A!A: Author is (shamefully) basing Foggy's experience on their own, sort of. Foggy's been...he's definitely been miserable somewhere in the background of his daily life all those years. He's been miserable and felt guilty every time he thought about Matt or Karen, because he knows that he left them behind and that it was a shitty thing to do. But at the same time, he was far away, he was hurt and he was mildly depressed, and it was easy to slip into a sort of dissociation, a bubble of conviction that he could take all the time that he wanted and needed and things Back Home would remain the same, would wait for him to catch up. The daily life was enough to distract him so that he forgot about New York and his friends, but when he did remember, the guilt and shame would hit him and he would think about contacting them. Only the more time passed, the harder it was to do so and the less he had to tell them.

Objectively I know that this is an awful thing to do and to happen. But I also know how hard is to drag oneself out of that dissociation, and how hard you have to work to rebuild your connections.

And the most important question is: can they do anything to get their friendship back?