I'm too insecure and traumatised to be with the person i love the most and it hurts so much

i cant afford therapy yet + the thought of saying all this to a real human being that i can see or hear feels like too much to handle

my partner and i have been together for almost a year now but we've known each other our whole lives. they were my first crush and my closest childhood friend but some traumatic shit happened to me in college and our relationship went from talking everyday to an occasional message on birthdays and stuff, so just totally out of each others lives.

i know its dumb and unhealthy but i never got over them. things in my life were just so horrible for so long that my only escape was to scroll on their social media or just imagine that i was in the place of the people in their life, that i was their friend in all their pictures that i was the partner they were holding hands with. these delusions kept me going through some of the darkest worst times possible but could also make me mentally crash because i would feel guilty for "using" someone like that without them knowing, because in between the fantasy "scenes" there would be blanks i couldnt fill in because i wasnt actually in their life to know what they were doing outside social media.

i used to lose so much time just laying in bed with my phone crying and it does still really hurt to remember those times. i eventually stopped the digital stalking because it just hurt too much and sort of let myself become numb to it all. i remember thinking that me "caring less" was a side effect of becoming more mature lol. i just went from inventing delusions and daydreams with images of the person i was obsessed with, to pulling these dream scenarios out of thin air and further twisting the image of this person into an idealised partner who would make my life as perfect as it could be

about two years out from "escaping"/being free from that awful situation i was able to move to a city with a friend and now having to worry about normal human things instead of insane abused person things really reframed my life for the better. in a weird coincidence the person i was obsessed with and i now lived in the same city and ended up reconnecting. and now we're together and now i have new mental problems making me sad.

biggest kicker and the main fuel of my stupid spiraling is it turns out i was also their first crush and they wanted to ask me out but thought against it because they were worried it would ruin the friendship. obviously i told them that it was the same for me, and we laughed like it was cute and "wow such a nice coincidence that we're together now!" but in truth it just really hurts so much for me. i feel so stupid for not taking the initiative back then, and a voice in my head says all those delusional fantasies from before could have ACTUALLY been real and not jsut fantasies.

i then spiral into all the what ifs and all the could-haves, like i actually could have been in their life all along and been super close to them and even have been together for over a decade. i think about all the firsts i could have had with them and all the happy times i could have had if i had just taken initiative. i then just end up in a stupid guilt spiral and self-hate spiral. its so fucking embarassing because theyve found me a couple of times having an ugly-cry breakdown and i cant bring myself to tell them why so they just hold me and stroke my hair like they used to when we were kids and it just makes me cry even more because i feel guilty that im weighing down someone so lovely with my broken brain.

i feel guilty that i cant just feel happy now. im living my literal dream but im still having these awful thoughts and i still feel guilty for the all the times i "used" them in my imagination and then guilty for myself (like wtf) for putting myself in the bad situation from before. sometimes they get really busy with work/life and we only text a few times a day and if we dont text enough i just find myself extremely anxious and heartbroken because im reminded of the times when we stopped talking. my only positive trait here is that i dont compare myself to their exes because i tell myself that theres a reason theyre dating me and not the exes now and im kinda pleasantly surprised with myself that im not a weird jealous freak in that way.

i have tried looking up thought exercises or how to be less insecure but i dont think it works at all. like i can hold the dam back for a bit by myself but eventually everything comes flooding out (especially the tears LOL) and i can only feel sad and scared again. i know i should talk to my partner about how im feeling a little bit but its not like theres much they can do on their end since it's not their fault i feel this way

if u read all of this i just wanna say sorry for probably wasting ur time and thank you. its still so impossible to open up about this to anyone, even the one friend i have who knows that ive been through serious trauma. im just terrified of being vulnerable in front of other people.