Well, I probably need legit therapy for this, but since I can’t have that at the moment I’m coming to Reddit.
This person has been a friend and our families close for a long time. Let’s call her Molly. Molly had a hard child/teenhood. She was closer to other folks in my family but when I moved back home after being married we did a lot with Molly- hanging out, going out, watching movies, shopping, and having a lot of deep conversations. She was 18 at the time.
There was pressure on me from both sides of our families to be like a mentor for her in very specific ways to get her to where they thought she should be in regards to where they thought her life was headed. She was struggling with some mental health issues, was really disrespectful and hurtful towards her family, and was headed down a dark and dangerous road. I didn’t want her to feel forced into hanging out with us and I didn’t want to force her to look up to me as this specific kind of person in her life, so I took everything anyone said with a grain of salt and just shared my own life experiences with her and we hung out just like we would with anyone else.
Now I have the experience of working with “troubled youth” and such which I think is why everyone was kind of hoping I could fix the situation, but because I have that experience I was not coming into the situation thinking I could or even trying to fix the situation. I just wanted to be support if she needed it, and to hold her accountable to certain things she said to me she wasn’t going to do.
Well there was one day she asked me some questions about my past and I shared with her I had been SA’d as a child and as an older teen. The one person I shared this with when I finally processed it had been my mother, but she didn’t know how to help me as it stirred up her own grief and pain. I shared with her I largely had to walk through that alone and it was hard and scary and still affects me to this day and to some extent probably always will. I let her know this is why I was worried about some of the situations she was putting herself in and that it was why I was concerned about some of her choices.
That day she seemed to take what I said to heart and really consider it. A few weeks later she was struggling with some mental health stuff and threatening to fight me at her parents house because she “just need to fight someone right now and you seem like the right one” as I was trying to deescalate her and get her to calm down she yelled at me that she was going to do what she wanted to do because she wanted to be rp’d and SA’d. I calmly told her she had no idea what she was really saying. She told me that’s what she wanted and she wanted to know what it would feel like. It took a lot of self control for me to talk to her calmly and get her to sit down on the couch before I left.
Fast forward to her now legitimately having been rp’d/SA’d by different people, and to now where she’s been caught up in some legal stuff because her baby daddy also did terrible horrific things to her. The good news is that she’s able to speak out and possibly becoming an advocate for women who have faced this kind of violence.
I’m over here wanting to be supportive… but I’m finding that difficult. Partially because of what she said years ago, even though I know she had no idea what she was saying at the time. Also because my own mother who has used my own past against me and purposefully forced me to be around people associated with my own trauma while fully knowing that’s what she was doing has now helped this friend through all this legal stuff and been supporting her.
I know what she went through was legit and intense trauma, I would never wish that upon my worst enemy! I’m sad for her. Still, I’m struggling to feel empathy or to be proud of her because of all this. She’s reached out to me a few times and I feel badly, I know I’ve distanced myself from her quite a bit and that might appear unfairly to her and our families… I’m not sure where to go from here… and I don’t like being unable to empathize with a fellow survivor.
TL;DR: friend has faced unspeakable trauma but I’m having a hard time empathizing because of something she said years ago, even though I know there was no way she knew what she was actually saying at the time.
3 comments
> A few weeks later she was struggling with some mental health stuff and threatening to fight me at her parents house because she “just need to fight someone right now and you seem like the right one” as I was trying to deescalate her and get her to calm down she yelled at me that she was going to do what she wanted to do because she wanted to be rp’d and SA’d. I calmly told her she had no idea what she was really saying.
For what it’s worth, it sounds like she was digging deep for whatever she could say that was most likely to make you agree to fight her.
She still owes you an apology. A massive fucking apology.
But if you’re able to, I’d try to look at this like an extremely low point from a woman who wasn’t in her right mind.
That doesn’t mean you have to close that distance. You don’t owe her that. You don’t even have to forgive her. Not when she never made it right.
But…I pity her. And I’d like to doubt that she sincerely meant a single word of that sewage.
She needs professional help. Not sure why her parents didn’t get her help back then.
It’s ok to distance yourself for you own mental health. Just because some in your family want you to be a mentor and “fix” her, doesn’t mean you have to take on that work, especially if it sets you back yourself or exposes you to issues that are harmful to you. It’s ok to take a step back and take care of yourself instead. She’s been through some trauma, but so have you and you deserve care and treatment as well. She may not have really meant what she said to you, but she still said it and it still had a consequence. She owes you an apology, for trying to harm you physically and emotionally.
Personally, I would grey rock someone like this until the end of time, but you can take time to think about it and make the right decision for yourself.