[PlayingPretend]

I recently lost a good friend of mine - understatement; she was my best friend. We'd spoken on an almost daily basis for 6 years. She was there for me through absolutely everything, and I was there for her. She "disappeared" over the summer (2010). We reconnected at the end of it. Put simply, things had changed, and things kept changing, and the more things kept changing, the more I had to forgive until I was over it. She was very recently dishonest about something huge. That on top of everything else that's occurred over the past several months caused me to end the relationship - maybe not forever, but certainly not now.

This seems to have been a trend in the past year. I've cut ties with some people - some acquaintences, some even close friends "once upon a time" - and I've moved on, or tried. My reasons have varied. Some of the decisions were, and are even still, hard to make. It is not easy for me to cut ties with people, especially ones I was once very close with, but I do need to take care of myself. And that's what I've done, and that's what I did with the friend I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

The thing is that I seem to be projecting this on to my boyfriend... ? The night of the day that I sent her the e-mail, ending our friendship, I quite literally turned on my boyfriend. He had said everything I'd needed to hear earlier - He had a point. He was right - and I ended up using that as ammunition. He didn't remember some of the minute details of some of the things that had happened between us while we were friends and over a year ago, but these were what I essentially blew out of proportion and attacked him with. The thing with me is that I have a killer memory. I think in pictures but I'm very good at remembering conversations, also. You could say I hold onto these memories, memories I sometimes bring up and they end up causing a problem, not because of how I feel about them (to most of the memories I have, I'm indifferent) but because the memories are what they are. However, in this case, thinking about those things that had happened with my boyfriend... It stirred up a lot of anger and resentment and hurt, and I laid pretty unfairly into him.

I believe the next morning I ended up apologising because by that point, I had realised I'd projected (and pretty severely) and he said that for as much as he'd gone into blaming himself for what had happened, he had pretty much had that figured. Since that night, I haven't done anything quite as severe, but there have been occasions on which I've panicked? Last night, for example, I'd drifted off to sleep, I don't remember most of it, but I do remember sending a text. He said when he got back on the computer (I was on MSN via my phone) I was panicking and apologising. It was probably around 3am when it happened, and I remember sending the text because I "could not find him" and he said he'd be around until 10am my time. This afternoon I woke directly from a nightmare from a nap and experienced the same level of panic. Sometimes it is not that bad. Sometimes it's simply a very... heavy (not the right word but the only one I can think of) feeling? Simply where I feel he's slipping away and there's nothing I can do about it.

He's very good about reassuring me and there are some times I almost believe it, but it's like I never fully let myself do so. He says he'll reassure me for as many times as I need for as long as I need, but what I don't want is for him to have to. And I don't want to become someone who ends up either begging or panicking and apologising because let's face it, that's downright unattractive. The thing is that these issues seem to have increased since I ended my relationship with my girl friend who, honestly, was closer than blood to me; she was my best friend for life. Though they existed before, I was, more or less, stable. I experienced moments of instability, but they were never as constant as they are now. I was never this mistrusting, this expectant of him to up and leave on me, etc.

And I don't know what to do about it. I don't even know how to begin coping with these emotions and how to stop subjecting him to them. So, help?

EDIT -- I also feel like I'm using/targeting him to process these emotions because he's "safe." I've been extremely depressed about it and have hit some suicidal lows (I say that as in feeling, as no matter how deep into the emotions I get, I still have enough self-control to not do it) and I feel like he's being subjected to it all unfairly.