Let's Not Meet Again

No One Helped

I apologize for any grammar mistakes since English is not my native language. This story took place two years ago, but it hunts me to this very day.

Around four years ago quite a lot of problems happened in my family ( sickness, trials, threats etc). 6 years ago I found out I was adopted. The very same people who I thought loved me slowly turned against me when I inherited quite a lot of wealth from my not biological grandfather. They said I wasn't part of the family, not their blood and so I shouldn't get anything. My grandfather thought it differently so he left me everything he had. They didn't like that, at all.

I won houses and grounds and lost almost every person I ever loved, because they stopped loving me. I wonder if they ever did to begin with.

It was 2014 and after years of no contact with any of my cousins, one of them came home from Greece. His parents were the only ones who remained neutral in all those years. When he contacted me, I didn't know how to behave. I didn't know if I could trust him. I was 18 at the time, 5'1 and on the underweight side, he was a 6'1 fit male, 22 year old. I had only met him once before during a wedding, so he was basically a stranger to me. Anyway, he was in Alb. alone and with no friends. I wanted so badly to have a good relationship with a cousin again so i went along with it.

He would call to hang out, sometimes we would go for a drink or a pizza. He would always invite me to his house, but the fact that we would be alone there made me uneasy, so I always made him come to mine, where I lived with my mother and grandmother. We would cook together, solve puzzles and talk about staff we both liked. I was happy. I thought I finaly regained a little bit of "Normality". It lasted less than a week.

I don't know what made me uneasy around him, the fact that I didn't know if he knew the truth about me, the way he started talking to me, or the dark way those bright blue eyes started looking at me. The unease only grew stronger in time. After years of no contact I didn't know what was normal behavior between cousins anymore. I tried talking to my friends about it, they thought his behavior was funny and romantic, said I was reading too much into it. So I stopped talking about it and blamed it all on myself.

He started moving his chair when we were out, sitting very close to me. Always made sure that his knees would touch mine. His arm over my shoulders. It never mattered to him that I tried to move away. My happiness was replaced by fear, and I never managed to speak out and tell him to stop it.

It was getting worse with each day. I could see it in his eyes ( he wasn't trying to hide it anymore). He didn't see me the way you look at a friend, he looked at me the way a man looks at a woman and under his stare I felt naked. I felt like a pray.

That night when he snapped, he had insisted to go to his house, I refused. My mistake was agreeing to go out for a drink instead. The atmosphere was so tense even the waiter noticed it. We finished our drink and headed home, to mine. And this time he was completely different. He grabbed me by the arm and basically dragged me for half an hour. I was humiliated, everyone on the street was looking at me, struggling to walk beside him. When we got to my neighborhood it was already dark. And he just lost it. He picked me up and went straight into a construction site. There was this type of hole where they had thrown broken glass and large stones. He kept me straight on top of it, said if I tried to get away from him again he would drop me there. Ordered me to say he was stronger, that he could do whatever he wanted (like that was ever in question). Every time I didn't say what he wanted he would lower me into the hole.

When he got bored of scaring the hell out of me, he just took me to a trashcan. Asked where I preferred to be dropped, on the glass or on the trash. Chose the second, and barely managed to fall out of it and onto the ground. He thought it was very funny. Grabbed my arm again and took me home.

When we got there I wanted to tell my mother everything, but realized I shouldn't. She had lost a lot simply from loving me, I didn't want her to go through hell for me again so I put on my best smile, and lied.

The psycho didn't leavo tho, he came in for a late dinner. And while I was cooking he was searching for something in my room. I know because I caught him there, my files opened, looking through my drawings. When he soo me, he wasn't ashamed tho. He gave me this look that I think I won't be able to forget for the rest of my life. It was purely evil. He had discovered a secret of mine through the drawings, my self harming. He had seen the scars on my wrist, but now he knew exactly how they got there and he was beyond happy about it. He was happy that I was crazy, so he said. He said he couldn't wait to see what I was going to do to myself after that day. If I would just bleed to death. I left the room.

He ate the dinner I cooked, congratulated me on it, and left after saying goodbye to my mother and giving me a hug that seemed like he was trying to break my bones. After that day he called again a lot of times. I didn't answer. Blocked him from fb also. I never said a word to my mother about any of it but I wasn't the same since then. I couldn't even sleep out of the fear I'd wake up to find him in my room again.

Things got better after two months, he stoped calling and went back to Greece, and I started breathing normally again. I have yet to learn how not to panick when someone touches my arm, how not to remember every detail of that night, but I stopped cutting. I won't give him that satisfaction.

And now if I ever meet with him again, I am ready to make him pay. Because I can't forgive, and I can't forget. Dear cousin, I will make sure I appear in your nightmares just as much as you appeared in mine.