I Know Were Supposed To Avoid Harbouring Sympathy For Our Abusers, But Goddam It, He Didnt Stand A Chance.

I know we’re supposed to avoid harbouring sympathy for our abusers, but goddam it, he didn’t stand a chance.  

Is it any wonder?

TW - self harm

When he was in his early teens, he confessed to his parents that he had urges to hurt himself.  He wanted to take one of his hunting knives and plunge it into his gut.

I’m not a mother, so maybe I don’t know, but if my kid came up to me and told me he was having a hard time not gutting himself, I’m pretty sure we’d be dropping everything and going to the hospital to get some professional help.

They took away his hunting knives.  That’s it.

A Big Event

I was going to try to wait until closer to the actual anniversary to release a series of posts about being cut off. But then I realized it’s been all consuming for a few days and I need it out of my brain. 

In the evening of October 20, 2017, I performed my daily duty of driving from home after deciding on a healthy meal option to a restaurant to pick up take out.  From there I drove to the outskirts of town to the new shop he worked at to bring him lunch.  I’d have to meet him in the parking lot of a coffee shop down the road, though, because he didn’t want any of his coworkers to see me.

I was still an embarrassment to him.

I got into his car, greeted him warmly and cautiously handed him his lunch .  He glared at me, opened the bag, saw his food and then screamed “Stay the fuck away from me!!!”

I promptly got out of his car.  Stunned.  He kept the food of course.

In unrelated news:

Not to be That Person(TM) posting remarks about weather on your dash but there’s been a surge of climate change posts on mine.  And not to trivialize the seriousness of those with my anecdotal shitpost but goddamit it’s October and I live in CANADA:

Aftermath

I didn't stop talking to him immediately after that message he sent me.  Truth be told, he’d ‘cut me off’ a number of times prior to that. We actually had a set of boundaries and expectations in place for just these sorts of occasions.

The last time he'd insisted we cease speaking, after the initial shock and flood of texts I sent him, I stopped texting him altogether.  He messaged me after a few days of silence and accused me of getting over him. 

So for the next 6 weeks or so, I texted him every day. Here’s some highlights of my shame:

Attempt #2?

I asked a girl out for a coffee.  She’s sweet and cute, and I’ve heard she and I have had some similar experiences relationship wise.  She said:

 “I would absolutely love to, but not for a few weeks.  I have a crazy couple weeks.”

“Ok, sure, no pressure.  Let me know if and when you’re ready.”

She seems genuine, but it could easily be one of those “I want to say no, but I don’t want to hurt your feelings” kind of answers. So I’ve left it in her court and minimized the amount that I interact with her dramatically.  She’s not really picked up the slack, which led me to leaning toward her feeling option 2.  

But then I come to find out from a mutual friend that she was incredibly enthusiastic about me asking her out.  Despite not actually setting a date.  And I’m excited knowing that she’s excited that I asked her out.  Despite not actually having a date set.

So we’re both super happy about an event that, at this rate, is not likely to happen because I’m not going to ask again and she doesn’t seem to want to nail it down.  And ... we’re content with that?

Yep.  We’re broken.

My response to the event I described in my last post. After this event I sent him a whole bunch of ignored texts like" hey can I help you today?" And " i miss you" and loads of other humiliating stuff. It's not terribly interesting and there's plenty other humiliating things to come so we'll jump forward to his response two days later: