I am not very old yet, I'm still quite young, but already many times in my life have I been made to be the villain in someone else's story.
It matters not so much to me in relation to people I don't know well and will never know well, but it's all the more dreadful when it's people I have put considerable effort into maintaining a relationship with.
These close relationships are few and far between, for even people I've known for years don't know me well at all. At any given moment, there might be only one or two people I'm particularly close with, who know my interpersonal struggles and the gritty details of my past and my family.
It becomes an awful spear of betrayal when something goes wrong, when someone with these interpersonal details somehow comes to the conclusion that there is something malicious about me.
It's a dichotomy of never being seen, of being forgotten and ignored, or else being seen and misunderstood, to be distorted in one of many ways. I feel as though I have never been understood, even by those have tried, but it's worse when they haven't tried and still hold strong convictions about me.
There is an obsession with placing blame on other people — accepting accountability for our own role in a relationship failure is dreadful, it kills our ego, it's easier to place the blame on others.
The only other girl I dated was entrenched in her own problems, obsessed with complaining, framing everyone else as the villain for problems she did not want to face. I was her makeshift therapist, she would come to be to vent, seek validation and consolation, and this made up so many of our conversations that the times we spent ordinary time together were so few and far between.
Never did she consider asking me about my life and problems to the same level of depth: nor did I think to share any, I rarely do. And the reasons for the breakup were menial problems she did not want to communicate about and fix, but that she thought ending it was the solution. The moment I communicated my feelings and opinions to her, it fell upon her to declare me abusive.
I don't know what she considered abusive specifically, but judging on what she would claim was parental abuse, something very simple as being less than nice a couple of times.
This is a major example, and it came about that people she was associated with came to view me as the villain in her story, which is no surprise. This is not the only case: if I am seen, I am evil. I bend over backwards to please people I am close to, but if I get sick of it, if I step out of character, it is all lost.
Living a life as a quiet, unnoticeable ghost is desirable until it isn't. Maintaining relationships is desirable until it swallows you entirely. People have certain expectations if you are to interact with them, and I know I won't meet them, which makes this pattern inevitable.
