I spent about a year trying to tell them it was a bad idea, that the decision was harmful to me and completely disrespected the boundaries I had set to protect myself. I told them that when the time came that the effects of this decision would come in to play, that it would be harmful to me. I told them that putting the person who had significantly harmed me in the past, a person I wanted no further contact with, in a position of power and control over an aspect of my life would be harmful to me. A position that by its very nature would force contact.
I told them.
I tried to explain my request and my reasoning. I tried to change their minds. I was met with dismissal, apathy, threats, attacks and accusations of trying to victimize my abuser, denying him of something. My motives were twisted, my intentions questioned, I was blamed.
All I asked was for my boundaries to be respected, and to not put me in a harmful situation. Here we are though, and it has come to pass, and this is exactly where I am right now, today. My abuser is in a role where he is the gatekeeper, he is in control. He can decide my future and control access to finances and information about my mother and her health that I am unable to obtain – without being in contact with the person I didn’t want to be in contact with.
This is going to be my life for a while. Every day I will wake up knowing this, feeling helpless and powerless, with him in control, again, just like he was when he abused me.
I get to re-experience that feeling every day now.
I told them.
It isn’t even that I think this control will be weaponized, or used inappropriately. It’s that I shouldn’t have been put in to this position in the first place.
I deserved to have my boundaries respected. I deserved to have at least one fucking person stand up and say “of course you shouldn’t have to interact with the person who hurt you, let’s figure out how to make that work.”
That should have been the bare minimum for someone to do, and I didn’t get it.
I told them, but they wouldn’t listen. I will never forgive them.
Your thoughts?