I heard we could share our trauma stories in your asks, so here's mine. Looking for advice and comfort/validation here, resources if possible but that's not strictly necessary. And also just to get all this crap off my chest somehow. It's a lot.
CW for stalking/harassment as well as emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Some mentions of animal abuse and antisemitism, and just a very long ask
How do you deal with likely never being able to find closure? Or wanting to stir things up with your abuser just so that something can be happening?
Many of my closest friends and I have been abused by this girl for years now, and we're just now finally getting out of it, I think. I'll call her L because in addition to being a piece of shit she's also a total loser.
L initially met me and my friends in highschool. She was a grade or two behind us and had like no friends so we let her hang around. I never liked her, but my best friend, D, who couldn't say no to save his life, was the main person she hung around. And I love D, so I just let that happen. L used to just be 15 and annoying. She wouldn't stop talking about herself and her interests, and immediately became cold and distant the second the conversation turned to something not about her. She made insensitive jokes and frequently took "jokes" way too far, especially at my expense. And she could NOT handle if things don't go her way. Once she raged at me for closing her laptop to stop the genuinely painful to listen to video she was showing us, the one I'd asked her to stop playing like 4 times. She also called me a sensitive little bitch when I told her to stop making nazi jokes because they weren't actually funny and also I'm literally jewish. If it were up to me, no one would have talked to her after, like, 2 weeks. But it was the kind of harm she could just grow out of with time.
Then she started getting really clingy with D. She got his phone number and would call him several times a day at all hours, even times she knew he was always busy, even when he'd pick up once a week at most. She tried to push me and him apart, even though D is my best friend and had been for a couple years at that point. He'd tell her over the phone that he was hanging out with me then and she'd say things like "oh, you're still friends with that guy?"
Then she figured out where he lived and invited herself over whenever she pleased, often at 7 or 8 am on the weekend, before D was even awake. She barely even wanted to hang out with him, just played games on his computer while he sat there. She'd constantly be "just walking by" when he was hanging out with me and/or others and invite herself to join, no matter what we were doing. D's car broke down and we were working on it in his driveway, she showed up, offered to "help" despite knowing nothing about cars, never touched a tool and instead read us her idea for a play from the perspective of the nazis in WW2 (it was as insensitive and weird as it sounds).
At the same time she started ramping up unwanted sexual advances and conversations with everyone. Trying to get people to play lewd video games with her, trying to wear actually publicly indecent shit to school. Showing people NSFW "memes". It's not, like, wrong to talk about or enjoy that stuff (except for the public indecency thing that's not excusable) but she was making everyone uncomfortable and never stopped when asked.
At one point D loaned her his laptop because she said she needed it for school work, and when he got the laptop back from her it had almost a hundred pornographic files on it. Not even hidden or anything. Mostly furry stuff, but several were fictional depictions of straight up zoophilia.
Also at the same time, she started getting violent with people. She always had a bit of an anger problem, made worse by the fact that anything not about her pissed her off. Once, my partner A (who has been present the entire time but not relevant until this point) was hanging out with D after school. She was invited to join but didn't show up so they left and went somewhere, like a few blocks away, without her. She texts one of the two asking where they're at, they tell her, and all of a sudden she's sprinting their way with a fist raised, ready to punch A in the fucking face. Now A was a wrestler and a football player in high school, so instinct took over and he knocked her flat on her ass, and she immediately de-escalated.
After that and the laptop thing, we stopped talking to her for awhile. The whole time she still called D constantly, at this point he'd pick up more like once a month, but she moved schools so we never really saw her outside of that.
She reappears a couple months later, again randomly showing up at D's house, to introduce us to her new partner V. This interaction lasts for like 5 minutes. Me and D leave for several hours and when we get back, she's in his backyard, crying. D might have an unlocked side gate or something for his cats, I honestly don't know how she got back there. I start this interaction ready to yell at her for trespassing but because she's crying and D has never gotten outwardly mad at a living being besides himself before, I stay quiet. She tells us that they had an altercation with V's abusive family, that she got into a fight with their brother and lost and now she's scared about what to do because they called the police. She tells us about how much she loves V and how she would do anything for them. How she's scared because V had been staying with her for a few days now and was terrified of going home. How V was suicidal and she couldn't lose them. That night I felt like I got her wrong, like she was just a flawed but ultimately good person. I offered her the best advice I could reasonably give at the time, and moved on. It was the last I've seen of her in person. (Still heard her in the background of a few calls, telling D to stop talking to me)
Over the next few weeks I get updates on the situation through D. She begs him to let V stay at his house, but that's kidnapping and he barely knows V so he can't help. V officially runs away from home. V moves in with L. Radio silence.
This is where my memory starts getting fuzzy, but at some point in here we stop talking to L entirely and nothing happens for a year and some change. Fast forward and now all of us but L are in college (I live in a college town so no one went very far)
I'm introduced to V at a house party A is hosting, neither of us recognize each other. We interact a little but there's lots of people I tend to just hang around D at parties anyway. After a couple hours, A sends everyone outside so he can talk to V in quiet. Then, he grabs D and this guy J who isn't really involved because he lives out of state but he's a good friend of A's and also known for owning a lot of guns. Then, the party resumes as normal, but V stays the night. I don't think much of it.
A couple days later D tells me what's going on. V had been living with L but was abused pretty badly, and couldn't leave without risking homelessness. They got lucky because A decided to give L a second chance, which gave them a way out through A. Exact details are fuzzy. A, J, and D got as much of V's shit moved out as they could. V was now couch surfing and nobody really had any idea what to do now.
I never got too many details about what actually happened to V, and it's not my place to ask, but they told A all of it and he vented to me about it. I've never seen him so angry, and he's been through shit I wouldn't wish on (just about) anyone. Neither of us knew we could hate a person that much. L was all of her usual self-obsessed and boundary-oblivios nature in that relationship, but dialed up as high as it could go. She regularly beat and s/ad V, constantly pressuring them for sex and not taking no for an answer on that or anything else. She stole V's medications and kept it from them. And these are just the details A could stand to give me.
That was about 2 or 3 months ago, and now we cut to present day. V has an unsteady but optimistic life with a new partner who respects them. L is officially cut off and if any of us even see her we leave that situation. She keeps trying to message people but we have her blocked on just about everything. V messaged her to fuck off one last time on an old account they just got back into. She had the gall to tell them they were lying to us to cut her off from her friends, that they were being manipulative on purpose, and that they should have just left well enough alone.
I don't understand how a person could even think like that.
Somehow I feel like it ends here, like this is the last we see of L. Like we just have to live with a little bit of fear forever. She knows our names, our accounts, our addresses. She'll do something really stupid out of desperate rage, she has before. I don't want it to end like this. I can't let it end like this. I didn't put up with her shit for so long for it to end with nothing. I didn't beg D to stop letting her walk all over him for years for nothing. A didn't vent to me about the worst secondhand trauma I've seen for nothing. We were gonna take this to court, but nothing has happened. One of my friends told me they couldn't say what, but something was going to happen to L. Something violent. But nothing ever did.
I feel almost selfish for caring so much. It's not my problem to have. I should support my friends, and I have, but I'm also sitting there letting rage eat me alive. I'm always thinking about her, vividly. I walk past a person with the same haircut as her and my heart starts racing. Someone knocks on my door that I'm not expecting and I'm reaching for my pocketknife before I can even think about it. I have a nightmare about her at least once a week. Something will trigger me and I'll launch into a vivid almost daydream of an encounter with her (not a flashback, picturing something that hasn't happened). I feel restless. I want something to be happening again, something I can keep track of. I won't do it because V has told everyone not to, but I want to unblock her and see what she says. I want her to randomly see me in public and start a fight. I want a real ending.
I know vicarious trauma is real because I have a lot of it, but I never feel valid in actually being upset. L is the third abuser I've had to deal with. 2 other close friends were s/ad in my early teen years, and nothing ever came of that. We did all the right things, went to a trusted adult, then the authorities. One abuser at least got expelled from our school, but that was only after police action was threatened against the school (she brought a knife to school and chased my friends with it too, the school wasn't even going to do anything at first). The other guy didn't have enough evidence against him, so nothing was done. A teacher said to my face that it was teen drama and the rapist and his victim just needed time apart from each other. Everyone believed the perpetrator and harassed the victim until she switched schools. Even though he was also a bully and, because I can never catch a break, also made some really weird comments about my religion. (I mentioned I was jewish in history class and he whipped out wikipedia list of ethnic slurs to find the right one to call me 💀 among other things)
I do everything I can to help and every time I still get nowhere. It was one thing when I was 14 but now I'm an adult with a job and a life I spent a lot of years thinking I'd never reach. All this shit with L is digging up all my past trauma. I don't know what to do. I can't let this happen again.
Well, thank you for reading, at least
I want to start by saying that L sounds like an incredibly miserable person and I am glad it seems L is no longer involved in your life.
Finding closure is so hard. The difficult truth is that closure must be given to yourself. Relying on abusers in any way is futile, as much as the responsibility should be theirs to repair the damage they caused. Abusers thrive on your dependence on them, and true freedom and healing is found in becoming self-reliant, especially in answering your own burning questions ("Why did they do this" or "Do they know how much hurt they caused" etc). It seems you're still in the early stages of healing, and so I recognize you may not appreciate hearing that.
It sounds like you're still experiencing trauma responses like hypervigilance, making you feel unsafe despite a recent incident. I understand what it's like to feel in danger but people around you either minimizing it or telling you in one way or another to get over it. There are ways to feel like your concerns are addressed while also maintaining your safety.
If you feel you must take action, you could get the opinion of a court advocate specializing in orders of protection if there is one local to you (you can call your local family court to ask, though it may be a criminal court matter, I'm not sure if criminal courts have court advocates). They can specifically advise you on your legal options, especially considering that L knows exactly where you live etc. I don't know where you live but here in NY we have Crime Victims Assistance Program (CVAP) that can also inform you of your rights and your legal options as well.
It may be tempting to unblock L to see if she contacts you in hopes of building a case against her, but this would cause the most escalation, danger, emotional stress (enduring court processes which can take months, having to see her in person, possibly testifying, being cross-examined), and financial burden. It's also not a guarantee that it would move forward as a case even if she did reach out, and it would go against V's specific request that everyone avoid contact with L.
If you can access or afford therapy, having a mental health professional you can talk to on a consistent basis could be essential as you process your experiences with L. They can also give you necessary guidance on your healing journey.
I hope this helps and please let me know if you have any additional comments or questions. You're free to come back to my inbox anytime if you have something to share.
