sympathy for the devil

you were the one who was jealous, possessive, and all but forbade me from talking to other people or having hobbies and interests outside of you because of your insecurities.

you were the one who swooped in and befriended anyone i showed any interest in getting to know, or sabotaged developing relationships so i wouldn't date other women.

you were the one who asked me what would have happened if we'd met later in life, and admitted you had wondered if we'd been having an emotional affair when i said i was uncomfortable with how we were talking because if i were your husband, i'd have been hurt by it.

you were the one who told me you "waited for me" and thought about me on your wedding day after practically forcing me into confessing feelings, despite my repeated attempts to set stronger boundaries for months beforehand, which you just got upset and argued with me about instead of respecting.

you were the one who called me your soulmate and your muse. you were the one who strung me along with lines about being the one you'd always wanted, that you had never stopped being in love with me, that i knew you better than anyone else and i was special to you. you're the one who filled my head with ideas about 'forever' even when we both had boyfriends.

you were the one who said i made you realize you were gay and capable of sexual desire because you had such an intense sex dream about me while staying the night, you questioned if it was real when you woke up.

i was the one who slept on the floor next to you just so you wouldn't be alone, because you couldn't bring yourself to sleep in the same bed.

you were the one who used sex as a tool for control or transaction, both with me and your husband - offering blowjobs in return for chores, threatening to take sex away during arguments ("hard to take away something i don't want," remember?)

you were the one who threatened to tell russell about the affair, despite your fears of me vindictively 'outing you' (something i never threatened or even thought about doing), directly contradicting your insistence that everything was above board.

you were the one who threatened suicide every other week if i voiced a boundary, said i didn't want to have sex, or tried to talk about how i felt.

you're the one who manipulated me into silence by telling me that i wasn't allowed to talk to anyone about what was going on, because doing so would have outed you, even to my roommate and their friends.

you're the one who controlled where i went, how i could get there, and when i was allowed to leave the house - i couldn't go inside a store for groceries during covid even though i had no car, and i could never go on walks past dusk without you being upset, meanwhile you got tattoos and browsed antique shops the whole pandemic.

you're the one who would fuck me and then roll over and immediately look at your phone. you're the one who would let me make you come and then tell me you weren't sure you'd ever want to be with me while you got ready to leave 15 minutes later.

i'm the one who said i felt used the whole time. i'm the one who said we should wait until after you divorced and had time to process that loss and coming out before we tried to be together. i'm the one who tried to end it, over and over.

you're the one who insisted we couldn't be friends, that you needed me, that ending the affair meant ending everything. you're the one who wouldn't let me go or let me move on, while you knocked yourself out with cocktails of sedatives to ignore your problems.

you were the one who regularly pinched the back of my arm, threw your cat across the room into a wall, took the knob off my door and taunted me while you cut yourself and i couldn't get out, and banished russell to the basement for a week.

you're the one who tried to force me into letting you "buy me a car" which i would then have to pay you back for and got pissed when i would not accept it, because doing so would have landed me in an overtly abusive financial situation where i was indebted to you.

you were the one hanging out with people you knew had crushes on you until 2-3 am, talking about how your "exes followed you around," and talking about how you'd do polyamory if you got to date multiple people who could only date you - meanwhile, i couldn't do my laundry without you having a meltdown because someone i barely interacted with had an unrequited crush on me.

you're the one who not only cheated, but have also monkey branched to someone new before fully leaving your current partner in every adult relationship you've been in.

you're the one who didn't stop when i said no, and then broke down when i tried to explain how important it was to listen to my boundaries afterwards.

you're the one who used the word rape.

you're the one who's changed up your story, acted like i deserved the ways you hurt me, and turned the narrative around - meanwhile what i've said had remained consistent the whole time, about my own behavior as well as yours.

you're the one who sent me suicide threats to silence me because i was getting too loud about my hurt in these nameless letters. you're the one who sent other people to read and watch my shit on your behalf.

you're the one who's treated me like a dirty little secret from the beginning, even back when we were kids.

you're the one who had all the power. you're the one who's always wanted control.

you're the one who played games, cheated, lied, manipulated.

you're the one who has a reason to lie.

You can go back and read in my journal entries the compassion I tried to hold for you, see me saying I was far from perfect; I've never blamed you for my side of things, nor have I minimized it. I said I was the only one responsible for my actions regardless of what was happening between us. Most of my entries are just lamenting the fact that I couldn't understand why you would treat me that way because I still cared about you as a person, and I foolishly believed you when you said you cared for me too.

But you've always found a way to convince yourself I deserved the awful and abusive ways you treated me and found ways to make it all my fault. You've done it since we were kids, for over 20 years - and that will never change because you never will.

Saying that I'm a lying narcissist who uses false sexual abuse allegations to "make everyone hate my exes" (demonstrably untrue, because I've always owned up to being toxic and shitty in many of my past relationships, needed therapy to realize how sexually abusive you were, and talking about SA doesn't win you social favor lol), sending me suicide threats to silence me, getting other people to stalk my blog and report back to you, having your friend Viv hover 10 feet away to watch over me while I minded my own business at a public event despite my track record of actively avoiding you in public, saying I'm smear campaigning you by processing what you did in my journal while you tell your friends half the story, and obsessing about whether or not I'll tell the truth about the affair...

Those are all things an abuser does.

And you don't get to determine other people's boundaries and consent. You don't get to decide you didn't violate them when I told you that you did - especially not because I'd been saying from the beginning that I didn't want to be in an affair, that I wanted to end the sexual relationship, that I wanted to wait until we could be in a real relationship, that I felt used. I literally told you to your face, "Kind of hard to take away something I don't want," when you threatened to stop having sex during an argument. Of course you didn't listen when I finally had the guts to say no in the moment instead of waiting until it felt safe. Why would you hear me then if you hadn't all the other times I said it? Even you admit that you "held on too tight" - by that do you mean threatening suicide any time I told you I just wanted to be friends? Because an environment where it's unsafe to say no is a sexually abusive one.

An apology was all I needed. If you'd just acknowledged what I felt, I'd have forgiven you (far too easily tbh).

Instead you doubled back on every apology, left me cryptic messages and posts, used me trying to be there to support you through your Granny's dementia after our "break up" as an avenue to try and guilt me into getting back with you, withheld my childhood things after promising to get them to me (because you were already dating Dani at that point, and presumably had been talking for a few months by then), blamed it all on me, and switched up the story. But you'd already been doing that anyway about what Russell was and wasn't okay with, and about how much he knew about the situation entirely. You apparently tell people now that things were above board the whole time, but I don't think you'd have been so worried about me talking to people about what was going on, broken down about how you didn't trust me not to blow your life up by telling him and/or outing you vindictively, or directly threatened to tell him about me during fights if you were being as transparent as you say. You change up the narrative about the sexual assault: Sometimes you insist I irreparably damaged you by "making you feel like you raped me" because I sat you down and calmly talked to you about the importance of stopping when I said no, directly after you'd failed to listen during an unwanted sexual encounter. Other times, you don't remember the event I'm referring to at all, despite the fact we talked about it multiple times via journal entries, text, and spoken conversation before you claimed it didn't happen.

You took me having boundaries and trying to hold you accountable for your behavior as a personal attack rather than an attempt to repair, and always have. You were controlling, manipulative, jealous, punitive, and emotionally volatile throughout our entire relationship, even when we weren't dating. You have always lashed out when I've tried talking about the things you did and controlled how much I was allowed to speak about it, no matter how privately - but describing your actions and how they affected me isn't revenge. If it makes you look bad for me to state the objective facts, that's on you and your conscience; it has nothing to do with me. Only one of us actually has a reason to lie about what happened. Only one of us has a reason to threaten the other into silence. Only one of us cheated and manipulated both people the whole time with lies, omissions, and half-truths.

I spent our whole lives staying silent for your benefit, while you talked shit about me to your friends, publicly made art about how heartbroken you were, sent your friends to watch over me or read my things on your behalf, and kept tabs on me to make sure I wouldn't speak out. When I finally did start processing it openly on my own blog, you silenced me with suicide threats and self-piteous laments about what a "terrible person you are" (which then, of course, became accusations about how I'm actually the terrible one). I spent 18 years reassuring you that you weren't selfish, abusive, controlling, manipulative, or mean every time you spiraled about it, spent countless hours trying to convince you of how good you were when you would argue. And every time I've had to walk away and say, "Let your actions speak for themselves," that's when you decide you hate me: When I stop sacrificing my own well-being and overlooking the ways you mistreat me to protect your ego.

I think the only reason you worried about being those things is because you knew that's how you were behaving.

you can convince your friends, your partners, and even yourself of a completely different narrative because there's no one around to say otherwise - but at the end of the day we both know the truth

let's talk about the fact i was 21 and you were 27 when we started dating. let's talk about how you told me you loved me after 3 weeks of long-distance chatting. let's talk about how you wrote me an entire song painting a picture of how in love we'd fall as we traveled. let's talk about how you had me help you buy a truck, used me to help fund your trip to YNP, and then told me once we got there that we should see other people. let's talk about how you took me 2,000 miles away from a single person I knew while you had an entire group of established friends. let's talk about how you had sex with me and told me how amazing and special i was behind closed doors, but then flirted with other girls and talked about all the other people you wanted to bang directly in front of me. or about how every time i tried to branch out and make friends you'd talk about how much you disliked them, or if i fooled around with someone after you told me in no uncertain terms we weren't an item, you'd guilt and slut-shame me. let's talk about the countless times i consoled you and reassured you what a good person you were while you sobbed into your pillow about being a piece of shit.

how about when i started mixing pills and booze? remember how awful and violent i got? do you also remember your response when i said i wanted to quit drinking and try sobriety? you discouraged me from it. you told me it was a bad idea. you'd think that someone making a change to take accountability for their abusive behavior would be a good thing to the person at the receiving end of it, but nah, you didn't want that. and i had no friends - all of yours, well, what was the only thing you all did for fun? oh, right. drink.

let's talk about how you invited kate out to YNP to visit under the guise that y'all were together, while you were telling me the same thing? remember how i got SA'd while i was blackout drunk (and sobbing my eyes out about you, actually) by another guy, and you promised you only had love in you for me and you were with me no matter what? remember how i buzzed my head and you insisted you cum on it to claim your territory? and do you remember how i heard you kissing kate through the window while i sat on your doorstep, five days after all of that happened? oooh no wait the best part is how you let me get dragged off to the psych ward after i started cutting myself (because NICK called - not you), and you wouldn't even answer me to help me figure out how to get home so i wouldn't become a ward of the state. you were too busy taking Kate on camping trips, having sex with her, and asking what y'all were gonna name your kids! just to drop her like a hot sack of potatoes once she left so you could, of course, mooch off of my brother and I for a free place to stay once you returned to Michigan. but i only found that out because i made you call her and put her on speakerphone while i listened, because naturally, you lied about all of it or said you "couldn't remember."

let's talk about the time you fucked one of your highschool friends, and when I knew about it, you lied your ass off the whole time until I contacted her about it too. You wrote me some sappy, self-piteous song to woo me back... and then told me when we were halfway across the country for another season in YNP that you had actually fucked her, and you weren't honest with me because you knew i wouldn't have gone otherwise. because you couldn't afford the trip out alone, obviously.

let's talk about the time you bought yourself an iMac for Christmas, and I bought you Protools to go with it - while you gave me socks and 1" Adventure Time figurines. let's talk about how i had to literally teach you to be a good person and not make misogynistic rape jokes. let's talk about how you sexualized me to your friends. let's talk about how often you belittled and insulted me to my face, and encouraged your friends to do the same. or about how you pinned Nick and I against one another every step of the way. let's talk about how you only complimented me when you knew i was starving myself, how you broke down my sexual boundaries and used that to make me feel like i had to constantly earn your approval because you didn't show me affection or care outside of sex. let's talk about the thousands of pictures of naked girls and porn you kept on your phone, and about the nudes you kept of your exes years after y'all broke up. wasn't Kate a teen in a lot of those pics? remember how you told me while we were dating that you'd thought i was hot when we first met, when I was a teen and you were in your 20's? or how you fucked a high school girl while you were an adult living in your dad's garage? she was my classmate, actually. you were pissed when she and I made amends over rivalry we had in school, even though it had nothing to do with you and you were objectively the one who treated her like garbage. i think you were just afraid i'd find that out from her and question the way you treated me.

let's talk about the fact that I moved out and left you because you never changed, and even then, you still tried to manipulate me and talked about how you were "looking at rings" - just to give me trash when you returned my belongings.

let's talk about selling the songs you used to manipulate me, one of which had my NAME IN THE TITLE. let's talk about getting the art i made ABOUT being abused by you, wanting to kill myself, and struggling with alcoholism tattooed onto you. 11 years after i drew it. even though i did tell you to delete all my pics because I didn't want to become part of your porno roster. let's talk about how you're 39 and still pulling this shit. i hadn't even checked in on you for years until your music page got recommended to me on insta, and i'd never dream of selling art i made for/about you, let alone getting your lyrics tattooed on me - but sure, i'm the problem. that's not obsessive or unhinged behavior at all. it's not like i'd have shit to say if you weren't still being fucking weird.

i will always say that i was terrible to be with, and i was awful to you in ways you didn't deserve - i should have left instead of letting myself become that person, and hurting you or trying to manipulate you to stay with me. every time i tried to leave you manipulated me back, too, though - and so many of those things wouldn't have happened if you hadn't manufactured those situations to begin with. our whole relationship started with that. you treated every woman around you like she was an object to be used and discarded. you didn't learn to behave better, you learned to dress it up in politically correct "feminist" language that I had to fight tooth and nail to teach you. and even now, you cannot confront the things you do. you just hide away and, if past behavior is any indication, spin more lies.

i've never questioned that leaving was the right thing, only wished i'd done it sooner, but seeing you continue the same patterns you always have when you are nearly 40 years old really just drives home what a coward you always were. i only tolerated it because i was so isolated and i was so much younger and less experienced than you... which is probably what drew you to me in the first place.

if you're going to say i physically abused you by yelling, slamming doors, or stomping, what would you call your behavior? what would you call the things you did to me if they had happened to one of your friends?

what do you think pinching the back of my arm and telling me it didn't hurt was? what do you think it was when you trapped me in my own room, taunted me while you cut yourself, and mocked me for thinking about jumping out the window? you yelled in my face, slammed doors, threw things, stomped your feet just as much if not more than i did. why is what i did physical abuse but what you did isn't, even when you trapped me (in an effort to get to me after i had locked myself in there to get away from you), disrespected my boundaries nonstop, and physically hurt me on purpose?

if a friend of yours had an experience with someone where their partner didn't stop when they said no (multiple times) during sex and then broke down when your friend tried to address the boundary violation with them - you'd say it was assault. you'd say they were manipulated. i know that's what you would call it if i had done that to you. what would you call it if they had been isolated by that person's control and jealousy, if they had been forced to keep the entire thing a secret because your friend's partner was married to a man and they "didn't want to be outed"? if they used threats of self-harm to make them stay, to keep a romantic and physical relationship they didn't want?

what power did i have over you? how did you choose to use the power you had over me?

the difference is i never said you deserved the wrong things i did - i insisted that no matter what i was accountable for my own behavior, and it was a two-way street. you were the one who blamed me, told me i deserved it, doubled back on every apology or declaration of care you gave me, weaponized everything you could against me, withheld my childhood toys, and twisted things around and changed your story. you were the one lying the whole time, waffling back and forth between saying your husband "knew about what was going on" and then threatening to tell him about us when we fought. you were the one who acted torn up about me speaking up after you didn't listen when i said no, then said you couldn't even remember it happening months later, and now say it both "damaged you irreparably" and I made it up to "make people hate you." you were the one who reached out to people you knew had caused me harm - i've reached out to one person I suspected was mistreated by you because i noticed you jumped from one relationship to another again, and someone who was still involved with you in the interest of giving them both sides of the story so they could protect themselves. you straight up contacted Ben while you and I were still talking and dragged shit up from 5-10 years prior, then crashed out and said you'd "always been jealous of him" so I'd have to comfort you when I was triggered about him selling the songs he wrote me... which was just a ploy to keep me from finding out you'd talked to him. You sent me messages saying it was my fault you were going to kill yourself, enlisted one of your friends to read my blog entries for you (most of which were honestly pretty fair, reading them back), commented on my shit... and also made buddies with someone who SA'd me, strangled me, used work and suicide threats to trap me in an unwanted relationship, and went for a position of power directly above me after purposefully switching to be on my shift. maybe if that's behavior you relate a lot to, that's not a good sign and you should try to change it instead of excusing or justifying it.

what i have said about what happened between us has been consistent from the start. i was telling you the whole time that i felt used, that i didn't want to be in an affair. i said at the time of the assault that you had crossed my boundaries and i wasn't okay with it - the only reason we stopped having sex after that was because i'd "made you feel like you raped me" and you were "afraid i'd change my mind and make you feel bad." i didn't change my mind, i said no THREE TIMES and tried to physically hold you still when you assaulted me. i only brought it up after because you didn't listen and KEPT GOING - and again, i had been trying to stop it for ages before that. one time you even threatened to take sex away and got angry when i said, "hard to take away something i don't want." i tried to end the sexual relationship and you threatened suicide, mixed a bunch of sedatives, and turned off your phone so many times i can't even count. when i was suicidal and hiding my plans from you, you held that over my head and used it against me in fights, but there were months-long spans where every other week you were threatening it against me... and yet somehow i never leveraged that against you. why do you think i wanted to die when there was no escape and i was completely isolated, forced into secrecy, and trapped into staying by your constant suicide threats? meanwhile you'd still threaten to leave every other week if i did something you didn't like after begging me to stay, the same way you did when we were kids. when i finally took you seriously after you said you were done and shut your phone off for three days, you acted like i was the one who had broken your heart and abandoned you.

yet another thing that hadn't changed from when we were kids.

Did you miss me the way I grieved you all those years in between? Did you feel like there was a hole ripped into your chest from the family you'd lost? Did you ever stop to question what really happened and why things went the way they did after mom died? Do you ever wonder now?

I know he's your dad too. That's why I tried as hard as I could to protect you from finding out the full truth of what was going on. That's why I told you I wasn't going to get you involved, that you had every right to be angry at me for speaking out and I wasn't going to try to convince you what I was saying was really happening - even while he was actively harassing me. But you involved yourself, and then picked sides with your silence, and you hurt and isolated me in the process

Why would I lie about you crossing my boundaries when I felt so ashamed for not speaking up for myself and for being part of the situation at all, and when you yourself admit that you are controlling and "held on too tight"

Vs.

Why would you lie about ignoring someone when they said no to sex? Why would you lie about coercing them into a sexual relationship they made it clear they didn't want by breaking down and threatening suicide any time they tried to de-escalate to being just friends? Why would you lie about how much your husband and your affair partner both knew about the situation? Why would you lie about isolating them by making sure they couldn't talk about what was going on so you wouldn't "get outed"? Why would you evade accountability for these things?

But I love you enough to want to do that nonetheless

And I hate myself for loving you because I feel like I shouldn't. I feel like loving you means what I experienced wasn't real. How can the two coexist?

But they do

I love you anyway because you're part of me, because you're a person who deserves compassion, because I understand why you are the way you are, because I know I'm as imperfect as anybody else and I hurt you too

I just wish you had not hurt me in such horrific ways. I wish I felt safe with you, that I could trust you. I wish I didn't have to grieve what should have been while you're still alive. I wish I didn't have to hate myself for loving you so much.

Sometimes I wish I could stop - but I don't want the same regrets with you that I have with Mom and Grandma, and no matter what I always wind up back here anyway: