The first guy was supposed to be my best friend until he did a thing I never thought could come from him to me. “I thought we were friends”, I asked, and in his response, “even friends can do this”. I didn’t expect that to come from him, however, I almost believed him until he tried to do something worse. In his same words, “you are irresistible and it’s your fault to be like that. So, how do you expect that I don’t do that to you?” Sadly, the damage started from there.
Deep down, I felt guilty for being so irresistible that even my friend could think of saying that to me. That would mean that other men would do worse because I am simply irresistible. So, I stopped trying to be irresistible. I stayed more indoors so that men won’t see me as my friend did. I stopped doing a lot of things to prevent reoccurrence. I convinced myself so much that it was my fault and my friend wasn’t a bad person, so we continued being friends. However, I restricted his access to me.
Two years after this incident, I met someone else who was like a big brother to me at work. I was working in a high school and being the youngest staff at the time, I was under the protection of many of the staff members. I had friends, but they protected me like I was their baby, so I felt really safe around everyone.
This new guy joined us, and was attracted to me after we had a riddle competition and I won his monetary prize. It was a really fun time. He said, “you are very intelligent, and I feel like I could learn a thing from you”. He was in his finals in school, so his duration at work was for a short time. He is way older than me, so like I felt with other staff members, I felt safe with him too. We would talk about many things including politics, economy and all. It was really fun having conversations with him because he is really intelligent too.
One day, I felt something was off about him. I think they call it guts feeling. But while I was thinking, it felt like he read my mind from afar. He placed a call right through to me and debunked the thoughts I had right away before I voiced it. My mistake was thinking he’s a perfect human and would never think of such. Also, I blamed myself for thinking too deeply and too far it almost ruined my friendship with him. The second mistake.
Everything was going well with us, until about three months later when I had left the work place and returned to school while he also had returned to school to complete his studies. We were still very much in communication. On one of those calls, he planned a visit, and that was when it happened.
In his words, “I wouldn’t have done that to you. It’s just because you are so irresistible and I don’t know what else to do when you were so close”. Well, that was it. It messed with my brain so much that I remembered my friend back home who had told me exactly the same thing.
I beat myself up for being like that, and I tried to hide from people as much as possible so that I won’t have a repeat of the incident. It took the intervention of a friend I met along the line to call me back to order.
He said, “they are the bad ones, not you. It’s not your fault that you are so innocent that you deal with people with plain minds and in deep trust. They are the ones that are bad and are trying to make you take responsibility for their bad acts. Meanwhile, can you see how you dress? Nothing about you calls them to do that to you, but they did that anyways, and it’s because their intentions towards you was bad. So, no. Stop blaming yourself for their actions. Remind yourself of how good a person you are. Also, you’ll meet more bad people along the way. Don’t let them gaslight you into taking responsibility for their lack of self-control”.
I hope the next time you try to blame yourself for people’s actions, come back here to read the paragraph above over and again.
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