Basically, I met my best friend under some pretty weird circumstances. His first impression of me was not good, to say the least. I was pretty mean to him because I was hurt and wanted someone to blame  for my own pain (we're both dating the same person but I was not sure how I felt about it at the time and would split on my partner frequently while trying to figure out what I was feeling.) 

Eventually, I started working on myself to be a better person and I stopped lashing out at people entirely. My lashing out at him was a one-time thing, I was surprised by his understanding response, and we eventually became very close friends and everything settled down. 

My friend seems to have slight abandonment issues like I do, and ever since the experience of me being mean to him one time, he is convinced that I actually don't like him and don't want to be his friend. He's brought this up multiple times, telling me that he never deserved to be yelled at. I completely agreed and I told him that he's allowed to still feel angry and hurt and I told him that I was sorry, that it was not his fault that I lashed out at him. He seemed to understand and calm down slightly, but recently he's been bringing it up more. 

Of course he is allowed to feel hurt by it for as long as he needs to and I don't intend to come off as if I don't care about how he feels. In a sense I almost feel helpless because I desperately want to fix it so that he won't be upset or think that I hate him anymore. On the other hand, I know that I can't force trust. He brought it up again a few days ago, and my brain started to tell me that it was better if I just left him alone. So I didn't text or join in the group call that we normally do. 

He texted me later stating that he noticed I haven't been joining the group calls. I said that I was just really tired and felt the urge to self isolate, which is true, but I didn't tell him why. He seemed a bit upset or frustrated and hasn't tried to reach out to me so far. I think the reason why I'm not talking much to him is because I'm scared of hurting him again even though I know I won't. I feel like it's better if we don't get too close to each other because either I'll end up hurting him or he'll end up hurting me. 

I guess just generally, I feel disconnected emotionally from others and I feel scared to get close to people and ashamed of who I am as a person and who I have been.