do

Submitted August 31, 2019 at 12:13PM by wejksone https://ift.tt/2NJdnFq