Despite having ended the relationship with my abuser, Xavier, I remained in his friend group. They were my friends by then as well. He wasn't going to "win" by also taking my friends from me, but neither he nor his girlfriend, Meira, would speak to me anymore. Xavier to the point of making everyone uncomfortable, Meira not as much, but it was still awkward. The problem I couldn't understand with myself was that I still wanted to be around Xavier. I still worried about doing things I knew he wouldn't approve of. I started either avoiding things to prove he was wrong when he said I was going to do them, or doing things as sort of a "suck it, you don't own me anymore." He was still somehow controlling my life, even though he didn't give a single crap about me anymore, other than to continue to make his point about never speaking to me again. I still always worried that he was watching and judging.
I opened up to everyone in the friend group one by one. I absolutely could not stand how they thought Xavier was so great. I wanted him knocked off his pedestal. It was maddening that the person who had hurt me the deepest seemed admired by so many around him. I still didn't have the right words for what had happened. I'd been taught that sexual abuse meant rape, and rape meant specifically vaginal penetration from a penis by a stranger that was violent in nature and involved the girl physically trying to fight off the guy all the while screaming "no." I'd been taught that physical abuse, which was being physically hit or punched, was bad. This was none of those things. I knew it was bad somehow, I felt broken, but all I could come up with was that "he made me do things I didn't want to do." I didn't understand yet that sexual abuse and sexual assault have a far wider definition, that consent can't be given if you're manipulated into giving it, and that our bodies don't just go into fight or flight mode during traumatic events, they can also go into freeze or fawn modes. I also had no concept of what emotional abuse was, or narcissism, or gaslighting, etc. Then there was the whole he was technically an adult and I was technically a child thing when it all happened, but there was no "proof" of anything, so even if I'd had the idea it could have been abuse, I blamed myself and thought I'd be blamed or not believed anyway if I went to someone who could do anything about it. Basically I had no tools to even know what had happened to me, wouldn't have known what to do if I had any tools, and neither did anyone I talked to about it. It felt like my shame to carry.
Everyone I told was angry to some degree. If they confronted Xavier, he would just get angry back at them, tell them I'd made it up or ask why he should stay friends with them if they believed it. He might also angrily claim they were trying to break he and Meira up. So the friends would immediately back off. Some didn't confront him, but I don't think I would have had the guts to confront a friend at that age either, so I can't blame them. One guy, who I very much respect, left the friend group all together, because he couldn't stand to be around Xavier anymore. But as time went on, the people who remained friends with Xavier all put it away in the back of their minds. It was too much to reconcile the things I'd said with the guy they still wanted to be friends with. Some stopped believing me all together. Some said I was just trying to get attention. Some said I was obsessed with him. They were not completely wrong. I was crying for help the only ways I knew how, and that came out in a lot of unhealthy ways. I was also still extremely attached to Xavier and could not understand why. I still had this desire to "fix" it, this thing I didn't even understand that could also never be "fixed" even if I had understood it. I longed to be around Xavier still, even though he literally pretended I was invisible. Not only could I not understand or explain what happened, I also couldn't understand or explain why I'd become the way I was.
I no longer had any respect for my body. I'd essentially shut off from my body. I knew it was there, but I had no emotional attachment to it or anything that happened to it. I felt disgusted, I felt tainted, I felt used and tossed aside, I felt like I wanted to physically get out of my own body. I felt like no "decent" guy would want anything to do with me ever again. In many ways, I stopped taking care of myself, because what was the point? I wasn't worth taking care of. I tried to get attention and physical affection from any guy who would give it. It was like I was trying to bury what had happened with my abuser by piling on other memories with other guys. It's called a "reparative urge." I also wanted other guys to prove I was wrong about the way I felt about my body. But maybe even more dangerous, I felt like I was supposed to get married immediately out of college, and to do that, I needed to be looking for someone who would date me stat. At 18, I felt like my clock was running out.
About 6 months after it had ended with Xavier, at the end of my freshmen year, one of the guys in the friend group, Frank, started pursuing me. Really, he didn't even have to try hard. He said he wanted to go on a date, he claimed he was a Christian, and he was friends with my abuser and already knew my story, so I could still be around my abuser. I didn't think anyone who wasn't friends with Xavier would understand my strong and persistent need to still be around him. Frank and I had almost nothing in common, and he really didn't have any qualities I was looking for. But, by this point, I felt completely shattered, completely worthless, like no "good guy" could ever want me after what had happened to me (or what I'd done, depending on who I was putting the blame on that day). I felt I didn't deserve anything good, and I just had to accept what I could get, which at the time, was Frank. So we started dating, on Xavier's birthday, of all days. It was an easy anniversary to remember. Looking back, clearly this relationship had red flags all over it. But, if you don't believe you deserve any better, red flags hardly matter at all.
My boyfriend, Frank, and my abuser, Xavier, became roommates my sophomore year. No really, I couldn't even make this up if I tried. They shared an apartment with another guy in their friend group and someone they didn't know. There were 4 bedrooms, each 2 shared a bathroom. So Frank and Xavier shared one side of the apartment and a bathroom, and their friend and the random guy shared the other side. My freshmen year, my dorm building had been their hangout spot, but my sophomore year, their apartment became the place they all gathered, if they weren't just connecting online through World of Warcraft.
Over the summer between my freshmen and sophomore years, Xavier had proposed to his girlfriend, Meira, and she'd accepted. She had graduated and moved to grad school, so she was planning their wedding that year from a distance, and Xavier was planning to move up to where she was after he finished his fourth year and (should have) graduated. Meira was no longer around, and I grieved her absence. I also grieved their engagement.
So my sophomore year, Frank and Xavier were roommates, which was messed up enough. Then Xavier started pursing a friend of mine, Leighton, who had just started her freshmen year at USC. I had hoped that if we (really Frank, not me) could tell Meira that Xavier was going after someone else, she would finally face who he really was and end the engagement. But Meira simply wouldn't face it and just got angry at Frank for trying to break she and Xavier up, all while Leighton fell into Xavier's trap. For a long time, I blamed myself for introducing them because I knew Leighton was also his type. She knew my entire story before meeting him, so she went into it with eyes wide open, but I later learned she was dealing with things in her own life that made Xavier seem like a safe person to her. So then, while Xavier's fiancee was away in grad school, he turned all his attention on Leighton, and her life began to revolve around him.
Leighton told me everything at first, but as was expected, she was silenced quickly, and I was no longer privy to what was going on in secret. Xavier's friends were so much under his spell by that point that they simply could not see what he was doing. They also just didn't want to believe he would cheat on Meira, who was also their friend. Like with what I'd told them the year before, facing the truth was much too hard when it dealt with someone they'd already been friends with for years.
I knew exactly what Xavier was doing. I could see all the signs, all the subtle actions on both their parts. It was glaringly obvious to me what was going on between Leighton and Xavier. I was absolutely maddened. My relationship with my boyfriend was also not great. Frank was not abusive, but he wasn't a great guy, and we were never a good match from the beginning. If anything, he should have stood up for me to Xavier and believed what I said, but even that he couldn't do most of the time. Frank spent all his time playing World of Warcraft with the other friends in the group, failing most of his classes, and only kept me around because of what I'd give him sexually, because at least he was getting that. Frank and I fought all the time, but I still felt like I had to marry him to stay on the "life schedule" I'd believed I had to be on, and I felt this was just my fate, to be miserable. I felt I didn't deserve anymore more than that.
I was somehow still getting mostly A's, but everything took me so much longer to do. I could barely focus, barely concentrate on school. My sleep schedule was a complete mess, I wasn't eating anything good for my body, and I was gaining weight at an almost alarming rate. I was crying all the time, angry all the time. Homework that should have taken me an hour took many more. Studying was brutal. Tests gave me anxiety attacks. My anxiety was constantly at an extremely high level, but I didn't know that wasn't normal. There was this constant dark cloud of depression over me. I didn't have the words to explain any of that or the knowledge to know it wasn't normal.
I tried to tell the people in our friend group what was happening between Xavier and Leighton. I'd point out specific things, explain behaviors, etc. They would always explain it away. No one would believe me. They really begun to hate having me around. They would say I was annoying, I was obsessed with Xavier, I was just trying to ruin his relationship with Meira. Xavier and Leighton became more brazen about their relationship and stopped even trying to hide as much, because clearly they didn't have to. As they did, I'd continually try to point it out to our friends, and they continually had some "logical" explanation for it that didn't involve them doing anything wrong if they weren't flat out telling me I was making it up. It was like Xavier could get away with anything. And when Leighton and I were alone together, which wasn't often, the air was absolutely ripe. At first, I'd confront her, but then I realized that, too, was futile. But my anger was glaringly obvious.
The closer Xavier and Meira's wedding got, the more frantic I became. I somehow believed that it was my duty to convince Meira to leave Xavier, even though she still wasn't speaking to me. It was absolutely maddening to me that Xavier could do everything he was doing, and Meira could still make herself deny it. It seemed them getting married was the ultimate "win" for Xavier, the ultimate proof that he really could do whatever he wanted and get away with it.
So throughout the course of that school year, I was around my abuser, who wouldn't speak to me, while he was having an obvious relationship with my friend while engaged to my former friend. I was being gaslit by all of Xavier's friends who wouldn't believe anything I said about it and wouldn't believe the relationship between Xavier and Leighton was happening at all. Even Leighton was outright lying to me by that point. I was dating a guy I was miserable with, convinced I had to eventually marry him because no one else could possibly want me. I was gaining weight, which, to my family, was one of the worst things I could possibly do. They didn't know anything about what Xavier had done to me or anything that was going on in my friend group. So my family's focus was on my weight and also how bad my decision in dating Frank was. It was never, "You deserve so much better," it was more like, "What's wrong with you that you're dating him?" My grandmother's words to my Mom, "Once Frank breaks up with her, no one else will want her because of her weight," resounded in my head for years. Like A) she was convinced Frank was going to break up with me (who at the time I believed I was going to marry)and B) my weight was what not only defined me but made me unwanted. My grandmother's words weren't the only words that stung. The silence of others stung just as much. To some people, my weight seemed to be the only thing about me that mattered. To say I hated myself was an understatement. Some times I look back on that time and wonder how in the world I survived it at all. But that's all it was for me, survival mode. Pure survival mode.
Looking back, I am so thankful for Xavier's promise to never speak to me again if I ended it with him as I'd done. I didn't get the chance for the roller coaster ride that could have happened had he left a crack in that door. It was just done. I would have had to completely destroy myself to try to go back to him again, and fortunately I didn't try to do that. It hurt like hell at the time, but now I'm so thankful. I've seen so many friends struggle with the back and forth, going back to someone who abused them, a narcissist in their lives, someone unhealthy to them, because that person kept the door open to keep the control over them. I've seen them struggle in new relationships with the other person still trying to come back into their lives. Because I still had such a desire to "fix" it, and I was still so attached to Xavier for things I couldn't explain, I was still extremely vulnerable to him...for years. Xavier's control over me at that time was by completely closing that door. And as much as it was completely maddening at times how much of a show he put on doing that, I'm so thankful now that I could not try to go back to him even if I'd ever wanted to. I'm so thankful I didn't have to worry about him finding me where ever I went, I didn't have to change cell phone numbers, I didn't have to figure out how to put up emotional and physical boundaries. It hurt like hell to realize he didn't care about me at all, that he could just flip that switch (likely he'd never cared to begin with and it was all an act), but it definitely protected me in the aftermath. It was hard enough to be around him and around friends gaslighting me and watching him have a relationship with another person who wasn't Meira, it would have been even worse if it'd also been back and forth for us for longer.
Eventually Leighton told me everything that had been going on, and I told others in the group. "Now will you finally believe me?" At first, they seemed to. Then one guy explained it away that Leighton had made it all up to make me jealous, and what she'd said wasn't true. He used his psychology major to explain how he was right. So everyone dropped it again. Once again, I was the crazy one, just obsessed with trying to break Meira and Xavier up.
In the summer before Xavier and Meira's wedding, after Leighton had told me everything and the one guy had explained it away as false, everyone in the friend group finally found something that proved to them that I'd been right all along and that Xavier was having a relationship with Leighton. The details of what they found don't matter, but with each discovery, each person confronted Meira to tell her. Instead of thanking them for protecting her, she would get incredibly angry at them and just tell them they were trying to break she and Xavier up. She would immediately tell Xavier, and he would then verbally explode at his friend, asking why he should even stay friends with them if they were going to hurt Meira like that. So that was it, and as far as I know, they didn't say anything else about it to either of them after that.
Xavier and Meira got married as planned, despite everything Meira knew by that point. Xavier moved in with Meira in another state, and I never saw him again. I grieved when he moved, I grieved when they got married. I still somehow felt like it was my fault that she was marrying him. But then, it was over. It was done. There had been nothing I could have ever done to break them up, that was never within my control, I could never live her life and make her decisions for her, but it wasn't until after they got married that I finally let that part of it go.
Sophomore year has a lot of memory gaps as well, but not like freshmen year. I remember most everything to do with dating Frank and everything around Xavier and that group, it's the things outside of that that are blurry. Like Frank and I went to Sunday School and church together, but I have few memories of that. We had a whole church group I vaguely remember. I still wanted faith to be a big part of my life, but I just couldn't focus, and I felt so unworthy. I felt like a fraud. I'd also already lost my passion for bassoon when I lost my passion for everything my senior year after my abuse, and I hadn't gained that passion back. Sophomore year I finally gave up on bassoon and band. Heck if I remember anything about band those 2 years. I have few memories of really most of my life outside of what was going on with my immediate circle. I was heavily involved with activities in the dorm I lived in, but I don't remember much of that. Classes, places I visited, other friends, much of that is a blur or a blank. I do remember that I took a piano class with Xavier one semester that year. We never had to interact because everyone worked separately at their keyboards. But at the end of semester recital, he wouldn't even clap for me while everyone else did. Even around those people, he was still making a point that I was invisible to him. Fortunately I do have a good amount of pictures from that year to help me remember what is blurry in my head. Everything just has this feeling of a dark cloud over it. This feeling of being absolutely miserable, desolate, and alone. Like screaming in a crowded room and no one hears you. College was supposed to be the best time of my life, but it just pains me to look back at those years, even to go back to visit USC.
Since this blog is titled "Look Behind the Smile," I had to find some pictures from that year of just me. These are pictures from a short trip I took to Washington DC with some people from the dorm I lived in. Again, the trip is fuzzy, but fortunately I at least have pictures. I smiled for the pictures, but there was no joy there. I was dying inside.
Sophomore year started without Meira there. Junior year started without Xavier there either. They were beginning married life together. Leighton also had to move back home over the summer to continue college from her hometown. Then, right before classes started junior year, Frank broke up with me. I was devastated. I had to marry him, I had to get married immediately after college. My plans were ruined. That would never be able to happen, there wasn't enough time to meet another guy to walk down the aisle when I was "supposed" to. And more importantly, who else would want anything to do with me? I felt completely washed up after Xavier and after Frank, and I wasn't even 20 yet. But fortunately, within only a few days, I felt this huge sense of relief that Frank had broken up with me. I hadn't had the confidence to do it myself, but really, it was for the best. I didn't have to be with him! I had been miserable with him. Maybe there was hope that I didn't have to be miserable, even if I felt defeated then. Then, after the breakup, who was left of the friend group wanted nothing to do with me. They said they'd only kept me around because of Frank, and since we weren't together anymore, I was out. I felt completely and utterly alone. That fall semester was just really really hard and lonely. I was dealing with a lot of things I didn't have the tools to deal with. But spring semester I went to study in Germany, and I came back like I'd completely turned over a new leaf, at least on the outside.
No comments:
Post a Comment