Confessions From An Emotional Abuse Victim:

Confessions from an emotional abuse victim:

#3 Real friendship

Due to my abuse coming from someone who I considered my 'best friend', as opposed to a partner or family member, after I broke out of the cycle of abuse, I had troubles with friendship.

I had become pretty separate from my friends I had before him, and I never thought I would ever actually need someone other than him anymore, so I didn't really try very hard to have other friends. At the end of that friendship, I had just entered a new little friend group because of my boyfriend, and I was also in a musical where I had found three people I really vibed with. Two of them are still some of my closest friends to this day.

Regardless of my shaky little support system, I still had a lot of trouble navigating friendship. I'm autistic and had just gotten out of one and a half years of covid isolation before I dove into an abusive friendship, so my social skills were not very great. The only two roles I knew in a friendship were leader and follower. As I tried to navigate friendships that weren't meant to hurt someone, I found myself making people uncomfortable a lot. I didn't know what to do or say, and I would go between either being really self centered or obsessing over the other person. I would hurt people without realizing and I became pretty isolated.

I spent most of the one year after leaving my abuser like that. I desperately tried to reach out and get people to enjoy my presence, but nothing I did seemed to work. It didn't help that I had gotten a silent reputation the year before when I pushed people away and blindly followed and backed up someone who everyone else could tell was a complete dickhead.

The one person who stuck by my side was my best friend. She took me under her wing and taught me some of the ways that friendship was supposed to look. I still have the memory ingrained in my mind of the one day we were in her basement building things with Lego, and she referred to me as her 'bestie'. I nearly broke down crying. My abuser had weaponized that term against me near the end of our friendship, saying that he hated when I called him my best friend. Hearing her say that was one of the most blissful moments of my life.

The next year, I decided to go to a different high school than pretty much everyone else from my middle school, including all the people I was friends with. I felt that I needed a clean slate, but I didn't really give myself one. I tried making friends, but after feeling even the slightest amount of push back from anyone, I would retreat. This left me with some people I didn't vibe with that well, but wouldn't reject me.

I stayed like that for a while, and was slightly miserable. I'm still not sure how it happened, but eventually near the end of the school year, I found my people. My friends right now are absolutely amazing people. I still mess up a bit, but I'm finally learning how real friendship works.

Navigating non-toxic relationships can become really hard after being in an abusive situation. It takes years, and many screw ups, but it's possible to become a better person surrounded by good people. As I continue to try and improve myself, I find that more people want to be around me. Improvement is possible, and will bring so many amazing new things into your life.