Whoever said “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” lied…

“Maybe I should have asked my younger, hotter friend instead…” Those words were said to me last Saturday by someone I really cared about and they are still ringing in my ears. I’ve tried everything to silence them, throwing myself into work, exercising to the point of exhaustion, watching The Endless Summer over and over again (the last screening was at 3:00 this morning when I work up from a dream in which this someone was saying those hurtful words over and over) but nothing works, I hear them all the time…maybe I should have asked my younger, hotter friend instead…

The backstory to this hurtful comment is this…early last week this friend called and asked if I’d be willing to go to a party with him. He was very upfront about the fact that while I was funny and had a great personality, the specific reason he was asking me was because I’m “hot” and he wanted to take someone hot with him seeing as his ex-girlfriend was going to be there. I considered this person a friend and agreed, wanting to help him out but as the week went on, I began to feel uncomfortable with this arrangement. For the last 22 years, I have hated my body because it’s been a constant reminder of my rape. Over the last six months as I’ve been taking risks and rediscovering my inner-athlete, I’ve learned to appreciate my body and what it can do. Last week, with the words “there’s a reason I’m not taking my sister or my cousin to this party” those feelings of self loathing I’ve wrestled with for better than two decades came creeping back in. To him, I am just a body, something to be exploited. In the aftermath of my rape, I defined myself as just a body, a piece of meat, something less than human. In the end, my friend had a moment of clarity and decided that he didn’t need a “hot date” and went to the party alone, which is a very good thing. Had I gone, I’m sure these feelings I’m wrestling with now would be much, much worse.

So why the maybe-I-should-have-asked-my-younger-hotter-friend-instead-total-douche-bag comment? On Saturday I was trying to explain to him that it hurt that I’m not the friend he calls to go to the farmer’s market with or wants to have lunch with, I’m the friend he calls when he wants to use me. Our friendship has always been very one sided, I do the cheering when he races, I ask about his training, I do the calling and the texting the vast majority of the time. If we see each other outside our group of friends, I’m the one doing the asking. I’m not someone he wants to get to know individually, I’m not someone he wants to have a deeper connection with…I’m just the one he makes suggestive comments about. I get those comments from other friends in our group but those friends invite me to lunch to celebrate 6 months of sobriety, those friends ask me how my training is going and plan to be at the finish line when I run my first race later this month, those friends call or text at random just to see how I am... Earlier this summer I thought I was more than just a body to him but it looks like that’s not the case, why else would he say something so hurtful. Backing it up a step further, why, after knowing the trauma I’ve been through and how it’s affected me, would he even consider asking if he could use me like that?

The worst part of this whole thing is that I trusted him and he intentionally said something to hurt me. I have trust issues to begin with and now I’m plagued with the thought that I should give up on trusting people, period. I’m literally exhausted by disappointment. I worry that I no longer have enough fight left in me to try to trust again because I don’t have the energy to regroup when I take another sucker punch to the gut. At this point I honestly don’t know what to do, I would much rather take a rock than ever have something so hurtful said to me again. If I had my choice between sticks and stones and hurtful words, I’d choose the sticks and stones…