ABUSE IS THE FAULT OF THE ABUSER

 ABUSE IS THE FAULT OF THE ABUSER

                Sharon is my friend and Keith is her long-term boyfriend.

                Keith has a sister, she gets along with Keith but she has never warmed to Sharon. She doesn’t like Sharon at all and she also doesn’t like me (I don’t know why). I don’t know Keith’s sister at all and I rarely see her and even when we go out she isn’t usually around. There are times when she is nice to Sharon such as on Sharon’s birthday but even on Sharon’s birthday it’s obvious she hates Sharon. I don’t know Keith’s sister but Sharon told me she is a bitch.  

                Keith’s sister had this boyfriend (now ex-boyfriend) and she was with him for years. I only met him once and had little to do with him. He attended one of Sharon and Keith’s daughter’s birthdays and he was wearing a T Shirt which read, “I MAKE PEOPLE BITTER” written on it. I have a photo of Sharon’s daughter cutting her birthday cake and he’s standing in the background wearing this shirt. He seemed okay at the time. He was being slightly bitchy towards Keith that day which we didn’t like but I think he was just acting like a dick but Keith wasn’t too worried about it. He was just making snarky comments and just going out of his way to be a little bitch. I didn’t think much of him at the time and I didn’t know he was abusive. The shirt he wore that day was more memorable than he was. 

                On Anzac Day Sharon asked me to meet her at our local RSL club to have some drinks and so of course Keith was going to be there as well. I didn’t know that Keith’s sister was going to be there with her boyfriend that day and if I did know beforehand I wouldn’t have cared. We were sitting inside the RSL club in the middle part having a drink and small talk, when Keith’s sister approached Keith and told him that she had just broken up with her boyfriend and was saying how he abuses her and stole all this money from her. The club was crowded that day but her boyfriend was still there lurking about with his friends. Keith listened to his sister and she eventually went home. I didn’t say much to her, I just said if she needed help there were support groups out there who helped abuse victims and she screwed her nose up and said, ‘Eww those lesbians”.

                Sharon, Keith and I remained at the club but the club was busy and because it was Anzac Day we had to drink out of these cheap tacky plastic beer cups.

                Keith has a history of verbally and emotionally abusing me over the years but he wouldn’t stand up to another man who was abusive (even if that man had abused his sister). I’m sure if another man approached Keith, Keith would fall down and faint. Keith didn’t approach his sister’s ex-boyfriend that day.

                When Sharon and I go out locally, it’s usually to some common local suburban club or bar which usually has a lot of pokies inside. It’s rather dreary which is why I don’t like socialising local but to go anywhere decent takes a lot of travelling, time and it can cost more money which is why Sharon and I usually just prefer to drink local. Sharon likes clubs and pokies so she’s cool with that. I just tolerate it because they are easier to get to and back home afterwards. The RSL rarely has music when we go there. I’m the type of person who likes to go out to have a drink, a chat, a laugh and listen to some music. I love music, but the local clubs and bars don’t seem to think music is important and care more about people playing their pokies than anything else. You sit there drinking and talking and all you can hear is pokies doing that bling bling sound. It’s so tedious. You never meet any decent guys and it’s always the same old shit, it’s like Groundhog Day. Drinking out of plastic cups is mainly because yobs start fights and start glassing one another. I’m over all the negativity. Usually when I go out I’m usually sitting with friends and listening to them talk; otherwise you can find me at the bar or in the bathroom.

                It was Anzac Day and it was busy at the RSL that day and so when I went to the bar to get a drink there were people lined up and scattered all over the place. You know how the lines are so long that the people at the end of the line are scattered because it’s too long, well it was a bit like that. All that waiting just to get a drink but what can I do? So I waited. I didn’t know Keith’s sisters abusive ex-boyfriend was lurking around that area because I’m short sighted and usually I can only see people when they are close to me. Keith’s sister’s ex-boyfriend is pretty ordinary looking as well and I’m not being mean or anything but he is common looking. He looks like your standard suburban type of guy. I remember once when Kyle came out to our local club with us one day on Anzac Day and he told me he felt uncomfortable there because all of the yobs around us. He also didn’t like going out on Anzac Day to the RSL Club because he has mixed feelings about Anzac Day. We went to the city once and he said he felt more comfortable because he didn’t like being around yobs. Kyle wasn’t with us that day but I was alone (unfortunately) when I approached the bar and the line was long and I could tell people were getting irritated because they were waiting for a long time. Keith’s sister’s boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend) was standing roughly at the end of the line but he wasn’t in the line he was sort of just near it and he was standing and lurking there with his friends and they weren’t sitting down. Usually when we go out we sit down at a table or if we stand up we are standing around a table, but this guy was just lurking around with his group of friends. I had to walk past him to get the bar line because he was standing just before where the line ended and he wasn’t that far from me when I was in this line.

                I didn’t think he would recognize me, because I’ve only met him once before. I just remember him because of his T-shirt he wore that time. He leaned over to me because I wasn’t that far away from him and he was obviously drunk and he started asking me where Keith was, “Where’s Keith?” “Where’s Keith”, he kept asking over and over again. I told him I didn’t know even though I did. From what Keith’s sister said about her boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend) he is abusive and even though Keith was has certainly been a jerk to me over the years I wouldn’t want to impose any violence on him. I thought if Keith wants to talk to this guy he would have done so by now and obviously Keith hadn’t gone out of his way to do so, so I didn’t want to send this abusive guy in his direction. If a violent yobbo guy abuses Keith, Keith is a goner. Keith isn’t a violent person (Gary calls Keith a “wimp” all the time because Keith isn’t violent). His sister’s ex-boyfriend was acting like a real yobbo pig as well which didn’t surprise me but I think that’s because he was drunk and he was in the company of all these other men. I believe it’s because I didn’t tell him where Keith was he became rude towards me. He probably knew I was holding back that information from him. Keith, Sharon and I weren’t sitting that far away from him but we were sitting outside on the balcony and there were a lot of people around so it would have been more difficult to have seen Keith that day through the crowd. This guy started being an asshole towards me and kept telling me that Keith’s sister hated me and I was thinking, ‘I don’t care’. I got the feeling he wanted to tell me she hated me so I could bitch about her which I wasn’t doing. I said to him, ‘I have nothing against her personally’ and he said to me aggressively, ‘SHE HATES YOU’ and he repeated himself, ‘SHE HATES YOU’. Like seriously, what did he want me to do with that information? Did I care? Not particularly. He wanted me to side with him because she “hates” me. I’m pretty cool under the most stressful situations and I wasn’t reacting to how he wanted me to react. I don’t follow other people’s scripts and people don’t like that about me. I tend to rub people off the wrong way with just being cool and not going along with bullshit like they would like me to. I just wanted a drink and after dealing with him I needed that drink. I attempted to ignore him which was difficult because he and his friends were lurking. He was drunk and he should have been thrown out but it’s common to see that sort of thing when you go out. He got aggressive with me and said, “Ring her up and ask her whether she likes you or not” and I said “no, I don’t care”. I attempted to ignore his bullshit like I would in any other toxic and negative circumstance. I don’t even have her phone number and even if I did I wouldn’t ring her. I don’t even talk to my friends or family on the phone, I’m not a fan of talking on phones. He was acting like a drunken idiot and he rang her up on his phone and when she answered it he hung up on her. I think he was just trying to fuck with her and he was trying to fuck with me as well. I said to him, ‘You really should start respecting women’ and he just repeated how much his ex-girlfriend hates me. I said to him, ‘You have no power over me’ and that pissed him off more than anything. After I told him that he ‘had no power over me’ he started becoming more aggressive so I just walked away from him and thankfully the line was moving so I could get away from him and finally attain my drink which I undoubtedly needed at this point. When I got to the bar I got two drinks so I wouldn’t have to wait in line again and so I could avoid that man. His friends were drunk and loud, but they didn’t say anything to me.

                I went back to the balcony after being served and was going to tell Sharon and Keith what had happened and at this stage I was practically alone with them. There were other people on the balcony but there were large gaps between our group and other groups which were also on the balcony. His sister was on the phone to Keith and I’m assuming that her boyfriend had rang her back or she had rung Keith and she told Keith that she was angry that I spoke to her boyfriend and she didn’t want me talking to him. She didn’t mention that he had approached me and was doing most of the talking and even though I attempted to tell Keith this it just went into one ear and out the other. I didn’t want to talk to her ex-boyfriend and I don’t know why anyone would, to be quite honest. Keith used this as another opportunity to abuse me and just started yelling and abusing me. His sister lives with her boyfriend and Keith told me if his sister’s boyfriend goes home and abuses his sister it would my entire fault and I said to Keith, ‘No, it won’t be. It would be his fault entirely’.

I was upset when Keith said that to me but I know Keith isn’t a smart person. I also know Keith would use anything he possibly could as ammunition against me

That day, Keith had attended the Anzac Day morning service early that morning and he started drinking more or less straight away after the morning service had finished and he had been drinking all day. Sharon and I didn’t get there until lunch time so we had less to drink then Keith had. I’m not making excuses for him but he had drank a lot that day. Keith and Sharon can be good people at times and I always try to focus on their good traits and I know their life isn’t rosy and they have insecurities and are unhappy in their own lives so I do take this into consideration when people treat me like shit. I think they just got a chip on their shoulder and they take it out on me to make themselve’s feel better about themselves and their own life. I certainly always stand up for myself. I never curl up into a fetal position and start crying.  I’ve also been drinking that day and usually I’m a polite and nice person when I’m sober, but when I drink I become overly nice to people. Sharon of course didn’t say or do anything when her boyfriend was abusing me; she is okay with him treating me like this. I’ve never seen him treat her the way he treats me. Those two act as a team. After he abused me I told them I was leaving and of course on my way out he said sorry to me and went to hug me. Keith was all nice again and was okay to me after that. He always abuses me, then acts nice and says sorry and then he is nice to me for months afterwards but then months later he will abuse me again. Keith is predictable. 

                I didn’t have anything to do with Keith’s sister after that but in all truth I never ever had anything to do with her previously. She was rarely around in social situations with us and I can honestly say I have only seen her less than 10 times the entire time I have known Keith. During those times I had little to nothing to do with her and she was always nasty towards Sharon but when she was cold and nasty towards Sharon it was only for a few minutes and then she would walk away.

                Months after Anzac Day it was Sharon’s birthday and we were at this venue place and Keith’s mother was there and she told us that her daughters got a new boyfriend and he was nice and I said, ‘That is good’. Keith said he wasn’t happy that she got into a new relationship straight away. I said to Keith’s mother, ‘I don’t hate her I just don’t like the way she has treated Sharon.’ She treated Sharon worse than she has treated me but I have had very little time in her presence and Sharon has had to endure her more than I have. It doesn’t concern me if Keith’s sister hates me or not, she doesn’t know me at all and I don’t know her so we can’t really judge one another and if we did we would be doing so unfairly. I’m sure she’s heard Keith and Sharon bitching about me from time to time and that may have influenced her perception of me. I don’t have any evidence that Sharon and Keith has bitched about me behind my back but I know those two so well and if they had it wouldn’t surprise me at all. I know their behaviour. Keith remained friends with his sisters ex-boyfriend on Facebook (even though he knew that he abused his sister) - I didn’t understand that.

 

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