Is mind-rape a real thing? Mine feels that way.

And I don't mean this in a joking way, like "Oh, that test raped my mind." I literally feel like I've been violated on a mental level. You see, I have this friend, and we roleplayed a lot. It's how our friendship began, a shared love of a television character and a joking game of I'll race you to him. It became a regular thing, after that. Between the two of us, we created ten or more characters. Fanfiction, originals, ourselves-but-enhanced-with-internet-magic, brief side extras. And it was fun, for awhile. I knew that to cheer him up while he was stuck on the other side of the country with verbally abusive parents, I only had to offer an escape from reality. In this game, we both had steady boyfriends, both played by me as I was the only one who had read both of the books they came from. After the honeymoon phase, I had begun to notice that he seemed not overly engaged in the conversation if we weren't roleplaying. I would babble on and on about things I knew we'd both geek out over, receiving minimal input beyond monosyllables and the occasional worry about how he hadn't spoken to his boyfriend in awhile, and maybe he should go check on him. I would avoid and redirect as long as I could, for at this point, creative writing had begun to feel like a chore. Which, if you knew how many journals I collected just so I'd always have one on hand to write something new in, seemed unfeasible. Eventually, there was no getting around it. He'd 'step through the rift' into our cyberspace lair, and my options were to follow or 'go to bed', which meant I checked my real self out of the conversation and gave our characters, mostly his boyfriend, free rein, until such time as he was willing to let me walk away for real.

At this point, you may wonder why I didn't just walk away whenever I felt like it. The answer is that I couldn't, at first. He had a bad habit of cutting and starving himself to cope with his home life and (later) his parents unacceptance of him as ftm. He asked me once why we didn't play as much as we used to, and I told him that it was simply that I couldn't always make up a story on command, I needed to be inspired and that sometimes I just wanted to talk to him, as us, rather than, say, a stuffed bear and stuffed wolf dueling with forks. He began dating, a bit, after awhile, and I encouraged it, thinking that if he could find someone, we could be fun again and he wouldn't always need the imaginary lover. No such luck, as he got repeatedly broken-hearted by going after people who reminded him most of this guy or roleplayed him in some manner. To ease his burden of guilt for being disloyal, I pretended the 'ghost' was trying to crossover and possess someone so they could be together. We lost touch for about a year after I tried to forcibly end the relationship by having the boyfriend send him away for his own good.

Fast forward a bit and his email is hacked by spammers, which sent a text to my mom's phone. I asked him about it, got snapped at and thought that was the end of things. Then I saw the facebook note about missing how close we used to be and our adventures. Missing having someone who shared my appreciation for gaunt men with big noses, I tried again. He had just come out as trans, at the time, and so we reconnected and roleplayed out his anxieties over not being accepted as a man, particularly in regards to romance. At this point, I had noticed I had to be careful not to refer to our adventures as writing, as he would get defensive. They were tapes, security cam footage from our lair. Ok, fine, I readjusted my mental parameters and learned to relate to him this way, instead. I had, even before we lost touch, begun to simply check out on him when I felt like it. Now, too, when I was simply too tired to be everyone anymore, I made the excuse of a tv show, and then simply allowed myself to fall asleep afterwards. Or I didn't show up at all, allowing myself to be pulled into family movie night or something, just so that when he sighed and moped, I could truthfully say that I was with them. I got a particularly vicious satisfaction out of seeing him taken aback and forced to be sympathetic when I met his "...*sigh*...Happy Birthday..." (guilt trip for not spending it in the lair) with the news that I'd spent the day at my grandpa's funeral, followed by lunch with my family.

I got very sick two years ago. My thyroid gland decided it was through working, and the first medicine I was on only made it worse. All night visits to the ER with numbness that made me think I was having a heart attack or stroke, my breath stopping when I slept so that I spent two weeks barely dozing for 30 minutes at a time, and then the medicine that helped all of that, only to give me kidney stones, hair loss, depression, aching joints and a brain so fogged I barely knew my own name. It was in this state my friend seemed to be suddenly getting worse in his own depression, so some nights I would try to talk to him, only to have him fret about his lover's silence. I would 'go to bed' and let him talk to the lover for a few nights, only to have him complain to that character that I was avoiding him. If neither of us spoke for a few days, the lover received messages begging for a response lest my friend have to crossover permanently and check on things himself. He had begun to view our lair as a sort of afterlife, by now.

There have been days that I stayed in bed all day, not moving to clean up after my cats as they ran out of room in the litterbox and started on the floor, hair hanging in an unwashed tangle around me because I couldn't bear the clumps coming out when I washed or brushed it, and I mean it spent days in a greasy, loose ponytail if I did anything. I told my friend all this once, via text, when I finally tracked him down after sending messages to everywhere online I could think of, while he stood at the edge of a cliff he'd taken to going to, to contemplate what it would be like to be Home, forever. If I cannot do these basic things for myself (indeed, feeding the cats with my sister's help is the only time I would rouse myself), how can I be constantly awake at night with you? If I cannot think, how can I...er...have adventures? But, no, if he could be bothered to want to go adventuring with me, why must I make him feel like a burden by not returning the favor?

By the time I'd gotten on better medicine and recovered myself, I had almost completely soured on the lair and my friendship. Still, I couldn't just end things, I would explain when my mother ranted about how he manipulated me, he needed me to give him a reason to keep going.

He met someone else, a fellow transman who I shall simply call K. He and K would skype, drive the few hours distance between their towns to hang out, do all sorts of couple-y things. And I was relieved, but also jealous. Not of losing him, mind you, but of having no one. I have never been a social butterfly, and for years I'd not even tried because I had to sleep all day to be up all night with him, which was the best way to do things with timezone differences. Even online, I'm not very social. So, between my sister's busy (at the time) social life with friends and boys who were all flocking around her, mom's new boyfriend, one best friend who had been married since right after highschool and has two boys, and the other who recently had a baby girl with her boyfriend, I was feeling more alone than ever after K came along. I confided these things to him, because if I told any of my local friends they'd try to set me up and that's never gone well. I don't like what they keep offering me. Perhaps his response was worse...why did I need someone when I already had a boyfriend in the lair, remember? And wasn't he the jealous type? It was no use. I couldn't put my feelings into words for fear of shattering his illusion bubble and sending him back into cutting.

Then he and K ran away from their troubled home lives together and moved in with some of K's relatives on this side of the country. And he was mentioning the lair less and less when we talked, so I thought things were going well. Until I accidentally forgot his birthday. I remembered two days before. We were talking, civilly, about our favorite show and the pain and joy of supporting our favorite couple on there. I was off facebook for a few days, and a combination of being terrible with dates (I have to have a trick to remember birthdays...my married friend and my own dad, still can't remember 'em) and being so isolated that time sometimes gets away from me, had me coming back several days too late. Keep in mind that he'd mentioned nothing about the lair when we talked before, and I came back to no messages indicating that he was upset. Just a status update letting the world at large know he was partying with his 'two loves', which meant that he was at the private forum he'd created for us to keep better track of our storylines. Curious, I go there, figuring that maybe K is playing the other lover as well as himself, to see if maybe my friend wants me to join in and bring some of the other characters. The forum was locked. I logged in, I went to my email and tried to go in through pm alerts, topic reply alerts. Nothing. My username still worked, I still had a profile, but I wasn't allowed to see even the threads I'd posted in. I sent a casual, 'hey, I'm locked out' to his facebook, which went ignored until I posted a status talking about how awkward it was to find yourself locked out of your own house, while two people were inside reading your diaries and one was gifting them to the other. You see, I had never shared my writing with anyone but him. There was some deeply private stuff there, that I'd posted on the understanding that the forums were locked and no one but us would ever see. That's when I got this note:

i know, it's okay. good news! with K's help there's a way for me to get to visit Home without having to bother you or make you feel bad anymore! though i'm surprised you bring it up now, since it's been like.. a really long time? like i don't know, maybe you didn't message me around my birthday because you didn't want me to ask/hint about it? i think the last time i asked was around the holidays, and you seemed very not interested.. so i figured that i would most likely not ever be able to visit again until it was my time. BUT now you don't need to worry about being a gatekeeper anymore, since i know it was stressful for you.

His shock at my displeasure was fake, at best, since he'd asked once if he should close the forum and I said I still read there when I was feeling down.

After a sleepless night, I sent him a letter, trying to put the extreme feeling of violation into words and tell him that K playing the other character was fine with me, but I wanted my writing back, so either let me in to get it and then I'll go away from there forever, or send it to me. Here is a bit of what I said:

I don't know if I was wrong to confide in K in a moment of spiraling down depression and desperation one night, or if he was genuinely trying to help and you had a fit of pique when he brought up the issue, but either way, not cool, brah.

Try putting yourself in my shoes for a minute, if you can. It's a bit like...Ok. Say you're head over heels in love with someone, and at first it's all good. The two of you talk about your feelings together, get to know each other, have lots of sex. Which is nice. Eventually, though, one night, one person just isn't awake enough or in the mood or whatever. "Can't we just cuddle or talk?" No, turns out you can't, because the other person absolutely NEEDS sex, now, or they'll hurt themselves, because obviously you don't care about them if you won't put out. So, you do. Over and over, until the times when the sex is fun are fewer and far between, but if you don't do it every once in awhile the other person is going to think you don't love them. And you can't have that, oh no, you'd hate to be the one responsible for their death, wouldn't you?

One day, after the sex issue hasn't been brought up for awhile, and you're thinking maybe things are getting better, you go home to discover the other person has locked you out and is making a loud, big deal, of the sex they are having with someone else. You're a bit taken aback by this, but the other person just bats their eyelashes and puts on their most guileless look.

"Oh, no, it's ok. You don't have to have sex with me anymore, I know how much you hate it."

"Ok...we didn't discuss me being replaced, but if that's what you want, fine. Could I just come in and get my stuff back?"

"But...why would you want your stuff? It's in the house with me so you obviously aren't interested in it. If it's all the same to you, I'll keep it and my new lover can wear your clothes, listen to your cds, write in your diaries..."

And, please, spare us both the insult of pretending that the next thing you sent, if you replied to me at all, wasn't going to be asking why I'd even want MY memories back, as if I lost some right to them.
<snipping a bit where I call him on doing this to punish me and try to make me beg for my things>

I'm so VERY sorry that there were nights I just wanted to talk as us, as friends, like we used to in the beginning before I stopped being a person to you and became a puppet dancing for your amusement (in hindsight, is that why you never came to visit me in person...pay no attention to the woman behind that curtain), because my concern and desire to talk to you weren't enough, I needed to stay up all night trying to be ten people at once or I wasn't concerned enough. I'm sorry I spent nearly ten years pushing everyone else and everything else in my life aside so that I could sleep all day in order to be up with you all night, since my brain can't function without sleep as well as yours can. I'm genuinely sorry you felt like I was being cruel when I realized I needed to find ME, again, buried under all the layers because I was losing myself entirely to worrying about you. I'm sorry that at a time when I could barely wash or brush my hair without it falling out at the least little touch, my every joint hurting despite my body being numb, and my brain so fogged I'd forget my words mid-sentence and it was a struggle for ME of all people to spell the simplest words, I'm sorry that at that point in time you couldn't just be a friend without asking me to be ten people at once when I could barely be two. I'm extremely sorry, indeed, that when I tried to be those two people I could only sustain one at a time and would get messages fretting about the absence of someone LIVING INSIDE MY HEAD! And I'm sorry that when I gave you what you professed to want, I'd get messages like this, instead:

"Well, i tried Beloved. Tried to speak to Shrew twice, and the first time she conveniently had to leave before a conversation even got started and said we'd be able to talk about it tonight, so i waited and waited until finally messaging her and she was busy watching a movie, very well, i waited again until she seemed like it was worth talking to me at last, only to very suddenly 'fall asleep' again before a conversation could even be started. So, Beloved, your concerns about her knowing anything appear to be unfounded as it seems like i get the feeling that she wants very little to do with me anymore, anyway. One can say anything nice they like to me when they think that's what i want to hear, but actions, Beloved, actions speak, too, and they speak loudly through the voice of the thoughts in my mind. My heart is heavy and my eyes are watering at these thoughts and feelings, and they make me crave another fix after having come down from my last one. After all, perhaps starting it over again would be pointless.."

To this day, I'm not sure if you genuinely forgot that it was always just me or you were just trying to guilt me into doing more for you when I could barely do for me. So many nights 'He' kept talking to you after I'd 'fallen asleep.' And I'm sorry, too, that when I'd come to you, as a friend and confidant, with my feelings of loneliness and sadness, you could never put aside the need for the fantasy even then, instead wanting to know why one imaginary person couldn't cheer me up the way another could for you. The answer to that is quite simple: both of them were ME. They lived in MY HEAD. One of them could spout all the flowery words of love and comfort you wanted, but it was a little more difficult for me to pretend. There was no curtain for me, there was only me. But, still, at those times when I most needed someone to be just a friend, I had to grit my teeth, tamp down on my own feelings and keep up the fantasy for your sake.

Oh, and Shrew isn't as mean as it sounds. 'Beloved' wasn't very fond of me and always referred to me as such in his letters. And that thing I'm not supposed to know? He was hinting to Erik that he thought he had leukemia but didn't want to bother me with it. And the 'starting over' was a reference to making another go at seeing how long he could do without cutting.

Anyway, I received no reply for a couple days, until K wrote to let me know that my former friend was very hurt and confused by my letter and was mulling over what to say back, but was going to return my things after he decided whether or not to let me into the forum or just send them himself. I replied that I was fine with him being hurt, since he'd obviously done this to hurt me, and asked him, again, to please understand that I wasn't having sour grapes, I was merely hurt that it was all come to this, that I had to be punished and have him take away something that was just as much mine as his, some of it moreso.

I'm sure to you this all looks very much like sour grapes or whatever, but it has been my reality since the end of my teens. To continue the sex metaphor from the letter I sent him: it wasn't that you didn't like sex, it wasn't even that you didn't like sex with your current partner. It was that you were given to understand in subtle, roundabout ways that 'no' was the cruelest answer you could give, and a forced 'yes' eventually starts to feel like a chore. Which makes it harder and harder to get in the mood, and then the other person makes you feel guilty for not having a sex drive.

And, yes, I was always given to understand that a no was mean. Growing up, he had learned not to ask for things, not even hamburgers for dinner, but if he could hint well enough he might make one of his parents want them, too. So, when I explained that hinting made me feel guilty because I didn't want him thinking I was like all the other people in the world who didn't understand him and couldn't see through him, I began to get a mixture of hinting and some nights there were actual requests. The hinting I had begun to ignore, to my extreme guilt, so I rewarded his 'progress' by saying yes even when I didn't want to, then letting other people make excuses for me, again, movie nights or whatever. Whenever I did this, I would feel emotionally abusive and manipulative, myself, since one of the signs of such a person was that they would agree to something or offer it, then let you know in indirect ways that it was too much trouble.

On the other hand, they'll also never tell you they're unhappy, but they'll find ways to make other people do it for them. Like the night it was mentioned K and I agreed on at least one thing, which confused me as we'd never met and therefore weren't fighting. I'm now questioning how reluctant he really was to tell me that his new boyfriend might have used to word 'cruel' in regards to me. He had to know I would get mad enough to send K an angry letter, after all, the reply to which was that, yes, I was being as cruel to him as if he were starving and I couldn't be bothered to come over and unlock the fridge. From my pov I was refusing to keep supplying a junkie with drugs. I talked to K and assumed he understood that the lair was special to me for sentimental reasons but that I couldn't keep being a puppet. Apparently not.

And now, I've still heard nothing back. No story files in my email, forum still locked, no reply on facebook. Only a status update from my former friend bemoaning his too long work hours, sinus infection and the betrayal of someone he trusted likening him to an abusive rapist. As expected, those who don't know me have jumped in to tell him how mean and stupid that was. I want to reply, but it feels very much like a power grab. If I reply, I've sent another thing for him to ignore. On the other hand, if I ignore being called out , it might turn out I didn't want my stuff back so badly after all. Meanwhile, all I can think of is the two of them in there...perhaps K is adding to stories I started, trying to write as me as well as all my characters (the lover I don't care if he writes...he was living in my friend's head before he lived in mine). Perhaps he's reading everything I ever wrote. The sex scene between my friend and his lover that we worked on together (and that made me very uncomfortable since I've never thought of him that way), the almost sex between myself and my imaginary boyfriend. Maybe he's scoffing because I've always been more comfortable writing fade-to-black while my friend could go full-on explicit. Maybe he's rolling his eyes at the time I cried on an imaginary someone's shoulder when my cat died of old age in real life. And then I think of the more recent stuff, the writing I was proud of, how my style had developed and changed over the years and how I may never have the visual proof again...and, yes, I feel incredibly violated.

I'm uncomfortable with the word "rape" here. But mostly because I have read all of your post and think there's a huge degree of betrayal there. And violation of trust. And those are strong enough terms as they are. The situation is horrible. I can't think of very much you can do to change it unfortunately. He has the power and it seems that he's willing to abuse it. I would hope with time that his feelings would change and that he'll give you access again. It will take time, though, if it ever happens.

I would suggest [and I appreciate this is incredibly hard] trying not to dwell on the possibilities too much. Thinking about people scoffing or rolling their eyes will always be hurtful. Even though you can't know the reaction [or even if anyone's reading any of it now.] And it may be that there isn't a way to reclaim your writing. It's something like losing old diaries. Full of history and personal significance and only valuable to their owner. So difficult.