I feel guilty [except I shouldn't. I think.]

this is gonna be very long, I'm talking about someone he kind of skewed my morals and sense of self. this story also contains mentions of self harm and weird fantasies, please take care everyone, you're not forced to read this if you don't feel like it, I'm just writing here because most of my friends don't know if this situation, and the ones who know feel very uncomfortable with the idea of bringing it up alone because it's disgusting.
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I had a friend whom I cut ties with at the start of this year, we've been friends for at least 3 years, and truthfully, I empathized with him a lot during the first half of our friendship, he lived in a horrible environment, had no friends, seemed lonely and unstable at most. at the time of knowing him, I was at the end of my teenage years, 17 years old, while he was freshly an adult who's 18-19 I think. we became friends after we had a chat about this game that we both liked, and he often told me about his struggles with overcoming his ex, whom I didn't know the age of, and his family treating him like shit.

I mean, we got along pretty well, given the little information I knew about him. we mostly just spent our time talking about the state of the world or playing games with my other friends, he acted weird sometimes, but it was easy to ignore and move on from when you're young and just want to have fun. everything started crumbling after he kept getting back to his ex and breaking up with her multiple times, it was okay, I guess? we comforted him multiple times without knowing her side of the story because we had no means of contacting her, and it's natural to feel bias towards your friend, though its unfair for the other party. during that time, it was really clear that he was mentally unstable, and I was someone naive that wanted to help. I had an extreme urge to help everybody out but not myself. the way people described it is that "he took advantage of my desperation and used it as a leverage" to send me weird stuff like furry and murder drones porn. I don't disagree with this point, but people call it grooming, english isn't even my 3rd language, so I take the definitions of such words too literally, I feel as though it was not grooming, maybe manipulation but I don't know. I never engaged with those, and I felt uncomfortable the moment he sent them, but I felt the need to go with the flow because he was going through so much, and he was known to self harm, and I was always worried that me, being his friend, would destroy him even more if I show rejection in that moment, I went along but never indulged in it. this feeling continued to grow as he tried to lure my other friends into their dms to send them the same stuff, whenever he started to whine and drop hints that he wants to talk about such stuff in the group chat we were in, I felt this extreme sense of need to stop him, and because of that, I was the one who always stepped up to comfort him and take him to our dms so he can send that weird stuff, weirdly, I didn't want my friends to go through he I am going through, I was young, but my friends were even younger, even if it's only by one or two years, I just felt responsible to not let them know about the weird stuff he had. and I still held hope that he was just going through a 'phase' and he will realize how weird it is once he snaps out of it and heals. but he didn't.


we noticed that he was getting obsessed with his ex. destroying himself over her, and reminiscing about her any chance he got. it got to a point that it was very annoying and border-line creepy and scary, he tried to know everything about her, he knew of her relationships while they were not together, and tried to get to know the girl she was in a relationship with at the moment, while going to my dms to talk shit about her and boost his own ego, saying that he would've done this and that better than her. at one point, I snapped at him and told him to not bring this up again, it's uncomfortable for me and makes me feel very suffocated in our friendship, he said he will stop and not bring it up again. and yet he did, time after time after time, at that point, me and my friends started to ignore him, and he got angry and started fights with us often, tried to criticize my friends and make fun of them, that was something I didn't tolerate and we had a semi-fall out, but he was still a 'friend'. because I still felt so scared that he might actually kill himself, he had proven capability of so a long time ago. to be truthful, I know why I was scared, it wasn't because HE was going to die, but because I will have to carry the guilt of 'not trying harder' and 'not helping him more', it's selfish and it was a decision that I thought of just to benefit myself, but I was in a spot in my life where I felt like I had to protect myself at all costs, if I saw the cracks I had been ignoring for a long time, I would've exploded at once and probably be gone forever.

he started showing signs of being racist, he was a full on creep by that time and I just couldn't handle him anymore. I talked to my friends one by one, and we all felt the same way about him, he was getting out of control and no one could fix him, no one was responsible for fixing him in the first place. but, once again like an idiot, I told my friends that I will handle everything and I will be the one who tells him to cut ties with us and never reach out to us ever again, and so I did, but at that point, I guess he knew that I can be guilt-tripped easily, and that I can be manipulated onto going along, he kept begging me to talk to him at least from time to time, be there for him when he needed. I was like, sure, I guess, as long as you don't act like we're friends, I'm just a stranger to you that listens to your problems objectively. we had this for a few months, he would contact me every 2 weeks or so I think. he started to harass my friends who were not part of the friendgroup and begging them to be his friends instead, I got so pissed when I knew about that that I stormed to him and told him everything I have been holding, as a last resort, he tried to tell me his one 'last secret' that he never told me. and that he was a necrophile, I felt so repulsed at that moment, but after he told me that, he immediately sent me a photo of his hand, cut and bleeding heavily, I was so taken back and I felt sick, but all that guilt came back to me and the fear of having the burden's of someone's death on me overtook my disgust, and I spoke to him briefly, before I settled my emotions never spoke to him again no matter what he sent.

his necrophilia was revealed a bit after by other people, he was kicked out of many spaces that he had a community in, and everybody was happy that he was out. but I was still scared that he will kill himself, I was fighting death myself as it happened because I was having the worst time with my health problems, and even though I consider myself someone who never thinks about harming himself. I grew this habit of banging my head against walls until I passed out, I even thought about killing myself, I, someone who always thought the idea of dying was repulsing, thought for once that death will be the easier way. revelations kept coming in, turned out his ex was 3 years younger than him, they started dating in 2020, meaning that when he was 15-16, she was 12. THAT in itself feels more pedophilic to me than anything. it just kept going on, and I remembered that once time he was talking about paraphilia, which is a mental disorder, and he was excusing it, was he saying he had one? should I empathize with him for that? I didn't know what to believe anymore and I genuinely think these things were a main reason in the way I am now, I feel skeptical of everything at all times.

I know for a fact that guy was disgusting, and I find everything he did so creepy and I think back to it and feel so extremely guilty for letting this go for so long, I put my friends in so much pressure, I put myself in danger, I feel like I should've dug more about him, I feel like I should've done more to protect my friends and that girl particularly from him, it's been a year, but I still remember it sometimes, it just keeps crashing down on me, was I too selfish about my own desires to not carry someone's death on my back that I let him terrorize so many people? I feel disgusted with myself.

any what, thank you for listening if you stayed around for this long, I'm sure you're probably thinking 'what the actual fuck' atm but yeah, have a great day, and be careful of who you come to know on the internet, don't be an idiot like me.