"When My Oldest Friend Did Something Unforgivable"

TW: Rape

"I decided to avoid, to the best of my ability, having any sort of visceral reaction to this place he’d put me in. In lieu of anger, or sadness, or disgust, I opted for some bare-bones reasoning. I knew that I couldn’t ever see him again (not that I wanted to). I knew if I told anyone what had happened exactly what they would call it, though I was hesitant then to claim the word. I still am, even with plenty of gender and women’s studies classes under my belt. The chasm that separates what I know — as a feminist, as a woman — from the sticky, tangled mess of what I feel, and what I fear to feel, has gotten smaller and more manageable as the years have passed; but I still haven’t been able to leap over that gap entirely. At the time, I used the simplest facts at my disposal to wrap myself up in a warm, safe blanket of unfeeling and carry myself, slow and steady, all the way from point A to point B.

I didn’t want this, I told him.

He flipped. I can’t believe you’re turning this special thing, one of the most important nights of my life, into something ugly.

As he began, over text, to spiral out of control, I sunk deeper into a vaguely apathetic sort of peace. This time I could say no — I could deny him — and it would stick.

But I’d been denying him successfully for years before, really, without my fully knowing it. He’d made advances toward me since I was fresh out of middle school, that first season at the snack bar, when I was scared and young and lonely. He had continued to flirt with me summer after summer, in what I’d thought was a playful, innocent way — he would never take it too far, I thought. I trusted him not to. Here’s what I hadn’t realized, all those years: Ever since I first met him, I’d had a string of boyfriends. I belonged to other men, and that made me untouchable. But within weeks of falling in love with a girl for the first time, I started carrying myself through the world a different way. And Thomas, perhaps, had sensed it. He’d sensed that now, more than ever before, I would never, ever want him."

https://www.buzzfeed.com/shannonkeating/when-my-oldest-friend-did-something-unforgivable?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Longform%20410&utm_content=Longform%20410+CID_c2123820a237c16d915c0f9265d35604&utm_source=BuzzFeed%20Newsletters&utm_term=.mxDyB0K1l#.grm5gKEXO

Pulling out because it's one of those things so many women do, deciding to ignore red flags because our society calls them "innocent" and tells us we are flawed for feeling uncomfortable.

It's just this scary thing to know that masculinity is so toxic it could creep violently into seemingly pleasant, casual - or even caring - relationships.