I'm struggling in the worst way to resist the urge to ask for accountability and answers that I know I will never get.

I was flashbanged by 2 different narcissists in the span of a month, the first one batted me around like a cat with a mouse over the course of several months leading up to the Truly Terrible™ Month.

First one was a coworker that I had a crush on, but was only ever trying to make friends with. I don't try to pursue relationships, because I know that the answer is always going to be no.

His behavior confused the fuck out of me, he'd be friendly and nice and (I didn't realize it at the time, flirtatious) when we were alone and then act like I was invisible when other people were around. He'd say things like, "Oh, I'm not so sure you don't have a line of guys at your door", (I fucking don't, I'm fat and ugly) and "How you been? Oh, that sucks, work been bending you over?" And he'd lean in and such when we were talking when we were alone.

I'm already mentally ill, I will flat out admit it. But his head games were the straw that broke the camel's back and I went to the edge, but I pulled back. I stopped trying to initiate conversations with him, deactivated my Facebook, muted our conversations on FB and IG, and came clean with my psychiatrist with how bad off my mental health was.

Enter narc # 2. This piece of shit was my brother's best friend growing up. I loved him and trusted him implicitly as a kid. I will never know *how the fuck* he knew it was the right time to reach out to me, as our contact has been the occasional Facebook comment or message over the last 20 years. (Read: occasional meaning a handful.) He messaged me 2 days after I deactivated my Facebook.

I fucking told him that I was insanely vulnerable, trying to pull myself out of an extremely dark place and I needed more affirmation and reassurance than he was probably used to and needed to be handled with kid gloves.

He then proceeded to love bomb me for 2 weeks.

Then, when he found out what I looked like naked, he came up with this cock and bull story about not wanting things to get sexual between us, he needed to work on himself and our lifelong friendship was too precious to ruin with sex. (Sidenote, narc #2 is poly and has been open about that from the beginning, I was okay with that because I don't have the mental resources to try to build a relationship with anyone right now.)

And then the paragraphs and 6 hour phone calls evaporated. I was a fucking idiot and told him everything, I mean EVERYTHING, and he has a naked picture of me.

I was extremely upset over the whole thing on the day that I slept with Narc # 1 and he sexually assaulted me. He told me he didn't want a relationship but that he liked me as a person and was attracted to me because of character, and in the workday leading up to the sexual part of the conversation, he wasn't doing his normal silent treatment shit. I told myself, "okay, maybe he just needed \*mutual friend* 's vetting or he is just socially awkward. I get it, I mean, *I'm* socially awkward."

All of it is eating me up inside. Both of them wanted me for the same reason, because I don't get attention from men and I would be easy to manipulate, and because their sex mines had run dry. They weren't even attracted to me at all.

These are the only two times in my life at age 33 that I thought that I experienced mutual attraction, and it turns out that I was just food for sharks. I already knew that love was impossible for me, but to know that even friendship and attraction is impossible just hurts so much.

How do y'all resist the urge to ask, "Why me???"

Narc #1 had plenty of other options but he knew that I was already at such a low point in my life, and I am/was getting closer with his best friend, who he claims he'd, "give a bullet for."

Narc #2 claimed that he'd loved me his whole life and didn't want to hurt me, didn't want to be a painful or sour memory in my future.

I don't understand why they did these things to someone they didn't even want and weren't even attracted to.