

You’re not clear on why you’re posting this, or what you want out of people’s responses.
You’re not clear on why you think you’re a bad friend, or why you’d be a burden to others just by interacting with them.
You’re not clear on what you know you have to do, but just aren’t doing.
Just saying/writing/admitting to something is helpful, because it forces you to confront it (and will be brought up in therapy anyway, so might as well do the prep work now). Just saying outloud the answers might make you realized how silly they are, or how they’re all connected, or what your priorities really are.
I apologize if this goes against your request, but as I mentioned, you were clear with your expectations.
I can related to your gas station metaphor, I feel that constantly due to gestures broadly at the world.
You’re too young to give up on marriage and parenthood, raw data shows that’s not true, you’re not even running behind yet.
And making one last assumption, but being distant or isolating yourself doesn’t make you a bad friend, and asking for help doesn’t either, only always asking for help and never asking about them does.





Feeling bad about how you’ve acted in the past is a good thing, it means you’ve grown since then. So even if you don’t recognize it, it means you’ve changed and improved as a person since then. This idea might be what your friend intended to expressive when they said to not focus on the past as much.
People can only change if they want to, and it sounds like you want to, so you shouldn’t give up hope on becoming the kind of person you feel you’d have to be to get marriage and have a family. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is today. You seem to be taking those steps to improve yourself, and in a few years you’ll reflect back on how you are now and see how much you changed. Growth is hard to measure on a day to day basis. Keep up the good work you’ve obviously (to an outsider) been doing to improve.