Guest Blog: Abused By So Called Friends

Today we have a guest blog written by one of my best friends, The Undead Noodle. It relates back to my 'Not All Killing Blows Are Physical' post and it's heart-breaking. This is why we need to stop peer and emotional abuse, and why no person suffering mental illness should be targetted for harassment and have their illness used against them. Such behaviour is life-threatening. In my opinion, it can amount to attempted murder.

To my UndeadNoodle. You are valuable. You are loved. You are worth so much, no matter what cruel ********* say. I know you won't believe me, but it's true, and I'm going to keep repeating it. I am grateful that you're in my life. Even though we can't see each other as often as we'd like, talking to you almost every day matters to me. You matter.

Pseudonymous Zombie
xxx

Abused By So Called Friends

Well, I have been asked to write a blog as a guest for one of my closest friends, and I said yes, so hey. I have been thinking a lot about what to write, and yesterday’s events gave me some good ideas. But before I go there let me give you a small bio on me, so the rest of what I write will make sense.

I am a 31 year old mum. I haven’t worked in 8 years now, because I wanted to be a stay at home mum and watch my beautiful boy grow. Then once I could go back to work I found I had cancer, so went through treatment which was successful thankfully. Now, I have struggled with depression for most of my life, and the last few years have added a massive bundle of anxiety to that too. I am overweight, so my confidence is basically non existent. But, despite all of that, I am a nice girl. I am always friendly, I support my friends as much as I can, and all in all I am a good person.

That’s rare for me to admit. Especially now, after yesterday. Yesterday, a couple of my friends and I were betrayed by someone we thought we could  trust. The woman and her husband were rude  disgusting to us. I was personally attacked online, and my friend was given horrid abuse when she stepped in to defend us all.

We were abused. It can’t be explained any other way. Unfortunately we all suffer from depression and anxiety. We have all self harmed. And at  one point or another we have had suicidal thoughts. The girl who was downright cruel I shall name Girl C, and her husband will be called D. Girl C was so good, she weaselled her way into our group, working slowly but surely closer and closer, getting us to trust her, to open up, to let her in. This is over the space of about a year, so she knew how to play the long game. Her husband, D, was always abusive. He treated her so badly and we all felt bad, supporting her through her depression, through her feelings of worthlessness that this awful excuse for a human being constantly made her feel.

We told her things barely anybody knew. We all shared, or so we thought. And we kept it all between us 4, again or so we thought. We were a close knit group. We chatted online every day. We Skype and oovooed, sometimes all 4 at the same time. We were really close. Until recently.

Recently Girl C changed. She got new friends that she spoke to more. I mean by all means no one was upset that she had more friends. It was the fact that her attitude changed towards us that I didn’t like. But, arguments aren’t my thing. I have always suffered with self blame, and I will blame myself for everything. I can’t help it. I constantly feel guilty. Guilty for things I’ve said, things I’ve  done. Even when I haven’t done anything. I don’t lash out, I lash in. I withdraw, and force myself to take the blame, take the punishment, even if none is needed. I always think I’ve done wrong. I have done since I was a teen.

So, naturally, I blamed myself for Girl C's change of behaviour. I tried to stay away from arguments, whilst still supporting whoever needed me. Oh, and Girl C was my best friend. I was fooled. She had been telling D stuff about us. Because yesterday, after I commented once, and it wasn’t even anything bad, D got involved. He told me and my friends to kill ourselves. He said no one wanted us. No one would miss us. He then turned on me. He said I needed to get laid. He said that I would have to pay them, or ply them with drink and drugs to get them to be with me.

Bang. One of my biggest triggers. Thrown so carelessly into my face. He didn’t care. He laughed. I have always felt disgusting. Like I wouldn’t be desired, wanted, needed. Especially intimately. It takes a lot for me to do anything. And  now, there is no chance. Not after that. I think of someone touching me and I cry because they wont truly want me, will they. They need drugs. They need money. Because I am not attractive enough for them to want  me just because it’s  me. Any tiny, miniscule amount of confidence I had in myself is gone. Completely. Because that’s how mental illness works. Out of a thousand compliments you will only listen to the one insult. Because it’s the only one that makes sense. It’s the only one you can truly believe in. Someone finally said exactly how you feel. And as you feel relieved that finally someone sees what you see, it also breaks you. It smashes into your heart and rips it apart. Your soul dies a little more. Your pulled a little deeper into your pit of depression. And the walls become even harder to grip onto.

You think, why bother? Why try and climb out when you can just slide to the bottom, lay down and die. If that one person sees your true self, then everyone else must do too. They pity you. And no one wants to be pitied. So push away again, your curl into yourself, so they don’t have to bother with you anymore. They will feel better because your gone. They don’t have to waster their time on you any longer. And it swirls. Down, down down. It’s never ending. I could write for hours and hours about how my thoughts go.

I know I’m worthless now. I know I’m nothing. If someone who was named my best friend could betray me, then I cant be worth anything, can I. But, I still will live. I will support my other friends who were abused by D. Because that’s who I am. I’m worthless, but I love my friends, and I don’t want them feeling this way. I won’t let them think like I do. I will support them until I am no longer needed or wanted, and then I will slink away and let them be happy. Because I can be a support beam, but I’m not worthy of standing on the floor I support.

TheUndeadNoodle
https://www.blogger.com/profile/06892693911835590834

Not All Killing Blows Are Physical

A few years ago something positive happened. My fiction writing drew some fans who became friends. Many of us suffered invisible or mental illnesses and we became close, supporting each other. Over two years wevcame to trust eachother. We thought we were good friends. However, there was one in our midst who became increasingly manipulative. She needed more attention than she was willing to give and had a severe victim complex.

It caused a lot of arguments. There were even times when this person told one of us to 'do it' when discussing suicide. She told the same person to 'get over' her anxiety as if it was that easy. What is particularly horrifying about this, is this woman has depression and anxiety herself. Not as severely as the rest of us, but enough that she should understand.

Anyway, back on track. This manipulative person acted like she cared until she was well enough acquainted to ask for favours, then her interest in our health and safety decreased. She had a habit of causing hurt and triggering our depression and anxiety, and when we pulled her up on it she played victim. Often she persuaded us we were to blame. She succeeded because the nature of our illnesses meant we blamed ourselves for almost everything anyway. Feeling guilt was second nature. I guess we were easy targets.

Easy or not, eventually we had enough. Several of us called her out. She did the usual, played victim and accused us (me especially) of bullying her. Maybe she targeted me because I'm more direct. I was bullied so badly as a child that I will stand up against the harassment of my friends, but the very act of standing up painted a target on my back. I don't know. What I do know is that she didn't like having several people tell her to stop bullying the youngest member of our friendship group and she started to air her dirty laundry on Facebook. That's when her husband got involved.

Now her husband is also manipulative; he emotionally abused his wife and we'd supported her through it. Yet right then he seemed determined to tear into us. He new all of our triggers, things we'd told his wife, and he used them against us in the most horrific way.

He told three people who self harm to kill themselves, and not to be pussys over the method even though two of us had already attempted suicide in the last six months.

He told us we wouldn't be missed, even though he knows we all have severely distorted self image and non-existent self-worth.

He also said some things that were just sick.
I'd once needed therapy because when I had my daughter I was so worried about someone getting in and hurting her that I had to check her every ten minutes and didn't sleep. This husband of an ex-fruend reversed that treatment by describing capturing me and slowly cutting the heads of my entire family in front of me. The image of him decapitating my children, my reasons to live, is stuck in my head. He has purposefully cause further psychological harm to someone with a mental disability.

In what world is that appropriate?

All three of us, the victims of his harassment, started talking about dying. I needed my husband to phone my crisis team. Another woman, a teen, needed to seek her mam's help to prevent a suicide, another now sees herself as completely worthless even though she's important to so many people. And Facebook's response to links and screenshots of the abuse... ? To do nothing without further evidence. What further evidence could I possibly send that I hadn't already?

To show exactly why this episode is so horrifying I'll include images of the anonymised abuse and the Facebook report messages. Please note this could be triggering. Also, I had to go through the reporting system a convoluted way because eveytime I tried to follow the instructions aimed at the app, the app either wouldn't do it or wouldn't allow me to add a comment. I apologise for my spelling in the reports to Facebook too, I was struggling to breath, shaking, and trying to silence my whirring anxious mind while writing.

This is not ok behaviour. I'm horrified. I'm anxious. I'm scared. Is this really behaviour Facebook will allow? Is it really behaviour society will allow?

Pseudonymous Zombie
xxx