BEING AROUND ABUSERS AND BULLIES

 BEING AROUND ABUSERS AND BULLIES

                I’ve noticed that Keith is okay with abusers and it’s obvious. Most of the people he associates with are abusive or bullies. Perhaps the reason why he hates me so much and targets me is because I’m not like him or his friends.

                I don’t usually judge people by who they are in a relationship with, who they associate with or who they are related to. I’ve been associated with plenty of family and friends who have been dodgy and toxic so I can’t talk.

                But sometimes who someone hangs out with is a red flag.

Keith and Sharon spent years putting me down. Many of the toxic people I’ve had in my life are no longer a fixture in my life and as I’ve matured I have grown enough common sense and confidence not to associate with toxic people anymore.

                He is in a relationship with Sharon and even though Sharon is a good person with a good heart, she has been incredibly toxic towards me and other people. Keith and Sharon can be incredibly toxic and they get their self-esteem from belittling other people. They are very much the “narcissistic couple”. Call it bullying or abuse or whatever you want, but those two feed off one another and I have certainly been the target through the years of their insecurities.

                Keith is best friends with Gary who has been a strong fixture in his life since high school. Gary has been in and out of prison all his life and the majority of the time it has been due to violence. Violence is one form of abuse. Even though Keith isn’t a violent person himself and hasn’t praised Gary for his violent behaviour, he hasn’t spoken against Gary for being violent either. Keith always calls Gary a good friend and calls him a ‘top bloke’. Gary has been violent towards complete strangers at bars; he gets drunk and bashes men who he doesn’t even know. None of the men he has abused over the years has been permanently harmed as a result, but that doesn’t make it okay. His victims could have ended up disabled or dead as a result. What Gary does is called a one-punch attack and this has killed men in Australia and it’s not something we should take lightly.

                One day when I was working in retail, Gary had to go to court because a woman accused him of physically harming her at a club and she said he did this after she had rejected him. Claire was with him when he went to court and said she wanted him to get help with his drinking. Gary also assaulted Sharon one night at her daughter’s birthday party. When Gary got involved with Claire, Autumn and I both knew about Gary’s violent history. Claire knew about Gary’s violent history before she went into a relationship with him. There has been no evidence that he has harmed Claire and Claire has never said he has harmed her but there is a possibility at some point in their relationship he may have harmed her whether it’s been said or not. Gary is a violent person.

                Keith’s other best friend is Craig and I’m not aware if Craig has been in prison for abuse or violence but I do know that there are red flags surrounding him. Craig and Gary are like Keith they love spending their time playing pokies and I don’t spend all my time playing pokies when I go out (I dislike them) so because of that, I am not in their presence all the time. Craig had this girlfriend Deborah and he was with her for years but he used to always emotionally abuse her and put her down for the way she looked. He was always putting her down for being “fat”. We would go out to the club and we would see her at the end of the night in tears and upset over the way her boyfriend was treating her. I never actually saw him abusing her and calling her fat but she would always tell us and Sharon has witnessed it on more than one occasion. Sharon was friends with Deborah but she always remained standing by Craig whenever he treated Deborah like shit so it was just a toxic mix, people enabling it. I didn’t know Deborah that well but she seemed to be a good person and I never had any issues with her. If I was with Sharon, Sharon would sometimes be around Craig and Deborah because Keith would be around Craig a fair bit, which meant I also was around these people. Craig was a likeable type of guy but Keith and Gary were also likeable at times but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t toxic.

                One night we were at the club and at the end of the night I caught up with Sharon and she told us that Craig got thrown out of the club by security and that security told her that the reason why they kicked Craig out was because he had hit his girlfriend. Sharon was upset about Craig hitting Deborah, but Sharon’s behaviour towards these abusers can be contradictory at times.

Sharon wants people to like her and cares little about standing up for victims. Sharon yearns to be liked so she tends to turn a blind eye to a lot of shit or she would gaslight a situation. This is what happened this time.

                Sharon at first was saying that Craig had hit Deborah and he was thrown out by a security guard. I said to Sharon, ‘There’s no reason a security guard would make that up’ and we both knew Craig was emotionally and verbally abusive towards Deborah. I lost count of all the times I saw Deborah in tears at the end of the night because Craig had abused her. Sharon had witnessed this more than I have; she certainly wasn’t ignorant of what is taking place. We all saw Deborah in tears and we were all knew why Deborah was in tears, so why gaslight that? Gaslighting the situation isn’t going to help Deborah and it isn’t going to help anybody else. The only person that is advantaged by gaslighting is the perpetrator. Deborah remained with Craig for years as she was completely in love with him but one day she had enough of all his bullshit and dumped him and I thought good for her! She deserved so much more than that little douchebag.

                Sharon remained friends with Craig and because I was friends with Sharon and Keith (who was close to Craig), Deborah deleted both of us off Facebook after she had broken up with Craig. I understood why she did this and didn’t take it personally. The only person Deborah kept as a friend on Facebook was Autumn and that’s because Autumn has little to no association with Craig and if she did it was only through myself. I’m not close to Craig, so Autumn certainly wouldn’t be close to him. Autumn hated Keith and the group he associated with. Sharon was upset and angry with Deborah and I tried to explain to Sharon that Deborah wants nothing to do with Craig and she wants a better life for herself. Sharon knew Deborah had broken up with Craig and Sharon knew that Deborah had been abused by Craig for years, yet Sharon chose to keep Craig as a friend on Facebook as well as in real life. Sharon continued to support and be friendly to Craig, even though he abused her friend. Deborah may have felt resentful as a result. Why would you want to be associated with someone who sides with your abuser? Even though Sharon and Deborah weren’t associated with each other for some time after this, years later Deborah continued to have a casual friendship with Sharon. They rarely see each other or communicate though.

                Craig and Keith hate fat women. They don’t want to have an overweight girlfriend but for some unknown reason that I can’t comprehend, they have only been in relationships with overweight women. They have never dated anybody skinny or who has had a medium-sized build. They are always in a relationship with larger-sized women and then spend their entire relationship bitching about their partner’s weight. Craig is well known for this behaviour (Craig is worse for this than Keith is). Craig not only has bitched about his girlfriend’s weight but he also bitches about other women’s weight. I was skinny when I associated with this group of people, so they haven’t put me down for being fat (that I know of); however, chances are, they could have without me knowing about it. When I was associating with these people I was roughly around 40 to 45kg. I’m a confident person so people putting me down for being fat or ugly doesn’t particularly worry me too much; I’m more upset by their intentions of the bullying than what they have to say.

                Melissa and I were at the club one night and Keith and Sharon and Craig were there also and we were all scattered all over the place doing our own thing. Sharon was sitting with me earlier in the night and she was saying to me, “I wish you had a boyfriend” (and she started boasting about how great Keith was). She said, “I’m so happy with Keith and I’m so fortunate that I have him. I wish you were in a relationship with someone like Keith and you could be as happy as I am” and I was like, “Yeah sure Sharon”.  That night Melissa and I drifted off to get a drink. Sharon, Keith and his friends would always hang out at the pokies and Melissa and I weren’t interested in pokies (Melissa hated sitting around the pokies with them) so we would just drift about.

                Later that same night we looked over and Sharon was at the bar with Keith and Craig she was in tears crying and Melissa said, “Should we go and see why Sharon is crying?” I said to Melissa, “We better go down there to see what is upsetting her because it might be something serious”. We walked down there and when I approached Sharon and asked her if she was okay, she immediately grabbed my arm and took me to the side away from Craig and Keith and said to me, “Craig is the type of guy that you hate”. Sharon told us that Craig was putting her down for being fat and so I approached him and asked him. Melissa was next to me when I approached Craig and I don’t think she would have been okay or accepting of his bullshit either. I’m not into conflict, drama or toxic atmospheres so I try to be civilized. So I asked Craig about why Sharon was upset and why was he saying she was fat? Keith jumped in and tried to reason with me, “You know mate, if you are in a relationship with someone you want to remain attracted to them”. I said, if you are in a relationship with someone for a long time, you have to realise that that person is going to change over time including their body and looks. But Keith and Sharon can be both extremely superficial. I have found trying to reason with toxic people is a total waste of time. Toxic people can be extremely stupid as well and hold little common sense. Sharon was always a bigger-sized girl, a bit dumpy (all her life). Keith knew what she looked like when he entered a relationship, so I didn’t understand why it’s a problem for him now. I said to the guys, “She’s had two kids” and they were saying to me, “That was years ago she had enough time to lose weight. She should go to the gym or exercise to lose weight”. I don’t think these men hate on larger-sized women because they are larger-sized, I think they just bitch about the size of women because they want to bitch about something because that’s what bitches do. People who say men aren’t bitchy and don’t create drama, those people should meet Keith, Gary and Craig. If Keith and Craig aren’t attracted to their partners why did they go into a relationship with them in the first place and why are they remaining in a relationship with them? If it’s such a big deal why are they still there? If it’s not a big deal why are they turning it into a big deal? I can’t think like these people. I said to Keith, “You are losing your hair and Sharon doesn’t tell you to go to Ashley and Martin” and Keith said, “But that is different”. Keith is going bald. They were just being contradictive. Even though Melissa mocks feminism, she turns around and tells Craig, “We’re feminists” and Craig looks at me and says, “I really respect how you’re a feminist”. Keith and Craig aren’t fat and Keith is a bit of a gym junkie and Craig is just skinny. Keith and Craig have never been in a relationship with a skinny or medium-sized woman.

                After Deborah dumped Craig, Craig was out drinking a fair bit and boasting. He said that he was going to have sex with hundreds of women now that Deborah was no longer in his life. It wasn’t long until he ended up in a new relationship. She was a lot younger than him and she wasn’t skinny (which Craig wasn’t happy about). Even after Craig and his new girlfriend had kids together, Craig kept saying he was still in love with Deborah and said he wanted to be with Deborah. Craig just used his new girlfriend so he could get kids out of her. Even though Craig has been with his new girlfriend for years, he always talks about how he loves Deborah. He told us, “Well at least I got children out of this one”. He is just using his new gf as a baby-making machine. It’s totally fucked up. His new girlfriend wasn’t a fan of Sharon, I don’t know why. She added me on Facebook but wouldn’t add Sharon.

                One night we were at the club on NYE and she and Craig were there, Autumn was there and Keith and Sharon were there. Sharon was sitting next to Craig’s girlfriend who was pregnant at the time and smoking right next to her and laughing. His girlfriend got up and walked away from Sharon but Sharon followed her and continued talking and smoking right next to her. Autumn and I left, when I got home I checked my Facebook and Craig’s girlfriend had been posting bitchy messages about someone who was smoking and talking to her. She posted the messages at the same time we were with them, the same time when Sharon was smoking and talking to her.

She had written messages about a woman who was standing next to her smoking and that this woman was trying to kill her baby with cigarette smoke. Craig’s girlfriend was also bitching about this woman’s laugh. The next time I caught up with Sharon, Autumn mentioned to Sharon the comments that Craig’s girlfriend posted on Facebook. Sharon didn’t believe that Craig’s girlfriend would write that about her. The first thing Sharon said was, “She was probably bitching about Julia (me) because she wouldn’t bitch about me” and I said, “I don’t smoke.” Sharon then realised she couldn’t pin it on me like she wanted to. Sharon told us that there was this girl that Craig’s girlfriend hated, but it didn’t make sense because we were the only ones with them that night. I asked Sharon, ‘Was that girl there at the time? Because I didn’t see anybody else around us’ and Sharon said, ‘No, the girl she hates wasn’t there on NYE’. So Sharon wasn’t making sense, how could Craig’s gf be bitching about someone who wasn’t even there? Sharon insisted that it wasn’t about her and it must have been about someone else.

                I don’t know if Craig was abusing this new girlfriend or not because I rarely saw him and Sharon and Keith saw them more than I did. When we did see them they would be sitting there playing pokies all night. Craig and his girlfriend got married not long after NYE. Craig and his girlfriend didn’t invite Keith or Sharon to their wedding. Keith knew that they were getting married, but didn’t know when. Craig and his girlfriend didn’t tell Keith when they were getting married as they didn’t want Keith (or Sharon) there. Keith found out they got married on Facebook. Craig and his partner did get married and did have a reception and did invite a large amount of guests etc. but they didn’t want Keith or Sharon to be there I don’t know the reason behind that but I do know that Keith was pissed off about it. Craig just made up some lie and even though Keith was sceptical he still remained on friendly terms with Craig.

                Craig’s girlfriend (wife) lost a lot of weight and she started becoming an exercise enthusiast, she was healthier than all of us put together. A part of me feels that she could have done this because of Craig’s fixation on women’s weight and she wanted to make Craig happy. She was running in marathons and became healthy; even though she did all this Craig was never happy and still complained that her legs were too ‘fat’. At Sharon and Keith’s daughter’s birthday, he said he wished he was back with Deborah and that she was ‘the love of his life’.

                I believe the reason why Keith is abusive is because he associates with abusers. They all just feed off one another. They support each other. That’s what I’ve noticed the most with bullies and abusers, they are all okay with how the other behaves. It’s no different to the toxic people I’ve associated with, all the bullying and bullshit that I’ve endured. They all feed off each other. Toxic people love other toxic people and they hate people who aren’t toxic.

 

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