My Real Friends Don’t …

I guess you could say I’m a victim of my own terminal naivety and hopefulness, even when none is warranted. How else could you explain my repeated attempts to make peace, even after everything that has been done to me? Is there any other way to explain why I would try to even co-exist with people who actively and with malice aforethought planned harm on me?

I’m generally not a stupid person. Truly. But when you are trying to move forward in positivity, it becomes easy to convince yourself that a positive outlook requires forgiveness and ease between all involved. Forgiveness, of course, is a very good thing. But co-existence, peace, ease … You can’t have this with everyone. You just can’t. Some people are simply evil, and opening yourself up to them invites nothing but pain.

I’m ashamed to say I did this. It was for all the right reasons: moving on, closure, a positive outlook … Whatever label you’d like to slap on it, they all mean the same. But I overlooked one major detail: you can’t make nice with people with no heart, no empathy, nothing inside.

I have spent months crying to my therapist that I keep hitting a wall in my healing and telling her how frustrated I am by the memories that keep surfacing. I begged her to help me figure out why I’m caught in a loop. The answer is not only painfully clear but comes courtesy of the one who deliberately caused all my pain, for no other reason than their own amusement.

See, that’s what narcissists do. They play with their victims, take what they will, and then leave them twisting in the wind. Mine went above and beyond, by fracturing my family. I have to continue to deal with them until my children grow up since they wormed their way inside my marriage and took my ex-spouse. The children were one of my reasons for trying to at least be civil.

But the narcissist will never stop if they have an opening. So my attempts at peace just opened the door for more abuse, more reminders, more pain both new and old. And when I finally reach my limit and react, and I have a few times, the narcissist points the finger at me and tells me I’m the one at fault. But this time, they did so with a quote that inadvertently unlocked the chains I had unwittingly put back on myself:

“I don’t see how we can talk. My real friends don’t say such things to me.”

“Such things” being that I had the audacity to remind the narcissist of what they had done to me.

But, you know what?

That’s some true wisdom.

Real friends don’t try to cause harm.

Real friends don’t steal spouses.

Real friends don’t fracture families for their own amusement.

Real friends don’t play God with others’ lives to cure their own terminal boredom.

Real friends don’t lie repeatedly.

Real friends don’t gaslight.

I could go on and on.

But mostly, real friends don’t do what you did.

But that’s because you were never a real friend. So thank you for the truth bomb you didn’t realize you were giving me.

I’m now set free from my imagined obligation to keep the peace with someone who deserves no peace from me.

He Didn’t Do It To Me

It was the middle of the night when I woke up to being raped.

I’d heard so many times about how to keep myself safe: don’t go out alone after dark, don’t go into unsafe areas, don’t put myself into a dangerous situation … I guess I missed the PSA that said not to go to bed next to my husband.

You read that right. My husband was my rapist. And the next morning he got up, kissed me, and waited for me to pack his lunch as he went off to work. Me, the person he had raped 3 hours prior … he waited for ME to make his breakfast and pack his lunch.

And I did it.

He had been verbally and emotionally abusive for as long as we’d been together. Shame on me for staying, and letting him treat me that way. I always felt like if I just gave in to whatever it was he wanted this time, maybe he would stop being an abusive bully and go back to the act that had won me over.

Let’s be honest here. It’s all an act with these kinds of men. If I gave him an inch he took ten miles, along with my dignity and self-respect. I wish I had learned to stand up to him when I had the chance. I wish. I wish.

I WISH

Do not let yourself be someone who wishes. Just don’t. You are worth too much and your boundaries are too valuable. Wishes are many things, but when they’re boundaries that you wouldn’t enforce, they’re painful and sharp reminders of things you once stood for.

I woke up confused, because something was off, something was wrong. What was it? Do you know those first few seconds when you can’t figure out why you were jolted from sleep? Well that, plus something much more. A blink, maybe two, and then I felt the sweat from above. What the hell? What is going on, and why am I being sweated on? What are the grunts for and … wait … it hurts. OMG it hurts. What is happening?? Why am I in pain??? And … THERE. Why does it hurt there? Wait, stop, why are you hurting me?? Please, stop. Please.

Why won’t you stop?

I put my head down, face-first into the mattress, to muffle my screams. And I screamed into the mattress until he was satisfied.

I bled when I pooped for the next few days. He professed his sorrow and immediately apologized, putting on his “contrite and good partner” act. I bought it, which is unfortunate because he did this to me two more times. He did this to me two more times after promising he never would. He did this to me two more times after I told him I was bleeding all week and he swore I would never wake up to anal rape again.

BUT I DID.

I think the best illustration I can give for what’s wrong with society is what happened next. I confided in one of my closest friends all of the above. I trusted my friend, and believed in her friendship. She took my private confidences and used them when she befriended my husband, something I allowed because I trusted her. I couldn’t believe she would betray that, because I wouldn’t.

Silly me. I wouldn’t, so I think others wouldn’t.

She thought that a man who anally raped his wife was attractive. Call me a prude, but I can’t see it. She thought that the man who anally raped me was not only worth falling in love with but worth throwing away my trust and destroying my family. I have 4 children who suffered because she was hot for a man who would rape his wife, the mother of his children. And her excuse was: “Well he didn’t do it to me.”

He didn’t do it to me.

THIS is why our country is so morally bankrupt. We are no longer our brothers’ (or sisters’) keepers. We only care what happens to us. “He didn’t do it to me.” Can you imagine if our justice system was built on “he didn’t do it to me?” How about our police force? What if nothing happened to criminals unless they “did it to us??”

What kind of person abandons a friend to prop their rapist? I’ve heard of victim blaming/shaming, but this seems like it needs a whole new category. I’ve never met anyone who found a rapist irresistible.

My rapist lives a happy life with his partner and her two children. I’m in therapy to process his years of abuse. I thank God every day that I’m here to raise my children to be moral and good people. I am aspiring to forgive the two of them for the worst evil ever done to me.

“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

I’m sure the above Bible verse, a quote from Jesus, applies somehow here.