A Friendship Gone Wrong

It never felt wrong. It never made me feel uneasy. He loved and cared about me so damn much. I was the only person who knew how to keep him happy; he always knew how to make sure I was never in the path of his rage whenever he exploded on every other women in his life. Our bond was indestructible. We were inseparable; where he went, I followed. He made me feel safe. He made me feel as if I was able to trust him with my entire life. He was my entire world.

Who the hell even cares if he was in his mid-thirties?

I was eight. If it was so damn wrong, why didn't anyone come between us and tell me that he was getting way too close to me for comfort? I mean.. it's not like he was actually family to me. He was just a family friend.. barely. You'd think anyone else watching from the outside would have realized how odd it was that I just happened to be the only child in existence he didn't seem to hate. I was only eight years old. It's not like I was able to stop in my tracks and tell myself that something felt weird about him. Because it didn't. Nothing felt weird between us at all.

The fact that he confided in me that he and his girlfriend were my "godparents" in order to mend our bond even more closely together. Personally, I have no idea how I even fell for this. My own personal religion didn't even have a belief for godparents.. yet, I still believed every word. It didn't even click that I was only told this so I would feel more comfortable changing in front of them. I just assumed that if they were my "godparents", my parents had to have known about what they were telling me to do around them. It was the only logical thing about the whole thing. After all, I was only a child.

This man had my young eyes witness so much as such a tiny age. If it causes me pain now as an adult, there is at least one teeny tiny detail that can be traced back to his actions. But as a kid, I was far too innocent to see the problems he'd eventually cause for me once I'm older. As a kid, the only man I was able to see was a best friend. I would do absolutely anything for him.. and boy, did he know it.

"How the hell did you let it get so far?" Someone might be thinking as they read through my life.. and with that I just have to give you a shoulder shrug. I have no idea. Seriously. I doubt I'll ever know how I let it get as far as it did; how I let this grown man control me so damn much. Probably a huge part of it was having every other adult in my life watch the two of us and say absolutely nothing about it. I've always wondered what would've happened if another adult was to actually speak up. What would I had done? Although I never felt unsafe around this man, this same man had the worst possible temper anyone could have. How were other adults so okay with letting me get that close with him?

The only person I do remember actually wanting to shield me from this man was my father. I never really understood why at the time, but my dad completely despised this man. No matter what he did, my dad just couldn't find a way to actually like him. I don't know. It could've been the fact that he was getting all close and personal with his only daughter.. or maybe it had everything to do with the fact that this same man had never hesitated to harm the women in my father's household (including his own wife). But my dad never took the opportunity to step up and pull me away from his grasp, so I never actually grasped the concept that the man I felt so bonded towards was actually a not-so-good guy.

Just think..

If at least one adult had spoken up when they had the chance..

imagine how different my life could have become.

Something to think about, I guess..