#that's probably just paranoia but like. i blocked him on spotify too just in case

[necromanticfemme]

💞 stay strong ❣️ in my experience venting helps you resists the urge to go back to those who hurt you so if you feel comfortable here is a safe space for you to do that

cheers anon :))

(tw for vague venting abt grooming and emotional abuse ig? no obligation to read lol)

i tried drafting up a message to reply to the friend and try to vaguely explain that i definitely do not want to unblock him and this is a boundary i am going to be very firm on for the sake of my own mental health but like,,, it's so hard since she (and everyone else from that friend group) still actively keep in touch with him a lot more than i keep in touch with them so i KNOW anything i say will get sent on to him and he'll definitely have his own version of events to give them and probably make me out as irrational and crazy. he has a pattern of doing that to girls.

it's just so. messy and horrible and on one hand I'm so proud of myself for even getting to this point where i'm brave enough to cut contact for good, but also i feel really guilty and still get so paranoid that maybe he's right and i'm not at all justified in feeling the way that i do. even calling him my abuser makes me feel afraid of what he'd say to that term being applied to him, even though conversations with other friends since have really made it clear to me that what it was was emotional abuse.

i feel so stupid for letting it get to that point in the first place - i was sort of the instigator of things, since it was lockdown in 2020 and i was incredibly lonely and he was my cool older online acquaintance that i wanted to talk to more. he was about 20 and i was 16, to be precise. even that age gap throws up SUCH a fucking red flag to me now, and my irl friends raised their eyebrows at it at the time but i always insisted that it wasn't like that, it wasn't like he was a groomer or anything.

any time i would mention something about our age gap or the way the power balance felt weird sometimes and i wanted him to be more aware of the fact that i was younger and hadn't had the same experiences he had, he'd kind of blow up at me for accusing him of grooming, and that voice that sounds like him still shows up in my mind sometimes when i try to describe the dynamic. and like news flash my guy! i was literally the second underage girl you had a codependent/romantic friendship with over a period of years who then finally got fed up and cut contact after starting uni.

anyways, that's all to say that it's still really hard for me to believe myself when i say that he was bad for me. it's taking me some time to rebuild that sense of trust in my experience of reality but since stopping talking to him my mental health has gotten a lot better and I've gained so much more clarity on how he harmed me. doubly so in the weeks since i blocked him. shoutout to drunk me for finally cowgirling up and pressing the goddamn button. here's to never talking to that fucker again!