The Sociopath Next Door.

(TRIGGER WARNING.)




Early this year, I came to very traumatizing terms with the fact that I was raped. By someone who was supposed to be my best friend.

And that's the reason I felt safe; he was my best friend; someone who was supposed to love and support me, someone who was supposed to be there for me, want to protect me, want to make sure I was okay. He was the person who claimed to love me to the sky and back.

And now, he's my rapist.

The background story is that, at the time I was raped, we were former lovers; met in high school, dated for two years, broke up, and remained good friends; eventually evolved to "best friend" territory; told each other everything, hung out all the time, laughed at the same stuff, had the same taste in music, books, movies, art, etc. Being young and naive and without a lot of experience in getting screwed over, I idealized him; ignored all of the signs of sociopathy that are now so crystal clear. It's funny how that happens; how all of those issues rush back once the rose-colored glasses are gone for good.

He's your average, textbook sociopath: superficially charming and charismatic; popular and good-looking; spewed lie after lie and broken promise after broken promise coolly and pathologically; always had an astounding lack of regard for others and absolutely no empathy toward anyone or anything; domineering, and he'd become SO bitter and outraged if someone ever did anything to dwarf him or knock him off of his throne; shallowly emotional; had no remorse, or dramatically feigned remorse for humiliating and degrading others; completely smug and smarmy; unaware and in absolute denial of privilege; impulsive by nature; deliberately manipulative; self-serving and self-absorbed; total know-it-all; never took responsibility for anything, or blamed OTHERS for the things that he did; and most of all, he never thought anything was wrong with him, and it was always everyone else who had the problem. All of the classic traits we all know and love. And by "love," I actually mean "morally despise."

As for the actual rape... I'll never forget that day.

We hadn't seen each other in a long time. It was summer, and he came over to my house for a visit, under the guise of watching The Goonies and playing bad video games. In retrospect, it just seems like the entire act was premeditated. He hadn't even been in my house for twenty minutes before he began kissing me and fondling me in ways I wasn't comfortable with, given that we were not a couple and I was no longer interested in him; definitely not interested in having sex with him. I asked him to stop, and he did... at first. Not five minutes later, he began again with the kissing and inappropriate touching, only this time, he was a lot more aggressive and less willing to listen to me when I told him to stop. He began trying to weasel my shirt off and I resisted, but then he pinned me down. I got pretty freaked out and there wasn't much I could do to fight him off; I'm a tiny girl, and he's a foot taller than me and a good 80-100 pounds heavier. And, beyond that, what can you really do to stop someone after they've eradicated your basic humanity to the point where you're nothing but a cunt and a set of tits? I asked him over and over why he was doing this, wouldn't kiss him back, struggled to break away, and uttered, screamed, cried, and whimpered a pregnant series of ignored "no"s, pleaded him not to do this, and was completely and systemically disregarded and outright ignored. Soon, I was lying under him, staring up at a corner in my ceiling with tears in my eyes, trying and failing to ignore the feel of his weight pinning me down, his rough, grabbing hands, wet, slimy mouth, and, most significantly, the unwanted penetration; trying to block it out, transport my mind, disassociate from my body completely, and hoping against all hope that I would soon wake up from this nightmare that I was painfully aware was not a sleeping nightmare.

Within the next few days, after hating myself and crying and never wanting to leave the shower, I spoke with him over the phone. I told him, point-blank, that the "sex" was non-consensual, and how upset I was with the entire situation, how angry I was that he could do that to me. Instead of being respectful, or remorseful, or even decent, he chose to shame me out of calling it what it was; insisted that I was being a "crazy bitch," wanted it as much as he did, and that I "let it happen," and thus, it was not rape. Not to mention that we had a previous romantic relationship during which I HAD consented to sex with him a great many times, though even then, in retrospect, he coerced, demanded, goaded, laid guilt-trips, or otherwise manipulated me into having sex with him quite a few times after an explicit "no" or three was loudly declared.

However, it was full-on rape, that day. And I'll tell you why, from my own experiences, thoughts, and perspectives:

Consensual sex doesn't make you cry and hate yourself and curl up into a ball on your bed for three days after and invoke a fear of being intimate with people you WANT to be intimate with.

Consensual sex doesn't cause you to make excuses to keep every significant other you've had afterwards at an arm's length because, even though you know you can trust them, and they would never hurt you (especially not like that), it's hard to trust anyone fully.

Consensual sex doesn't give you the frantic NEED to constantly keep your mind busy just so you can grapple for ways not to think about it.

Consensual sex doesn't make you positively nauseated when you look back on it.

Consensual sex doesn't cause you to mentally transport or disassociate from your own body when you're having sex you actually want to have.

Consensual sex doesn't cause panic attacks when you take your clothes off in front of someone else, or when one of your partners touches you in a similar way and it triggers a flashback.

Consensual sex doesn't implant irrational thoughts in your head every time you leave your house, that you need to keep a watchful eye on him, and him, and him by the bus stop, and him in the juice aisle, him, and him, and him.

Consensual sex doesn't make you seriously consider enlisting the services of a good therapist.

I should know, because I've had consensual sex, and I've been raped. I've also been through every single one of these scenarios (and others) since that day.

For a long time, I shamed MYSELF out of calling it rape, because, in addition to the vitriol he spat at me that day when I laid out my initial accusations, the many narratives of the rape culture we live in went through my head, over and over. Because I didn't know any better. I thought what we're all taught to think: Rapists are strangers in bushes in the middle of the night. Rape is a power-struggle, and includes palpable physical violence and vicious threats; maybe even the use of an assault weapon. You can't be raped by a person you've consented to sex with in the past, because if they've stuck it in once, they're entitled to do it whenever they please forthwith. I blamed myself for letting him kiss me and then trying to back out, and being alone with him, and not asking him to leave the first time he kissed and touched me and I didn't like it.

And all of that is the result of a society where it's not only acceptable, but commonplace, to blame the victim. And a society believes that rape is considered a natural, human behavior; not the vicious, violent, life-altering, filthy, personally-ruinous, disgusting, degrading, dehumanizing act that it actually is.

I think that's what bothers me the MOST.

I have to live with all of that for the rest of my life; the humiliation, the degradation, the disgust, and aberration, the complete and total depletion of my peace of mind, the mental-instability, the emotional exhaustion, the suffering, the nightmares, the tears, the trauma, the sexual paralysis, and the reminder that the person who was supposed to be my BEST friend - who was supposed to love, support, respect, and protect me - raped me. My wounds will heal through time, but the feelings I associate with that day and with this period of coping will never be forgotten.

He gets to walk around with a big, stupid, ignorant smile on his face, and never think about it again, because he wrote it off long ago.

Thank you to anyone who took the time to read my story. I really needed to get it off of my spirit. And it's helped. For now.

Blessed be.