Finest lockdown romance

[pepto bismol]

So here's the story, as short and detailed as I can tell it.

I know this guy since I'm 16 and him 18. We met online and talked a lot, everyday, for hours and hours, during 13 years. He was my confident, best friend... He supported me out of the first abusive relationship I lived, and his words, his kind support allowed me to get out of this without any "bruise" to my mind. For two years after I was celibate and talking a lot with him, building a very rich relationship with our own universe, dense pile of movies, books, and tons of bizarre music. I was feeling sweet by his side, protected, important, allowed to truly be myself. But my health was deteriorating and I isolated myself progressively from friends, familly... And him. But I continued to write to him for myself, to talk to him as a confident, to think about him regularly.

Something like seven years - including two other relatively short abusive relationships, a few diagnoses, financial independency finally acquired, two healthy relationships and my health stabilized - after I disappeared from his life, on february of this year to be exact, I decided to try and reach out for him. I was under pseudonym - one he didn't knew - and lend a few words on my FB wall, than invited him. He responded immediately, recognized me without any shadow of a doubt. He remembered my first and last name, every pseudonyms, the nicknames he used to call me, the bricks of our universe, tons of details on my personal life... And seemed genuinely shaken by our reunion.

He told me he had a huge depression that led him to make a suicide attempt, that he wanted to protect me from that. That he hesitated to contact me a thousand of times but wouldn't "grovel in front of me". He also told me he loved me all along and felt so miserable after I "abandonned him", that he was stupid not to have told me frankly all this time. My reaction was very physical : I puked during four hours straight. The days after were a strange mix of grieving and utter joy. Grieving because I realized he could have died without me knowing, because we don't have any friends in common. Grieving of all these years without him, of all this time spoiled not being with him when we were in love with each other.  I told him I couldn't imagine not knowing if anything happened to him again and we exchanged our numbers.

Following days were about to get to know our new selves and slowly get back in each other's lives. He was very hurried to meet me, I was a little bit less : he just broke up, "the very same day that you came to me", and my romantic relationship was dead but still not officially broken. I had a huge surgery to come, something ugly and crippling which would leave me exhausted, probably irritate and feeling ugly and useless. But he soothed me and soon we decided to meet mid march, regularly. We were talking about future, and the romance soon started. I told him often that it was so fast it frightened me, that I feared he would take it all away from me. "I already have suffered too much. I would get up eventually - I always do - but I'm tired to fall, and this loss would destroy me. Please don't play with my feeling" - "I won't play with your, with our feelings, I swear". He reassured me constantly, encouraged me to believe and give in.

So, at the beginning of march, he called to say he loved me. I still got the moved, quivering sound of his voice in my head... The day after, I went to hospital for a harsh diagnosis and heard first about the covid. As he was supposed to come the next weekend, I texted him "I'm immunocompromised, come if you wish, but we will not be able to go out a lot"... And he no longer answered. I texted him twice more in a week, to tell him I was frightened and hurting...

It took him a full week to text me "pardon me, I didn't know what to do. I have limited SMS and internet access, I isolate myself. I don't know how to get through this imbroglio without taking leave of us... I wish to see you soon". So I panicked. What did it mean for us? For how long? What was happening? I knew he had some family problems, health problems in his surrounding... And I was in the beginning of my quarantine, not quite sure I'll go through this all alive, and that we'd be able to talk again. So I asked him what happened and if everything was ok. One more week to answer me "i'm fine, situation is complicated, think about you, not about me"... Which absolutely failed to reassure me. "Don't ask me the impossible, i'm isolated and I know nothing about your situation, will you tell me?" and, since he still connects regularly on FB but doesn't talk to me, "am I about to get it right in the face?" Third week he answered me "it's becoming unhealthy. Your requests are valid but I don't know how to fullfill them. I don't understand your reactions. You are my love, you stay my love. I miss you but right now I can't."

So at my end of three weeks of panic, lose contact, not understanding a shit about his context and getting worst and worst, I settled : "You call me one night to say you love me, we were about to meet, and suddenly, nothing... Not a word, not an explanation but "it's complicated". This looks like a 'go fuck' to me, but doesn't correspond to anything you formerly said. I don't recognize you in this. It makes no logic to me and I don't understand what's going on. I know you, I know your context enough to not take it personally, I imagine you do your best to preserve yourself but if that means sacrificing my peace of mind and you don't get it, that's indeed unhealthy. I have no choice, I take my distances... Stay safe."

Two days after, I saw him disappear from my contacts. He blocked my phone number, blocked me on messenger and simply send me two songs, one telling he was back to his "voyeur" position and the other, ambiguous, could have meant "goodbye" as well as "let's meet later".  I had the feeling I was plunged in an acid bath and could'nt understand anything was happening. I sent him a mail telling "when you feel ready you can come back if you want to" and tried to show support to him, indirectly, as I didn't knew if he was suffering a grief in his family, doing a relapse or what.

After three months of silence, and having seen him swap photos for something equivocal possibly meaning he considered I tried to subdue him than left him, to which a friend laughed before he hushed him cause "walls have ears", and in such an incertainty, I was beginning to have dark thoughts - for the very first time ever...

So I decided to finally try to poke and see. Asked where we were - through a friend, since he shut me everywhere... He simply answered "goodbye". I insisted : "you owe me some explanations, a proper farewell. I won't accept that" and he finally backlashed at me. "You're talking to the void. I no longer read you since a long time. You won't accept that? Too bad for you. I will no longer accept that either. Your friend writing me a message ??? That's unbelievable. Too many things have changed during lockdown. My life goes on with my partner and that's the last time I write to you."
...
I was with family when I recieved this mail and they encouraged me to "let go everything that came", so I backlashed with a colorfull language - also to make it "unfixable" on my side... Of course I had the "wow I was right to let go of such a toxic illusion" speech, than "You're judging without knowing, as usual, you only thought about yourself all along... If you have to hate me so I can finally set myself free of your ascendancy" (????)...
And that's the last thing I know about him.

I.
Don't.
I don't understand ANYTHING of what happened.
I still torture myself trying to figure out what I did wrong, if my original message was so terrible, if "I take my distances" means "I break up with you" and I just misused words, if he lied to me and I was the mistress all along - but still, I couldn't understand such a huge rage towards me... - and how, just how, he could behave this way on ME, especially since he never closed his profile before, especially since he seems to be in good terms with at least one of his exes, especially since formerly to all that shit storm we were friends, close friends! for twenty years, and my affection for him was deep and sincere... I feel like a monster, I don't know what I did to deserve such an awful treatment, I don't get why it is reserved to me, I can't understand how he could blow up twenty years of friendship so cruelly and lightly, I don't recognize my friend and I'm so, so deeply wounded...

That's a slightly bit more than three months from his ghosting now. Panic attacks and dark ideas ceased when he finally backlashed at me but it still feels deeply traumatic and I can't possibly wrap my head around what happened. I'm totally shaked and could use a hand.