Hi sorry this is a long post, please be warned.
Sorry if this seems all over the place; my head is too!
So I’m nearly 30, and in my teenage years and young adulthood I went through some very traumatic experiences. Multiple actually.
It may not seem traumatic to anyone but it genuinely was for me so please don’t be unkind or rude, but one of these things was a mass ostracism; (I was a part of a group of friends I had known since school. We’d always been the “lovely girls”. The girls who yes, got bullied by the troublemakers/popular kids, but otherwise we got on with almost everyone.
We weren’t unkind or nasty to people. So I always assumed I was in a good, strong group.
Anyway, 2010 brought about me still trying to get justice against the guy who r*ped me a year and two months previous (police took forever to do anything!!!!), to then only be let down by police and he got away with it. My mum was then diagnosed with breast cancer...I worked full time at the time and still lived with my parents, so I ended up pretty much being the breadwinner whilst my mum had both chemotherapy and radiotherapy, she needed a few surgeries too and vice versa, so my dad was almost always at hospital with her. I took on all the housework too. I didn’t object of course.
Anyway, they knew all of this, and yet one of them out of the blue fabricated an issue with me one day and all hell broke loose.
The entire group ganged up on me, dragged even more people into it, bullied me, made a huge smear campaign against me, and everyone believed them because they were “so nice. Why would they lie?”
I soon became ostracised by my entire town pretty much as word spread. I was harassed by multiple people, verbally abused in public, humiliated in public... I’d like to point out that I’m on the autism spectrum.
This was no secret. I was also suffering from depression PTSD (yes I was diagnosed with both) due to my ordeal with r*pe and abuse at the hands of my ex (the one I had reported). They knew all of this and would purposely do things to trigger panic attacks to the point I was too afraid to leave the house anymore. I lost my job, all my friends, my dignity and everything pretty much.
I never trusted anyone since. I already had a hard time making friends due to being autistic and now I stood no chance. They ruined my life even more and to this day the memories of it all still haunt me. I can’t seem to shake them. Yes I’ve had therapy but it never worked. I moved away a few years ago and never went back.
Again I was diagnosed with PTSD and depression by another psychiatrist and have seen a number of therapists over the years, to not much avail.
Fast forward to now; this year I finally ended a 20 year toxic and, sadly it seems, one sided friendship with someone who was all round an awful friend for many reasons over the years. She sided with these “friends”/bullies for one thing, but insisted she “wasn’t taking sides” and “I was just as bad as them”. For what exactly?!
I felt some obligation to stay friends with her all this time because of how long we’d been friends, and because for some reason I thought deep down she was nice really, but enough was enough in the end, frankly.
She also recently married a much older man (she’s a year younger than me), and he is scarily, radically religious to the point that he has threatened me with an exorcism?!? Yes I am completely serious.
He said apparently he knows people where I live now, who would restrain me and “forcefully extract Satan/the demon from my body” and that I am not welcome to talk to “his woman” as he calls her, because “I am the devil incarnate” and he will see to it that I never come near her again. (I haven’t done anything to her though?) I’m a non believer and she used to be too until he brainwashed her. Now she’s even worse than before! She’s becoming a female version of him and it scares me. She repeats his crazy stuff all the time; she NEVER used to believe in all of this.
They’ve both told me I need an exorcism now more than once, and they’re deadly serious when they say it...I’m gobsmacked?!
They genuinely think I’m evil or something? Why?
Apparently he’s a social worker too! Whether that’s for children/elderly/disabled etc I don’t know? Surely he can’t make these sorts of threats and insinuations?!
He’s said some awful things to me whilst she listened and didn’t stop him;
Things like how I should “learn my place” whatever that’s supposed to mean? How he’s “a child of Jesus and I’m a hell spawned heathen and a disgrace to society and humanity” apparently. He’s said that he’s met my parents (mine and her parents are friends), and how they’re so lovely and don’t deserve “something like me”. 😞
She didn’t tell him to stop or anything. She was agreeing with him, telling me I need help and that I “can’t go on turning people away and turning my back on Jesus in doing so.” I have only ever removed people who have been toxic to me and dragging me down!
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. As Jaq says, rude, nasty, toxic comments and behaviour are not accepted here, ever. You will only find warmth, friendship and support here.
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