I feel incredibly distressed tonight. My Ex-Roomate is refusing to take me off the lease unless I sign some sort of "agreement," which he hasn't given me yet, so I don't know what's in it. He's sent me many accusatory e-mails, in which he insults me, and tries to lay the blame of what happened on my head. He tires to downplay what happened, constantly refering to what happened as "what you think happened" or "the night that you became frightened." He has quit trying to make me like him again and move back in with him. He sees that I mean business, and that I'm not going to be his friend again, and now he's attacking me.
But the truth is that he was attacking me in one way or another almost the whole time that I lived with him. He constantly invaded my privacy. He was allways trying to tell me what to do. He was allways pointing out in which ways I was dyfunctional, and how if I let him tell me what to do everything would work out. Watching him interact with his other "friends" was allways a distressing experience, because he would berate them incessantly, try to make them feel like they were bad people that he could fix, and whenver they said anything to stand up for themselves he would concoct some sort of logical trap, hit them with a torrent of technical words, and when they would become confused he would swoop in for the kill, telling them that the outcome of his statement was that they needed to do what he said. It was really sick, and by the end of my time there I was barely speaking with him. Luckily, by the end of the time I was living there he was spending the majority of his time sleeping on the couch, and his speeches to me were usually just one sentence statements, telling me to not think this, not worry about that, and not do the other thing, which I pretty much just ignored.
The one thing that I did that I'm not so proud of is I promised him, the day after he attacked his friend and tried to break down my door, that if he got my name off the lease quickly and without argument, then I wouldn't tell the apartment manager what had happened. However, after a few weeks went by and no action had been taken, I went to the aparment manager and told him everything that happened, to find out what my options were. I also did this because, reviewing my ex-roommate's past actions, I realized that he would most likely distort the situation to try to lay the blame on me (I have first-hand experience of him doing this. One time he asked me to write an e-mail to someone who was supposed to give him notes for a class. This was right before he checked himself into an institution for a few days, and he asked me to tell his friend that he was in the hospital, didn't have e-mail access, and that he really needed his friend to bring the notes ASAP to the office of students with disabilities. I wrote the e-mail, then sent it, and then felt like shit. I told him that I would never do anything like that for him again). Also, every time I talked to him before he found out I told the apartment manager what happened he tried to manipulate me into moving back in with him, which made it clear to me that he was not interested in getting me off the lease. But I did break my promise to him, and I don't feel good about that. Now, he's using that as an excuse to make things difficult, constantly reminding me in his e-mails (I refuse to talk to him on the phone) that everything would have gone off just fine if I had not broken that agreement, and that now he's forced to have me agree, in writing, to certain things. I shuder to think what these "certain things" might be.
The real point of all of this is that I feel really broken right now. I feel like I can't trust anyone anymore, that I can't open myself up to other people. I thought that I was putting this all behind me, but my actions and feelings say differently. I find myself being very schemeing with other people, and very selfish. I've been avoiding people in general, because I feel very vulnerable in front of them, and wary of how they might try to manipulate me. But I realize now that that's the exact opposite of what is good for me. What I need to do is associate myself with people who have proven to me in the past that they can be trusted, so as to restore my faith in people. Isolation has never helped me. It has always made things worse. Loving association has always made things better. But I'm afraid that my judgement is shot, and that the people that I thought I could trust in the past will turn on me at any moment.
But it's not like my ex-roommate turned on me out of the blue. It was actually a not-very-surprising culmination of events. He was verbally manipulating me the whole time. When I cut off that avenue, and closed myself off emotionally and mentally from him, he took the desperate act of trying to get at me physically. When I cut off that avenue by moving out, he's trying to get at me legally. He's been doing it the whole time. This is not the case with my other friends. They have been trustworthy the whole time I've known them, and I have no reason to doubt them now.
Alot of times I feel like I can't trust a certain individual, or that so-and-so gives me a bad feeling, and that I should keep that person at arm's length. However, I usually discount those feelings, because of my problems with paranoia in the past. I need to realize that there are certain people that I can't trust, but there are alot more that I can. The fact that there are some people out there who could easily do me harm is not paranoid, it's realistic. What I need to do, however, is look at the facts of how people treat me, not go just be feelings. There were alot of things that my ex-roommate said and did before I moved in with him that could have tipped me off that he was of dubious trustworthiness, and that he probably wouldn't be a good person to associate myself with too closely. On the other hand, my long-term friends have shown me, over and over again, that I can trust them. That they're not out to manipulate me or use me.
Why can't I get this out of my head? What do I need to do to start the healing process?
But the truth is that he was attacking me in one way or another almost the whole time that I lived with him. He constantly invaded my privacy. He was allways trying to tell me what to do. He was allways pointing out in which ways I was dyfunctional, and how if I let him tell me what to do everything would work out. Watching him interact with his other "friends" was allways a distressing experience, because he would berate them incessantly, try to make them feel like they were bad people that he could fix, and whenver they said anything to stand up for themselves he would concoct some sort of logical trap, hit them with a torrent of technical words, and when they would become confused he would swoop in for the kill, telling them that the outcome of his statement was that they needed to do what he said. It was really sick, and by the end of my time there I was barely speaking with him. Luckily, by the end of the time I was living there he was spending the majority of his time sleeping on the couch, and his speeches to me were usually just one sentence statements, telling me to not think this, not worry about that, and not do the other thing, which I pretty much just ignored.
The one thing that I did that I'm not so proud of is I promised him, the day after he attacked his friend and tried to break down my door, that if he got my name off the lease quickly and without argument, then I wouldn't tell the apartment manager what had happened. However, after a few weeks went by and no action had been taken, I went to the aparment manager and told him everything that happened, to find out what my options were. I also did this because, reviewing my ex-roommate's past actions, I realized that he would most likely distort the situation to try to lay the blame on me (I have first-hand experience of him doing this. One time he asked me to write an e-mail to someone who was supposed to give him notes for a class. This was right before he checked himself into an institution for a few days, and he asked me to tell his friend that he was in the hospital, didn't have e-mail access, and that he really needed his friend to bring the notes ASAP to the office of students with disabilities. I wrote the e-mail, then sent it, and then felt like shit. I told him that I would never do anything like that for him again). Also, every time I talked to him before he found out I told the apartment manager what happened he tried to manipulate me into moving back in with him, which made it clear to me that he was not interested in getting me off the lease. But I did break my promise to him, and I don't feel good about that. Now, he's using that as an excuse to make things difficult, constantly reminding me in his e-mails (I refuse to talk to him on the phone) that everything would have gone off just fine if I had not broken that agreement, and that now he's forced to have me agree, in writing, to certain things. I shuder to think what these "certain things" might be.
The real point of all of this is that I feel really broken right now. I feel like I can't trust anyone anymore, that I can't open myself up to other people. I thought that I was putting this all behind me, but my actions and feelings say differently. I find myself being very schemeing with other people, and very selfish. I've been avoiding people in general, because I feel very vulnerable in front of them, and wary of how they might try to manipulate me. But I realize now that that's the exact opposite of what is good for me. What I need to do is associate myself with people who have proven to me in the past that they can be trusted, so as to restore my faith in people. Isolation has never helped me. It has always made things worse. Loving association has always made things better. But I'm afraid that my judgement is shot, and that the people that I thought I could trust in the past will turn on me at any moment.
But it's not like my ex-roommate turned on me out of the blue. It was actually a not-very-surprising culmination of events. He was verbally manipulating me the whole time. When I cut off that avenue, and closed myself off emotionally and mentally from him, he took the desperate act of trying to get at me physically. When I cut off that avenue by moving out, he's trying to get at me legally. He's been doing it the whole time. This is not the case with my other friends. They have been trustworthy the whole time I've known them, and I have no reason to doubt them now.
Alot of times I feel like I can't trust a certain individual, or that so-and-so gives me a bad feeling, and that I should keep that person at arm's length. However, I usually discount those feelings, because of my problems with paranoia in the past. I need to realize that there are certain people that I can't trust, but there are alot more that I can. The fact that there are some people out there who could easily do me harm is not paranoid, it's realistic. What I need to do, however, is look at the facts of how people treat me, not go just be feelings. There were alot of things that my ex-roommate said and did before I moved in with him that could have tipped me off that he was of dubious trustworthiness, and that he probably wouldn't be a good person to associate myself with too closely. On the other hand, my long-term friends have shown me, over and over again, that I can trust them. That they're not out to manipulate me or use me.
Why can't I get this out of my head? What do I need to do to start the healing process?
posted by nearfalse | 10:53 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home