48. The Victim Card
I confided in my best friend that I’d been abused for a portion of my life. He was the only person I’d ever told in the 10 out of 17 years of my life it’d been happening.
His response? “Why do you ruin things, you’re bumming me out right now. That’s not what friends do. Good night.”
I gave him a chance to take it back and apologize, to realize what he’d just done but he stood his ground and told me I was in the wrong for being mad at him and continued to accuse me of playing the “victim card”.
Despite us being best friends and having to spend further time together in school and social events, I knew I could never really see him as a decent human being anymore let alone a friend. Took me months to realize it wasn’t my fault the friendship ended and even now I still blame myself when I’m feeling down.
I should say that it wasn’t an out of the blue statement, throughout the past year and a half I’d implied plenty times of the things that had been done to me but he chose to ignore the subtle hints (I was too afraid to say it out loud). I finally worked up the courage to tell him and that was his reaction.