This is my last post for 2016. I want to put this year behind me. I want to let it go.

End of 2015 I met someone. We had a lot in common and yet we were very different. We had a connection and soon a friendship blossomed.

I had the awful catfish experience which I don’t want to go into but this friend supported me through it and helped me to get over it. I was vulnerable. I had experienced emotions with my catfish that I hadn’t experienced ever. I had also rediscovered my sexuality and I was struggling with years and years of pent up frustrations.

The world had changed a lot. I had changed. My twenty years of silence regarding my rape had been broken. I never thought that I suffered. Suffering to me is being abused, being deprived of basic human needs. That is suffering. I don’t see myself as a victim. In fact, I’m a fighter. A survivor. Telling this man about my rape was me opening up. I trusted like a child. I showed him all of me. My soul, my body, my mind. My thoughts, my conflicts.

He became my confidant and best friend. We became intimate and I fell in love. The last time I fell in love was 2002 – 14 years ago. I didn’t know how much the world had changed. That sex was now a way of passing the time. That sex was just sex. To me sex is so much more, especially when the person I’m having sex with is someone I feel a connection with. Someone I call a best friend.

I soon discovered that I was wrong. Sex didn’t mean the same to him than it did to me. I was confused. So confused. I didn’t understand how you could be that close to someone and for them to feel nothing.

So began many arguments. He always insisting that he wasn’t using me when I didn’t understand what the purpose of our relationship was. I was always too scared to lose him, so I would lie to myself and say, I can do this. He will come round. Surely. He is only confused as well and broken and a pessimist.

And now, looking back, I see him for the boy he is. A man wouldn’t have said what he said over and over again, and then kept doing what we did, over and over again. When we spent time together we were great, but as soon as we didn’t see each other, I would be needy and desperate. Two very unattractive characteristics. Two things I know now that will push any man away. But it’s what the neediness and desperation did to me that was so upsetting as well. I would get lost in my emotional turmoil and become this person I hardly recognised.

How could a sensible person like me become so irrational and change my mind so many times? On and on it went. I spent so much money on him. Weekends away, gifts, poems, songs. I even had a poem I wrote for him made into a song for his birthday. I even lend him money.  I became so lost.

What didn’t help my mental health at all is that whenever he tried to end the physical side of our relationship, he always blamed me. He would become so insulting. He would dig into my character. Tell me how I never listen. How tired he was of my emotions. How he didn’t believe how I felt. The kind best friend, would become a monster of blame. It ate away at my self esteem because I respected and trusted him so much, I started believing he must be right. I was doing this all to myself. Initially when the arguments started, I would fight back. Get angry. Say hurtful things too, but I always ended up forgiving him and believing I was wrong. The most confusing aspect of it all is that we always ended up having sex again. Now new arguments were added. I was always coming on to him. I was always seducing him. How could he resist? He can’t help he doesn’t want to be loved. He can’t help he is attracted to me. The blame was always diverted to me.

When this whole cycle began again in Nov, I fell into the depression. Reason? We had once again spent a weekend together. Hardly hours after him leaving for work I text him and I was so happy. I told him that I no longer cared what his intentions were. I knew what mine was and if all we have was like the weekend we just shared, I would be happy. He responded with the same as before. I don’t want more than friendship. I don’t want to sleep with you. This time it broke me. Depression, anxiety, anger, hurt. I just didn’t understand how we could have such a good time and then he tells me that hardly two hours afterwards.

I didn’t see him for two weeks. I was so low. I wanted to die. I wanted to know what is so wrong with me. I wanted to know how my body was good enough, but not the rest of me. I wanted to understand how he could make me feel so loved, but denied loving me. Was he just a good actor? Was he just the modern man? Is this the modern way? Men are allowed to have their way and blame the woman for everything afterwards?

It boils down to this. He never kept his word. He always said he didn’t want to be loved (by me). He didn’t want a relationship (with me). He always said he didn’t want the sex (until the next time we spent time together). I know now that if he really cared about me, even as a friend (best friend), he would have stopped the first time he said he wanted to. That’s what a man would do. That’s what a best friend would do.

In the end, it turned out he found someone else. He literally jumped from my bed into hers. It was the darkest moment for me. The knowledge of the true extent of his betrayal.

I can honestly say that I would never let him touch me again. Why would I? I wouldn’t have let him touch me the beginning of December if I knew he was already in love with another. It is kind of sick in a way. And she thinks she’s won. That this whole thing is her victory. Yes, I’ve had contact with her. And she was so smug and proud of herself and “her man”. I didn’t insult her once. Why would I? She had plenty to say to me. How weak I am. How I might be an over sensitive person. How I need to get out of my cage of suffering. How I should know that men are dickheads and assholes and that they will always take the sex when it’s given so freely. Yet she seems to fail to realise that this is the man she has chosen. A man that repeatedly used a woman for sex under the guise of being her best friend. Wow, he is truly a man to be proud of.

Lessons learned:

When a man says he doesn’t want a relationship, what he means is he doesn’t want a relationship WITH YOU.

When a man says he is not good enough for you, believe it and move on.

When a man says one thing over and over but does another, don’t be confused by it. Don’t let it anger you, turn you into a psycho bitch. Let him go.

When a man says he is not using you and makes YOU feel guilty, he is selfish. Let him go.

When a man says you are his best friend, but you are never called that in front of anyone else, or never meet his other friends, or you are the only one he acknowledges it to, it’s a red flag.  You are not his best friend. My best friends know about each other. They have even met each other. I’ve met their families. If you are his secret, friend, lover, best friend, you are just that. A secret.

I never want to lose my way again because of a man. I do not want to let a man define who I am. I was so lost in 2016. May 2017 be my sober year. A year I can be proud of.