TL;DR at bottom but I urge you to please read the whole text



So, yeah, as the title says, I have to go to this ‘event’ where there’ll be a bunch of people who I used to be friends with but we just don’t talk anymore. So that’ll be kind of weird. Keep in mind these are mostly immature, toxic, like to think they are very masculine and superior kinda folks. The bigger issue is as follows.

Among these people is this guy who I use to be really close with but I hadn’t realised how bad he was for me. His dad is a grade A narcissistic, manipulative, abusive drunk man and he basically fucked up this guys life. Making him become a carbon copy of himself i.e dude is extremely insecure, toxic AF i.e. will gaslight the fuck outta you after purposely fucking with your brain followed by extremely weird hot and cold behaviour with a bunch of apologies thrown in. 

We had a bunch of issues as a result and this one time he crossed the line , I was in an extremely vulnerable state of mind ( use your imagination) and he used that to manipulate me after I pointed out that I can’t continue being friends because of all these flaws in you. He proceeded to superbly gaslight me into thinking I’m overeggaerating everything and that in fact all our issues had been resolved ( they hadn’t). 

Anyways, after that incident due to pent up mental health damage from shit that had happened before, what ended up happening was that I went through 4 months of daily panic attacks, depression and low self esteem. I’m legions ahead of where I was but I still deal with anxiety especially if I allow prolonged thoughts to focus on him. 

Now, the current issue: A good friend of mine is hosting an event to which i have to go because I have flaked on too many prior ones. This guy will be there and he has tried to apologise and get in my life and I turned it down and last I met him he was still acting very weird after apologising ( giving me condescending vibes+ saying things discreetly to try and fuck with my head. This was relatively recent. 

How can I overcome my anxiety and not only go but have a good time too. There will be roughly 80 people and I’m not currently in the kind of mind state in which I can confidently go snd strike conversations with and be fun with a bunch of random or slightly known people  


TL;DR : 
Massively toxic friend fucked with my head, tried to ruin my self esteem AND gaslit the fuck outta me for a whole year and one particular instance ended up in me going into a deep depression with consistent panic attacks for 4 months. He’s gonna be at this social event I have to go to and can not bail out of and I don’t wanna let my anxiety due to seeing him cause of how fucked up he’s been to me, stop me from going or ending up in me having a bad time if I do go