I (18F) have been invited to recreate a photo taken in middle school with my entire class (17-19M/F) who both mentally and physically abused me and am having trouble refusing, what can I do ?

Don’t really know where else to post this but if the topic of this post is inappropriate for this sub please tell me !!

On to the story, a boy I went to middle school with recently added me to a group chat with the rest of my class (very small middle school, we were around 20 in my class/grade) asking if we can recreate a photo we did while on a school trip.

I was originally down for the idea, especially because the boy who invited me was nice-ish with me back then, but when I saw who else was invited it brought back some really horrible memories from middle school and that trip.

Background on the classmates : there were a handful of them who were nice, a handful that manipulated and mentally abused me (which I only realised after hearing other people’s stories of much nicer middle schools as well as stories on here about manipulation) and a last handful who were just downright horrible. The latter have previously broken my nose, twisted my arms, hands and fingers in painful positions, purposely stepped on or hit my foot after I had sprained it, pulled out massive lumps of hair, slapped and punched me and threatened me with a gun (I still don’t know whether it was real or fake but given that I’m from France I’m guessing/hoping it was fake) ; the others acted as my friends but only did so to get things out of me (sweets as I always had loads, nice food as I always brought nice food from home while they ate cafeteria food...) or to humiliate me for their own pleasure (cutting my hair while I slept, stealing clothes, asking me to wear certain clothes but making fun of me when I did...). They also were incredibly conformist and would belittle me if I wore/did anything different (dyeing my hair weird colours, wearing any shoes that weren’t trainers...). I stayed friends with them because I thought this was normal and also because I sort of didn’t have a choice (no other girls in my class).

Background on the trip : it was a weeklong trip to Spain with my class and 2-3 teachers (including my pedophile headmaster), where to make a long story short I suffered basically everything I did usually as well as getting mugged by a stranger while walking around a Spanish city.

Anyway, I definitely do not want to go, especially given all that happened during my time there, but I don’t know how to refuse because A. I’m still sort of stuck in that mindset where I should obey everything my “”””””””””friends”””””””””” say and B. I want to refuse by saying things like “this was the worst time of my life, I hate you all for making me go through this, I don’t understand how you can idealise this school when it was a such a horrible place...” but same problem. Please help, I’m so lost.

TL;DR : I’ve been invited to recreate a photo that was taken in middle school with my entire class who mentally and physically abused me the whole time I was there and don’t know how to refuse

EDIT/UPDATE : I will eventually just be blocking them all after leaving the group chat. After everything they got from me then I realise I no longer (and definitely never did) owe them shit. I say eventually because in just over a week I have my graduation ceremony (high school diplomas arrive late in France) and there are a few of them who went to the same HS as me and I don’t want them to purposely approach me and ask what happened. Thank you everyone for the encouragement and comments !! <3

Submitted November 27, 2018 at 03:04PM by crachax https://ift.tt/2BD1z0Z