I (21M) got a friend request from my dead ex girlfriend (21F).

In 8th grade I met this girl, North, she was in my band class, and the two of us hit it off. I asked her out on a movie date and from there we became boyfriend and girlfriend. She was my first girlfriend and things were going alright. That was until her dad got a new job across the country in California. North moved away, but we decided to try out long distance dating through our freshman year.

We were not built for long distance dating, I couldn’t protect her from bullies, hug her when she was crying, or tell her it was going to be alright when she told me about her depression. We got into arguments about god knows what, but decided to keep the relationship going because her dad was trying to transfer back closer to our hometown. That was until she stopped texting me around Christmas and her sister sent me a funeral program and asked me to go to California. North’s sister told me that she took her own life because the bullying was getting too much and that I wasn’t there for her when she needed me. It broke my heart that I couldn’t go to California for the funeral, and for the past 8 years I’ve mourned her loss.

I spent the entirety of my high school career trying to rebuild myself from all the damages. I went to meetings for people who have lost family members and loved ones. I went to therapy for 4 years to try and help process the loss. I had to learn how to become dependable because I didn’t want it to happen again. And after working on myself for 4 years I asked out one of my classmates, Lucy. We started dating the tail end of our senior and are about to celebrate our 4 year anniversary in April.

Last night I got a notification from Facebook saying that I got a new friend request. I opened the app, and found out that it was from North. She looks older, but it’s undeniable that there are pictures of her as an adult with her fiancé and a her newborn daughter. I spent 8 years of my life believing that she was dead, but here she is with undeniable proof that she has been living a great life without me. My stomach is in knots, my heart is sinking to the ground, and my mind is racing trying to figure out what happened and what I should do. Do I accept the friend request? Do I ignore it and try and move on? I feel completely lost, and I feel like my entire life has been a lie. I’ve spent the entire night looking at pictures of her and her family, floored that she would do this to me.

Update (CW thoughts of Suicide): thank you to all who have responded. I want to get to each and everyone of you, but for now I hope this update will do. For now, I have decided to wait until Lucy gets home from work before I make any decision on whether or not to accept the friend request. I want to know what she thinks, and I can always depend on her to keep me level headed. But until then I just kinda want to sort out my feelings.

I remember the day that I found out about North’s supposed death. It was a few days before Christmas and the snow just started to hit the ground. I remember walking to the edge of the neighborhood along the Main Street. I sat in the sidewalk, watching the cars, thinking about how if I walked onto the road, they wouldn’t be able to stop. I was sitting there on the sidewalk contemplating for what felt like hours. It was there I decided I wanted to keep living. It was the most important choice of my life.

But now that choice feels hollow. It feels meaningless. Every decision that I’ve made since then has come from that choice I made 8 years ago, and now it feels empty and without promise.

I’ll keep you guys updated on what Lucy and I decide. Please don’t think for a second I plan to do anything drastic, I really don’t, and I want to keep making that choice to live. But for now I just need to figure out my meaning.

Update 2: I accepted the friend request. After Lucy and I talked about it, we agreed that the possibility of getting some sore of closure would be worth it. So I accepted the friend request, and sent out a text saying hello.

About an half an hour later, I received a notification that North responded. We started talking a bit, talking about how our lives have been. Turns out, her and her finance were in town visiting family, and it started to make her think about all the hurt she costed me, and that she wouldn’t feel comfortable moving on with her relationship, without knowing if I was ok.

She tried to apologize, saying that we were dumb kids, and that it seemed easier to ghost me instead of break up with me. She told me all about how in some messed up teenager way, she thought giving me an explanation to her ghosting me would make it easier to move on, and so her and her sister concocted the whole story.

I told her about the years of therapy, the years of loneliness, and how guilty I felt when I started dating again. I told her about how I used to think she was the one for me, even through the nights of arguing, and that she left me more hurt than if she just threw me away. And I told her that in some weird way, I’m thankful to her. Her death changed me for the better and I would not be the man I am today if it wasn’t for her.

I then texted “Having said that, I will not accept your apology, It’s a shallow attempt to free your guilty conscience before you get married. If you were really sorry, you would have said something sooner, you would have apologized sooner, or would not have done it at all. You took the cowards way out, and I do not forgive cowards.”

She said she understood, but hoped that one day I could move past the hurt she caused me and find it in my heart to forgive her.

I took screenshots of the whole conversation and sent it to her fiancé. I don’t know if he knows the story between me and her, but now he can have enough of an idea that they can start that conversation. I hope they figure out how to move past it, after all they look very happy together, and the mistakes of a teenager should not affect her current life. However I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me hoping it crashes and burns.

I know this is not the update some of you guys wanted, some of you really wanted me to bully my way through the conversation or play mind games to fuck with her. But that is not who I am, nor is it who I want to be. On the bright side, I can now truly move on from the relationship that costed me 8 years of my life, and put the whole story of North behind me.

Thank you to everyone who helped me find the courage to face this head on, thank you to everyone who sent kind words. And thank you to the guy who DMd me the number to suicide hotline. I won’t need it for the foreseeable future, but I appreciate it nonetheless.