I won’t go into specifics about the hoax, but everything else is fine. At the time, I was one of their few friends, which inadvertently made me the one to comfort them and abuse them.
I thought it would be entertaining to put my burgeoning skills on display, but disconnecting a person from reality and then re-anchoring them to it causes far more psychological harm than 20s me could have understood. Your anchor cannot unmoor itself without forcing you to travel a ways and I didn’t even consider the proverbial currents.
I told them immediately after, but that compelled a unique sort of emotional dependence and power dynamic that I hated then and that haunts my days and nights now. I became both abuser and soother. It was like flipping the switch to “battered housewife.”
We’re still together, and significantly better for one another after counseling. Neither of us were harmed physically. Just years of potential development wasted.
I won’t go into specifics about the hoax, but everything else is fine. At the time, I was one of their few friends, which inadvertently made me the one to comfort them and abuse them.
I thought it would be entertaining to put my burgeoning skills on display, but disconnecting a person from reality and then re-anchoring them to it causes far more psychological harm than 20s me could have understood. Your anchor cannot unmoor itself without forcing you to travel a ways and I didn’t even consider the proverbial currents.
I told them immediately after, but that compelled a unique sort of emotional dependence and power dynamic that I hated then and that haunts my days and nights now. I became both abuser and soother. It was like flipping the switch to “battered housewife.”
We’re still together, and significantly better for one another after counseling. Neither of us were harmed physically. Just years of potential development wasted.