If the things that they choose to believe about me were true, it would mean that I've been a bad person for most of my adult life. That doesn't seem to be something that they dislike about me, except for when I say something critical of them, and then they decide that what they believe about my past excuses them for abusing me; not that they seem to worry about abusing me even when they're not angry about something that I have said about them.
They seem to think that I should be abused no matter how they're feeling about me, and that my thinking that it's abuse is cute or hypocritical or evil or jealous or anything at all except accurate. They seem to think that either they will eventually convince me that the way that they treat me isn't abusive, or that it doesn't matter how I feel about the way that they treat me, no matter what I say or for how many years I say it.
What does it say about what they're like that the things that they choose to believe about what I'm like don't deter them from thinking that they want to date me? What do they think has stopped me from dating one of them, fear of what people would say about me? Is there anything else that someone could say about me that I haven't heard? Have I seemed to care about public opinion to the exclusion of what I think I should do? If so, I'm sorry that anyone got that impression of how I think about gossip.
They never believe my saying I don't want to date bad people, or that I don't want to date someone who doesn't respect me? They always want to believe that there's some other reason, or that I'm saying it to hurt them because I'm capricious? Nobody could really not want to date famous people, or rich people, having realized what a lot of rich and/or famous people are like?
Why do they think that they love someone whom they don't respect and to whom they don't listen when she's talking about what she is like, what she likes, what she doesn't like, how she feels, what her value system is? Whom do they think they love, someone that they're going to turn me into, or someone whom I'm pretending not to be? Why would I waste 6 years of my life and theirs saying things every day that I don't believe? Why would I live a painful, imperiled life while pretending to be good when there are so many rich people who not only don't care whether I'm a bad person, but would probably like to believe that I'm a bad person so that they don't feel guilty about what they've done to me or to anyone else?
Copyright L. Kochman, March 13, 2016 @ 5:12 p.m./additions @ 5:29 p.m.
