A little background: I (27F) grew up religious and homeschooled. Eventually, I went to a public high school where I went through a rebellious phase and suffered with mental health and substance abuse issues. There are almost no memories of this time that I carry with me today, as the drugs weren’t great for memory formation, and all this was ~10 years ago.
Tonight, I began to remember a painful time in high school: I was best friends with a girl named “Kim,” with whom I formed a trio with a guy named “Lance.”
I always saw Lance as strictly a friend, but as time went on, he became more and more sexually insistent, groping/kissing me against my will in public and when alone. I would say “no,” and “stop” but apparently never in a way that he understood to mean that I was serious.
This went on for far too long (a year perhaps?) and I still thought of him as a friend— I was so desperate to be liked and painfully socially awkward, that I let him trample my boundaries time and time again. Eventually, I gave up and pretty much let it happen.
Eventually, I began to date/hookup with guys of my choosing. It felt freeing to feel in control of my own sexuality, instead of my parents/religion/“friend” trying to control me.
The happiness was short lived, as soon after, Kim and Lance completely dropped me as a friend with absolutely no explanation. My best guess is that Lance told her that I was his girlfriend, and my dating other guys was “cheating.” (Again, I never wanted to date him or touch him. However I understand that my lack of force in saying so may have caused enough ambiguity for him to misread the situation.)
At the time, so many bad things were happening in my life that I never really had time to process the sadness that losing two friends should have caused. Simply put, I moved on and forgot about the ordeal. Tonight, all of this started to come back to me, slow at first, and then the weight of it hit hard. I cried for over an hour—much more heart broken about my best friend who had ditched me without a second thought, than Lance’s unwanted advances.
I tried to express this to my partner, who is typically very empathetic and loving. But he was just baffled by the entire thing, asking “what is really bothering you,” if I had re-started my birth control (which made me moody in the past)…basically he could not conceive of how something so minor that happened 10 years ago could result in such an significant show of emotion. Now he’s frustrated and we are at opposite ends of the house.
I don’t really know what to feel now. I genuinely have no idea if this is all a stupid over reaction, or if I “deserve” to feel sad. Any perspective would be appreciated.
TLDR; I remembered losing a friend as a teen, cried, and now husband says it’s too minor to care about.
Submitted January 24, 2022 at 07:27PM by Zestyclose_Train_678 https://ift.tt/3H3w13y
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