My nightmares are one of the reasons my counselor suggested PTSD. I felt silly afterwards for not having considered it. It stands out to me now. I had a nightmare last night about my abuser marrying a former best friend.
I had a painful friend break up that happened with me a couple years ago. This was a friend who I'd known since childhood. We spent SO much time together. I ended up feeling stifled. I wasn't very tactful (I was in 7th grade at this point) and I basically told her I didn't want to be her friend anymore because I didn't get any space. She was mad, of course, and we didn't speak for another two years. After that we happened to strike up a conversation at a church youth camp and decided that we loved each other tons and didn't want to continue being mad at each other. I felt grateful that she'd given me another chance. She is really funny, a strong personality, and we had a strong history. We were obsessed with our American Girl dolls, babysat each other's pet fish, rode our bikes to each other's houses all the time, played on the same soccer team. We attended the same church and our families were friends. We celebrated several Thanksgivings together.
So we were friends again after the church camp. We weren't "best friends" quite the same, but that was ok. We went to choir together, talked occasionally, kept each other updated. Eventually she started dating one of my friends and we had a couple double dates with my abuser and myself.
She supported me when my abuser broke up with me, but was shocked to find that we'd been having sex. I've never quite figured her out; she always made dirty jokes and innuendo and seemed to understand the process and culture of sex WAY more than myself, but she made no secret of her disapproval of me. I think she knew that I had felt pressured into doing it, so that maybe softened her reaction a bit. This was also before I knew the extent of the abuse and was still blaming myself for everything.
When my daughter was born and I moved out of my mother's house, she helped me move and go shopping. Her mother bought me a crock pot. I felt so grateful that I had her; she was my rock for a while. She came over often and we'd make dinner and stay up late. We'd all go out to the "beach" (there is a small artificial lake in my town) and we generally just hung out a lot. She offered to babysit for me when I began dating my now-husband. I am a terrible housekeeper. My dishes were often a week old, laundry was never folded, toys often were not picked up. I seem to like and attract clutter.
My friend was a neat freak (she also had a diagnosed anxiety disorder for which she took medication). Sometimes when she came over, after my daughter had been put to bed, I'd do the dishes while we listened to music and talked. I didn't want her to do them for me, I just appreciated the company. But it started to happen that she would get impatient with the dishes piling up and start doing them before I did, or she'd start tidying up, folding laundry, etc. She taught my daughter to fold before she turned two! Again, I was grateful for the help. I don't think I ever failed to thank her, and I don't know that I ever asked her to do these things. Now, though, I wonder if she felt used.
Anyway. When I began to date my husband, she was my confidant and was eager to know ALL the details. So I told her all the details, including the first time we had sex. She became really concerned again; she urged me to remember how awful my relationship had been with my abuser and chalked it up to premarital sex. Despite being such a strong personality, loud, and very opinionated, she also subscribed to pretty rigid gender roles and made fun of us for not always fitting gender norms (my husband is more of the sensitive and romantic one of the two of us). It was strange too, because she would act excited and ask me about the things we did and what is was like and even gave me a gift card to Victoria's Secret, implying I should get something naughty for him. Then she'd turn around and berate me for my activity, talk about how it was against the Church and sinful. I continued being honest with her. I didn't know how to explain how it was radically different than my first and only other sexual experience. After my abusive relationship, I also attributed my continuing feelings of anger and guilt and shame and hatred and misery to the sin of premarital sex. I know now it's a normal reaction to the abuse, and that I most likely have PTSD. At the time I didn't know it. With my husband, it was not the same. I felt free, like I was in charge completely of my decisions and my body. He never pressured me; I initiated almost all of our physical encounters. He didn't degrade or make fun of my body. He didn't withdraw emotionally or push my boundaries or make fun of my awkwardness or any of the horrid weapons my abuser had used against me. I didn't feel as though I was doing anything wrong; my gut told me this was the right person to be doing it with. It ended up just being a strange topic between us, so I'd find reasons to change the subject.
Other stuff started coming up. While she was visiting she'd discipline my daughter on things that weren't terribly important to me and clean up after her without really waiting to see if I would. I didn't speak up, because she watched my daughter often and I didn't want her to feel unappreciated. Once when she offered to babysit to see if I wanted to go hang out with my boyfriend, I said I'd rather spend the evening with her. She congratulated me on being "grown up" and not going out on a school night. Seriously. She started staying later and later even after I dropped hints that I was tired. If she felt my attention wandering from her, she'd throw pillows at me or make jokes about how sexy I was. Sometimes I wondered if she was attracted to me. I started remembering how stifling the relationship had felt when we were younger, but I loved her. I wanted to be friends with her.
My husband and I decided we wanted to have a baby. It was a very rash, spur-of-the-moment decision and we knew it. We didn't even live together. We'd discussed marriage but he was wary about it and we wanted to just feel like we could be together without any label "pressure". I was ok with this, although he knew I wanted to get married someday. We both just felt that we wanted a child together. I became pregnant the night we decided.
It was rather rough on everybody. My mom was terrified, my older sister thought I'd gone nuts, his parents were diplomatically congratulatory (they've always told me though that they were positively thrilled we got together; my mother and his father are best friends), I don't even remember my dad's reaction. I don't think it was bad, just sort of distant. Anyway. My friend continued to be a babysitter for me. My daughter adored her, but we started getting further apart. She seemed less and less interested. I remember feeling like she wanted me to choose between her and my husband.
We lost the baby we had conceived at 5 1/2 weeks. It was devastating for us; my husband cried often and I cried all the time and it was terrible. We had wanted this baby so badly and we were thrilled that she had been coming. We had both gotten a strong vibe that it was a girl, and we'd decided to name her Matilda. When she was gone, I felt like we were going insane with grief. My family tried to help, but due to the religious nature of the family I have their consolement went a little too often to the idea that losing the baby was "for the best" due to our unmarried status. We made no secret of the fact that we were still determined to be parents together and shortly moved in to a house that we rented. It was exciting despite the lingering grief of the lost baby, but it seemed to be too much for my friend. She stopped calling me after that. I called her a few times, wanting to clear up any misunderstanding, and I wanted to assure her that I loved her very much and didn't want her out of our lives. We invited her over for dinner a couple times and things appeared to go well; she and my husband got along very well (they both love dirty jokes lol) and I felt like maybe we were on the mend. When we became pregnant again soon after (our daughter will be two years old in a week and a day!) I called her with the news. We had a long conversation about how our relationship had gone so far...she told me she felt that I had betrayed her by my decisions, that I wasn't the person I had led her to believe that I was. I was at a loss; I felt more myself than ever. I tried to express how I felt like I was finally learning about who I am and what I want out of my life. She felt that I had betrayed my faith by living in sin. I even spoke with my priest, because I had stopped recieving the Eucharist out of respect for the Church, but I felt sure that if I was truly in mortal sin, I would have some sort of inner voice saying so, and it simply wasn't there. My priest was amazing about it. He listened to me about how I did want to get married, but my husband was atheist and wary of all things religion. We were surrounded by broken marriages and divorce. He simply didn't have any faith that our commitment could be stronger because of a piece of paper. I told my priest about my inner conviction that had been present since the beginning (in sharp contrast to my gut feelings about my abuser) that I knew my husband would stand by me til the end despite our unmarried status (he had also stated so, and he has never been anything but terribly honest with me or anyone else). My priest said it in a beautiful way; he said we grew up in a world where the concept of true marriage had been dropped and broken into pieces, and our generation had been left to pick them up and put them together in any way we could that made sense to us. He said that also meant eventually it was our responsibility to pick up that last piece, marriage, but he didn't tell me I was in mortal sin, and he said I could recieve the Eucharist without fear.
My friend didn't see it that way. I told her I wasn't any less Catholic; that my relationship with my husband was full of love and goodness, and how could that drive me from God when it was full of God? I even told her that our having a baby was conditional on having that baby baptised. My husband knew of my faith, and I had no desire to leave my faith or not raise my children in it. She insisted that he must not really love me if he wasn't willing to marry me. My friend still didn't understand, and I had to accept the fact that she probably never would.
When our daughter was born, my friend and I had not spoken for a while. I called her up and invited her to dinner. I had left her and her family a message inviting them to my daughter's baptism but had not recieved a reply. She came to dinner and it was like nothing bad had ever happened between us; we joked and laughed and told stories. Then she asked my husband how he felt about having the child baptised in a faith he didn't believe in. He made a light-handed comment about not thinking that some "guy in the sky" was going to make much of a difference for us. My friend got very quiet for a minute. When she spoke she sounded very defensive and started arguing with my husband and his beliefs. We were both taken aback; he said he wasn't trying to attack anyone, and she responded with a biting comment about how it was stupid to think that God couldn't exist. My husband responded with reminding her that she had asked him how he felt, and all he had done was tell her, and that he didn't feel appreciated about being critizised in his own home. She started crying and left.
After that she deleted me from her facebook page. I called her infrequently but she never responded. I have seen her a couple times at the university we both attend, and we exchange a smile and a nod, but that's it.
I wish this still didn't hurt me. I think back and I don't know how to feel. Was I taking advantage of her? Did I not do enough? Why did she always pretend everything was fine until I pushed her to talk? Was I a bad friend or was she jealous of my relationship? I don't think I'll ever know.
In any case, I often have nightmares about my abuser finding ways to infiltrate my life. My most frequent dreams involve waking up to him in my bed instead of my husband, him stealing my daughter and disappearing to another country, or him just walking into my home, sitting down, and joking with my family like he belonged there. These dreams terrify me. Last night, I dreamed that he was marrying this friend. It was flashed in my face and hints were dropped that it was part of a grand scheme to ruin me. When I woke up I was choking back tears.
I know they are dreams. I know it's not real. But I hate it that the deepest parts of my heart are still exactly where his program knows to target.
