Yikes.
Imagine this as the continuous low murmur in the back of your head from the time you left for college at 18 until you were 35: You abandoned your aunt who raised you! She’s mentally ill and needs you to care for her! And you ran away! You’re a bad, terrible, horrible person who deserves no happiness for doing such a terrible thing! You will pay!!
I spent my 20s absolutely hating myself, afraid of living, afraid of people and terrified that everyone I met would realize I was a “phony”. I barely dated, I didn’t go after good jobs in my field, I didn’t network, I didn’t show anyone my writing. I would pick people who were just like my aunt to replay humiliation and abuse. If I did do something I enjoyed, just one thought of my poor aunt having one of her way-outsized and frequent rages because something didn’t go her way would make me feel awful again. As if my presence had ever actually calmed her down (it hadn’t, unless you count hitting me as a way to calm down).
I wish I had been able to break out of my guilt and fear that I was a bad and selfish person for wanting to live my own life, but I didn’t know how, and I thought that since I didn’t babysit my aunt, who has BPD and schizophrenia (and who refused to get treatment, but liked to punch people), then I deserved to be miserable, lonely unfulfilled and broke. I do feel bad about the people who did get close enough that I played out these issues on.