#dealing with abusers

[dafthermits]

Why we speak out. And how we mange to stay happy ( mostly). A simple comment can inspire.

http://youtube.com/post/Ugkxku5nJXQhQmADe25ZgQyW2bK8wyljXjJL?si=Rm72XEUbFwbnXEN1

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[dafthermits]

A quick tour round our off-grid home. Here in the Scottish Highlands. 38 years off-grid. Simple

Welcome to our wee off-grid home. We have been off-grid for over 38 years ( not including the time as kids when we escaped abuse). We have lived all over the UK and beyond. Slowly getting the hang of it. But as always learning every day . If you want to see some longer films simply Google @dafthermits Or check out our YouTube channel I recently started up again @dafthermits on there. We…

[pheita]

So it’s been a week since I cut my so-called best friend out of my life. I knew her for about 13 years. In those 13 years she constantly manipulated me with emotional blackmail using her borderline diagnosis against me. She had been in and out of mental health clinics the first years of our friendship but today I sadly have to say she never wanted to get a grip of her diagnosis or change for the better or even work on her issues. She only went into a mental health clinic to get good enough to work again so she could go back to her unhealthy lifestyle of drinking a bottle of wine each evening, working overtime without a need for it and self-medicating her pain with over the counter meds despite the need to see a doctor for it. When I spiraled down back in college because my trauma surfaced and I couldn’t push it aside anymore after ten years I checked in a mental health clinic myself. I never got the help I needed there because “We don’t talk about these things during group therapy sessions” and group therapy was all they did. During this time so-called best friend pulled me into her personal drama and forced me to deal with her shit on top of mine. He never gave me the break to deal with my own shit. Whenever she visited me it was all about going out and drinking. It was all about what she thought I should wear. I was about what she wanted to do no matter if I said I can’t because after I finished the mental health clinic I had to quit college and move out of my dorm room in three weeks. I went back to my mom, got put on disability for the next 5 years because that’s the time it took me with my awesome therapist to work myself through my PTSD, depressions and social anxiety to be able to work at least half a day. When I got fibromyalgia on top of all that, being in chronic pain for years already, this so-called best friend used my sickness to her advantage whenever we were out together. Either she belittled me for being slow or needing to sit all the time or she played the caretaker and went one like “Oh my friend has this thing, could we have the seat?” Six years ago I should have already make the cut because I learned she lied about her life for the last two years. I don’t know anymore how I figured it out but I know she cried me a river and apologized which I thought was honest. But since then I found myself doubting her whenever something big and/or dramatic happened. And dramatic stuff happened to her all the time. The last three year at least once every two months. She never said it but her actions spoke louder than words that she demanded me to be available all the time. Whenever she went home from work she would call no matter how late and called as often as it needed for me to answer the phone. When I ignored her because I wasn’t in the mood for her stupid rants because she is angry at everybody she would send me an email asking if I am ok. The same kind of emails I got if I didn’t answer her last email fast enough. She never considered me having a life of my own. Even when I said I wasn’t available at least three times before an appointment she would call anyway because she never remembered this because in her mind I was always available. Things escalated last week when she stranded in a city close by after a short vacation because the airline messed up. Instead of waiting at the airport she took a long distance bus to get to the city where I live expecting me to let her crash at my place till she got a flight back home from my hometown. I told her no because I still dealt with a flare-up, my brother has social phobia and was already stressed out because of an appointment he had the following week and honestly there were other ways to handle the situation. Plus we already live with three people in a small apartment and she was always a judgmental person who talked trash about everyone and everything she didn’t like. There are interests of mine she never learned about because I know she judges people who like this. She called me a couple of times, once even crying. When I hung up on her because she wouldn’t accept the options I gave to her she called back and suddenly she wasn’t crying anymore. There were no hints in her voice or sniffing like you always do after you cried. I just thought “Ah here we go with faking shit”.  I gave her a couple of ways to solve the situation but she refused to use them.  All she wanted was using me again as her tool. That’s when I was done. I ignored her emails and calls. A day later she sent a passive-aggressive email when I was considering writing a long email to let her know what was wrong with the whole friendship but after this mail, I knew she would just use it to get me back. Besides I talked about it so many times and nothing ever changed. I expected her fiance and her ex to write me like “What an evil friend are you? Not helping the poor woman” but nothing which speaks a language of its own because she always managed to make others defend her to get someone back. She made me do this a couple of times with some of her boyfriend/fiances. In the long-term and thinking back all these years it should have been a warning that all of her partners either ended up trying to commit suicide, one even successfully, or became aggressive towards her. For a long time I apologized it with they weren’t able to deal with her bad times but on the other end she even managed to bring the bad out of me over the course of time. I never found myself being so angry, so aggressive towards someone else than her even if someone really pissed me off. While I reflected this I sadly had to say a lot of drama was caused by herself because she doesn’t want to change her ways. The irony of all this? In this week without her, I wasn’t even tempted to contact her like all the many times before I tried to cute her out. The first 36 hours I got panic attacks when I saw an email arrived because I was afraid it was her or her fiance. But in this whole week, I lost weight without changing anything. My chronic neck pain eased down big time. My sleep got better. I never played so many videogames in years like I did this week. I was never that productive. I have more energy despite the pain. I felt free. And I know she would do everything to sabotage my job training in case I can start it next summer because she needed me to be dependent. No one was allowed to be better than her. She wanted to break me so I was hers alone, at least it felt like this, but I got out of it stronger. She managed to bring out my bad sides but I learned to deal with it constructively. What I want to say with this super long personal post is this: Emotional abuse doesn’t only happen from the hand of men. Emotional abuse doesn’t only happen in romantic relationships. The same for verbal abuse. Whenever someone demands they are the center of your world and you aren’t allowed to do anything without their permission and don’t even dare to have other friends, its abuse. And it can happen in any kind of relationships. It can happen to everybody despite biological gender. It happens all the time all over the world. And if you need someone to talk to my inbox is always open.