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dawnleafs · 2 months

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Shark Infested Waters

I consider myself a fairly quiet person who has an aversion to conflict. But at a point in my life, being on edge and getting into conflict was all I'd ever known. I once had a friend. A dearly beloved friend. A friend whom I was willing to give the world for. A friend I was glad to have by my side, because I believed I had no one else. Because I thought I had no other choice. It was either him, or no one. And I didn't want to be friends with no one. I didn't want to be alone. No matter how much I deluded myself into thinking I could be fine alone. And yet. It was with this so-called friend I had never truly been more alone my entire life.

While the years have long passed by and I am busy juggling much more important, adulthood manners, I keep finding my mental state fixated on this point of time in my life. This time in my life in which I was a young high schooler who just wanted friends, but struggled to find solace among my peers. So naturally, like the huge ass loser I was, I turned to the internet. And it was in my countless days of lurking about the internet and slipping into spaces I probably had no real reason ever being on, with people coming and going in my life, I met him. FutureDiarist, SharkDiaries, SharkYGO, whatever the ever-loving FUCK this dude goes by nowadays. Skylar is his name. And having a friend like him? Who needs enemies?

I had written about him once before on a past blog. Through some… Shenanigans, shall we say, that post had been lost to time. Not even trying to access the post through the waybackmachine yields feasible results. But like the scars in my memory, I hadn't forgotten to keep a backup. Do I have horrible coping mechanisms for my anxiety and trauma? Probably. But I don't want to be quiet about this. Not anymore. For how much Skylar and his current boyfriend may want to "leave things behind", it's not so easy for me nor any of the others who have been hurt. For as long as this keeps haunting me, I'll haunt back.

Every now and again I find myself relapsing, after going so long just living like a half-normal functioning adult, my mental health takes a nose dive. Everything's going nice and dandy, but then suddenly, it hits me. And whenever thinking about Skylar is at the forefront of my stress, I can't help but wonder how lucky and how stupid I must be. When I am reminded of him, I just spiral into a smoldering rage. It just keeps coming back, no matter how many times I block his accounts, mute things even related to his interests that trigger those memories, the anger just keeps coming back. The pain of having someone I thought was my one and only friend in a hostile cruel world when he was perhaps the worst person I could have possibly had as a friend.

I was just a lonely high-schooler willing to spend time with anyone who would be with me. He took advantage of my naivety and loneliness. I was so blind to his methods of manipulation, as an impressionable, desperate kid who longed for somebody to connect with. And connect we did. Roleplaying, video games, just chatting. It was probably early 2011, maybe earlier. While a bit standoffish and childish at times, Skylar was still someone I considered my closest friend. We roleplayed on chatango, roleplayed on tumblr, chatted over Skype. However, things were a bit… Off. He was clingy, sure. A little too overbearing at times. But what took things too far was how passive aggressive he was. How he, whether he realized it or not, demanded all my attention.

With regards to roleplay, he would occasionally pivot to questions of a sexually charged nature. Being the dumb young teen I was, there were times I fed right into it. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, just the thrill of sharing another common interest with my supposed friend. But there were times where he was very guilt-trippy about it. Like I owed him something. Like it wasn't something we just did every now and then for the fun of it, but something he deserved, something I had to provide at his beck and call. And when I didn't give him his way? Or if there were times I was too busy to even respond within a timely manner? He would turn on a dime and berate me in ways most vile. Acting like I was ghosting him intentionally and threatening to harm himself just to get my attention… Or egging me on to enable my suic-dal ideation. He knew I struggled with thoughts of self h-rm and suic-de and ENCOURAGED me to go through with it. I had come so close to pulling through with it, too. He really messed me up. He shattered my trust with just about anyone following that time. I still shudder thinking that I applied to the same college he was attending at the time, and wonder if I would even still be alive if I had gone through with it.

As if it wasn't bad enough, this man, Skylar liked creating sock puppet accounts. By the dozen. Hundreds, maybe. Who knows? He'd put on a persona and pretend it was someone else, but hindsight is 20/20. It's so painfully obvious that he pretends to be other people, it's so obvious that he pretends to stage anonymous hate mail being sent his way, it's so painfully clear that he tries every which way to paint himself out to be the victim, because he can't fathom the idea of having genuine friendships built off of trust rather than lies and deceit. I recall one time, when my tumblr RP phase was hitting hard, he accidentally sent me a message logged into the wrong account.

Skylar flipped out, when this account I wasn't even sure was him, turned out to be him on an alt. He repeatedly insisted I delete the post and speak of it to nobody. Because yeah. I'm sure he'd want to sweep that one under the rug, when that same account he'd use to harass other users in that community circle of roleplay could be tied back to him. He'd also probably like for me to forget about the time he needled and prodded me for some fanfiction between his self insert character and some League of Legends character. Or how often he roleplays. With himself. On different accounts. And I'm sure he'd like for me to forget when he even claimed one of his sock puppet accounts died of cancer. Or how his sock puppet accounts on skype were conveniently not logged in at the same time until I showed him a video tutorial to have multiple Skype clients open at once.

I'd love to log back into my skype account and skim through the chat logs for some real bangers of shitty behavior he's pulled through, or even the chatango logs, but I can only imagine they're lost to time and at some point it's not even worth the agony anymore. I don't even have my laptop from back then on hand anymore.

And now as I look into myself and the person I've grown up to be since those days in my high school years I just can't help but shake the feeling that I am no better than he is, that I'm more like him than I realize, that I'm not a good person either. And I strive every day to be the best me I can be and shake off my horrific attitude. I know I'm no saint, I know I've had my moments of being a downright prick, but I keep having these nagging thoughts that I'm just like him that I deserved him with every selfish bone of my body, that being the puppet under his control was the universe's way of punishing me for being just as vile deep down to my core. And when I think I've taken back control of my life and he has no hold over my feelings anymore it just keeps burning and burning until I turn green in the face from nausea. The pain just isn't going away.

He wants to move on so bad yet he hasn't truly held himself accountable nor shown any real sign of changing.

So Skylar, keep complaining about your past catching up to you. Keep complaining about your bans or account deletions on wherever you crawled into. I'm so sorry you couldn't afford an ounce of human decency to your dear friend. And I'm so sorry I got into drawing art AFTER we were friends. I'm sure you would have loved taking advantage of that just as much as you enjoyed taking advantage of other artists. How you'd love to beg for free art but then in the same breath decry those who get close to artists for free art. I'm quite sorry indeed. He can speak in fruitful platitudes about how he wants to leave the past behind but he can't ever truly change because his behavior shows me he feels no remorse for what he has done, simply that he has no more direct control of those he's victimized. But in a way, he still has a less direct control with how I can't let go of the pain that haunts me. How because of him, I'm less trustful of everyone I call a friend. Because of him, I feel like I have to put on a fake smile and pretend everything is okay. Because of him, I feel guilty of wanting to spend time with those I care with. Because of him, I am constantly reminded that I am not as smart as I believed I was.

Trying to add me on discord after I made my first "callout post" and then trying to befriend me when I told him to his face I despised him, that sure was amusing at the time. I'm pretty sure he deleted that account by now. But he sure is a piece of work for thinking I would ever forget what he's done. If I were to ever forgive him, it wouldn't be for his sake, but my own. I'm still hurting from all this, after all. I still struggle at night with believing that I'm not good enough, that I deserve everything wrong going on. But no. He's truly, beyond toxic. An abuser through and through.

All the people I've seen, saying that they too went through some shit because of him, only makes me regret not saying anything in the first place. Especially while everything was fresh in my mind, and not just tear-stained memories of a friendship that could have been. I'm in a much better place now than ever, even if I do struggle sometimes. Skylar once said that he was so tired of my self-pity that he would beat the shit out of me until I smiled. Well, now I can smile without that childish threat looming over my head.

I do not condone encouraging anyone to inflict self h-rm upon themselves. It's beyond despicable. Harassing Skylar is no better than the bullshit he's inflicted upon myself and many others. It would take some kind of miracle for this grown manchild to truly realize how rotten he had been and make a change for the better. Because he never has, and likely never will.

It's up to you to determine if you think I'm a trustworthy narrator. If you're reading this far, you either scrolled all the way to the end to get some tl;dr on this bullshit, or you might be humoring the idea that I have something worthwhile to say. I'm really just venting and rambling in circles about my thoughts in the passing years since burning bridges.

#futurediarist #sharkdiaries #with love and spite #your old dear friend Lillian #please do better :)

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