Never trust a stranger-friend; No one knows how it will end. As you're pretty so be wise; Wolves may lurk in every guise.

 Handsome they may be, and kind, Gay, and charming — nevermind! Now, as then, 'tis simple truth — Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth!

Please note: this essay describes various forms of abuse. If this isn't your bag, please take care of yourself and skip this one. I will see you next time.

My 7th April body anniversary was on the 16th. I had waited for this day for many, many years. Seven years. I expected it to be liberating. I expected it to be healing. I expected to feel free. I was not expecting to feel even more sad or broken than before. The day was finally here. I had waited so long for this day. And I felt nothing. I felt empty. I felt unfulfilled.  Of course it also came coupled with all of the James Barbour shit bubbling back up to the surface, and having to relive all of those feelings. This was supposed to be a beautiful day for me, a freeing time, and it wasn't.

I finally was able to pin point acutely what this feeling was: grief. 

For a couple of years, I thought the body anniversary was actually on the 19th, not the 16th; but then I remembered, it wasn't the anniversary of CAROUSEL, it was Selena's birthday. I tried to listen to the original 1945 cast recording of CAROUSEL last Wednesday, and ended up bursting into tears and having to tap out.

I found that my body was still acting up, and I couldn't figure out why. Was it the stress from Operation AtomiCat? Was it the James Barbour shit? Was it just navigating this Hellscape in general?

Then I remembered: whilst it wasn't a body anniversary, there was another trauma anniversary coming up. Even if your brain suppresses these memories, your body keeps score. Even if you cannot remember what happened, your body does. My body will always remind me of these bad days. I don't obsess over them. I don't pour over them over and over and over again--but I let my body lead the way on how I handle these days.

I am very glad that I documented all of this on LiveJournal, albeit, on friends-locked entries. I briefly logged back into LiveJournal over the weekend to read through what I had written. I knew that something was wrong, but I was being made to feel like I was overreacting, or that it wasn't that bad. But it WAS THAT bad, and it only would get worse from here. Again, I am forever being mocked for "always running away," and I wish on this day that I HAD run away and that someone would have listened to me because this was only a taste of what was to come.

Again, when someone tells you who they are the first time, believe them.

I remember this day very, very vividly. I still cry when I think about it. I still feel as though my heart shatters in my chest when I think about it. It still feels too cruel and too awful to have been real. I realized that it was this awful as I was experiencing it. When I went back and read what I had written, I realize that this was indicative of what was to come--that this would be a demonstrated pattern of behaviour this person would exhibit, and that this person would feel even further embolden as time goes on.

This person had been pressuring me to not go on this trip. They couched it as a loving concern. They couched it as being a "true friend." They couched it as caring about me.  There was something about it that didn't feel quite right, and I had gone on this trip as a defiance. I did not tell them how badly this trip had ended, how I had run away in tears and spend several days crying on the floor of my friend's apartment. I didn't say anything about how it had gone. 

For the last few months before this trip, there had been other trips. Each time I had gone on this trip, this person had tried to talk me out of it. It was presented as concern, but there was part of me in my gut that felt like it was coercion. This person was opportunistic, and was taking advantage of my loneliness,  and whilst I was having problems with many of these friendships in question, this person was using these rifts to isolate me. 

"I can't believe you let that ugly fat guy treat you like that." 

"If I didn't know you and I had heard about this, I would think you were stupid. But you're not stupid, are you?"

On this day in particular, the one I am sure my body is reacting to, this person and I were meeting up for the first time since the ill-fated trip. I hadn't told this person anything of how it went, and I wasn't going to tell them. We had decided to 'celebrate' something silly in the news--one of the 50 million political candidates dropping out of the 2016 presidential election (stupid, I know). I remember this moment very vividly. We were in line at the grocery store. We had put the hard ginger ale lemonades on the conveyer belt. This person would suddenly move up very close to me and stand over me. It struck me like lightening and I froze.

I knew exactly what they were doing. I had made the mistake of letting them know that I had allowed [this other person] to stand and express body language at me like that. That I had felt safe enough in [this other person] to allow them to do that. They were specifically imitating what I had described. 

I hadn't told them how this trip had gone, but they had taken me saying nothing about it either way as a sign of them winning, and now they were going to assert their dominance over me. Someone else had "failed" in their eyes and now I just belonged to them (I guess?).

I knew this is what was happening as it was happening. I froze. I know "deer in the headlights" is a hackneyed cliché, but it really, truly felt like that. It was so ugly and so awful, it could not be real. This person was my friend, they wouldn't do this to me, this can't be happening. No no no no no no no no no, this couldn't be what was happening, this is too ugly to be real.

I don't ask to go home because I am too scared to ask to go home. I am second-guessing myself. I am sad. I still can't believe this is happening to me and I try to tell myself it's my imagination. We get to the place where we were supposed to hang out and meet up with friends. They would immediately start drinking, get too comfortable and too handsy accidently on purpose. Then it would become painfully obvious, they had taken me to hang out with these people so they could show me off. Some of their friends had even asked me how long we had been dating, and I was quick to politely correct them.

Eventually, they had sobered up and drove me home (and, in retrospect, I should have not gotten in the car with them, no matter how sober they had claimed to be, and had run away when I had had a chance). I remember going home, and bursting into tears. I made sure to hold it all in until I got home. I felt disgusting. I felt violated. I felt foreign in my own skin. I very distinctly remember getting rid of the clothes that I had worn that day because I could never wear them again because of how violated I felt in them. I remember very specifically having to get rid of a couple of dresses that I had bought because they had made me feel beautiful in them. I felt disgusted, disgusting, ashamed and powerless. I was so embarrassed. It was such a humiliating, debilitating, and utterly dehumanizing experience.

This would not be the last of these instances. This would be part of a demonstrating pattern of behaviour that would grow more entitled, more controlling, most possessive, and increasingly violent. I did not feel like a person. This person never said the words "I love you," they never said the words, "hey, [this person] isn't what or who you need, and I have always cared about you, would you consider giving me a chance?" If those words had been said, and if they had come from a true place, which they didn't and never would, it might have been different. But it was never going to be that. This person took advantage of a decades-long friendship, they took advantage of crumbling relationships with my best friend and others. 

I know I was and am still mocked for being "stupid," when my great folly was that I wanted the people I loved to feel the same way about me. I wanted the person I considered my best friend single middle school whom  I had been through everything with to not leave me behind. I was there for all of their tears and their phone calls and through all of their academic ups and downs and I had always seen them as being part of my life--and now I was being shut out of theirs. All those years, and they were important to me, but I wasn't as important to them. And that devastated me. I wanted the person who was using me as their human security blanket to love me as much as I loved them.  I had just wanted the same kind of love that I had poured into everyone else's cups for so long. I was lonely and sad and scared and worried, and this person had taken advantage of that.

But control and coercion and abuse are not love. 

I had a nervous breakdown in the Spring of 2017 as a culmination of the abuses that I had experienced over the course of the year prior. I have never been the same person again. And that's okay, I was not meant to be that person anymore. I had been crushed by the selfishness and mistakes of others, but I was the only one who paid for them.

I know that standing towards someone a certain way just seems like an overreaction, something completely innocuous. And, you know, most people wouldn't have even given it a second thought. But most people don't have my past experiences, they don't have my history of abuse. They don't have touch aversions, they don't have the history of CSA and stalking, they don't not let people into their world. They didn't have people telling them to bring their walls down and let people in. They don't have a history of boundary violations and then finally allowing someone they loved and trusted to be in their space like that.

I will never let anyone in ever again.

When people tell you who they are the first time, believe them.