I have this friend who has like literally an amazing life. He’s a bit annoying, but I get it: constantly getting attention from his parents, having enough money to visit NY once in a while, he even has a nice grandma that invites him to tennis matches! Point is he expects everyone’s lives to be the same.
I have PTS from suffering of domestic violence for like one fifth of my life. I have one mother figure, and that’s it. I don’t actually travel much. I tend to assume everyone knows. I know, not the best mechanism, but honestly in high school rumours spread fast, so why wouldn’t he know? Apparently no one mentioned it to him.
It came into the conversation casually, smoothly even; from one of my snarky and bitter remarks I like to do. My food was too salty and I said that that was one of my top ten reasons for being glad he’s not in my life, I even laughed wholeheartedly. My friend’s eyes grew big and he took it as a personal offense. Then I realised.
He assumed I was just like the rest, he didn’t think my past defined me, he always saw me as myself and thought I’d always been like that. It was fresh, but I stared at the floor as I said the words “domestic violence,” and he was so weirded out at the fact that I didn’t want to see my father... But he didn’t know, and now I let him into the taped pages of my book. Hope it doesn’t turn out badly.