Me too, too

An assault by someone you care about has a way of challenging everything you know about yourself. You begin to question your ability to tell if people are good or bad. You begin to wonder if you bring pain on yourself. You question your own sanity, and often, you react insanely. At least, that's what happened for me. I must admit, this was the most insane I've been in my life. One night, I particularly remember how insane I felt. I was hanging out with friends and literally began questioning everything about myself. Everything from what I did for a living, where my next job would be, who I was as a person, whether or not I was attractive, whether or not I deserved to be loved. Then, I'd swing back to "normal" and feeling reassured that many people feel this way when trying to cope with difficult experiences. I was grieving, dealing with police, wondering what to do from here, and also facing a huge, life altering surgery that would cure a coupl...

It was not pretty. After the trip was over, I continued to text with him. When you care about someone and believe that they care about you, but you still want them to know that the person they met on the trip isn't the real you, that there was something off, I found every way to dance around the subject. A couple of times, I tried to bring up the topic again and, every time, he would change the subject. I got a very strong message that he could not handle what happened that night. So, for awhile, I stopped bringing it up. He continued to talk to me about a wedding one day, about life, and very little had changed. I was still telling myself "But, he cares" and "But he can't handle it". I continued to lie. In the beginning, I changed my story more times than I can count. I always told him he was an incredible person and nothing would change that. Then, I'd tell him my reasons for acting "off" during the trip. It seemed every time, my reaso...