Lost in translation

This is a post about somebody who had a “crush” on a version of me they made up. They don’t even know I’m an atheist, let alone the fact that I keep this blog where I can process the experience of being mistreated by others.

So, a little over 3 years ago, I posted this on Instagram:

I think it was mildly self-deprecating, if @ all, but it IS a post about how I look pretty in this picture! Which was fun for me, because I was scrubbed into gym clothes w/ my hair up. I did not call myself ugly or unattractive, but all of the sweet comments on this photo are from women who rushed in to hype me up. They had no qualms hyping me up publicly, because A. that’s what women do & B. there’s absolutely nothing WRONG w/ what they’re saying. Then, for some fucking reason, I got these PRIVATE messages from a man:

Right out the gate, I feel like he’s acting unhinged. I didn’t call myself “ugly” OR “unattractive” in this post. If you “should keep this to [your]self”, why don’t you keep it to yourself? It’s bad enough you can’t say anything nice about me publicly, like all the women are doing, but why are you privately confessing your feelings & reprimanding me? I choose not to engage this “compliment” @ all, instead telling him that I have no control over my thoughts (which I still believe to be true, since I don’t believe in free will). He then asks, of all things, if I “need him” for anything. What I could need a random man for, I cannot imagine, so AGAIN, I do not engage his nonsense.

This is emblematic of how I used to circumvent confrontation. Instead of “What you are saying is making me uncomfortable”, I change the subject:

Here, he wants to talk about my marital status. I don’t know why. I do not value marriage & never have. I was trying to talk about these so-called “silly people” (of whom he clearly is 1). The next part of the exchange is even more baffling.

What the fuck does he mean, congratulations, I’m a wife? I never said I’m married, but he is weirdly hung up on the idea. I do not value marriage. I do not value the idea of being a wife. His “congratulations” is diminutive & insulting & presumptuous. He didn’t understand what I said, blew right past it & made his own conclusions. Then he gets disgustingly solicitous, because he inserts himself into my relationship. What do you mean, you’re going to tell my man how to speak to me? I never indicated that he doesn’t know how to do that, nor have I ever indicated that YOU do. I deflect this idiotic comment, & this lascivious man triples down…right after demonstrating to me that he does not know the difference between the word “conscious” & “conscience”.

I was under the impression that when you tell a man you’re taken, he will be more likely to let go of his attempts to come onto you. But when I say triples down…he tells me that if things were different, I would belong to him.

I have NEVER INDICATED THAT I AM ATTRACTED TO THIS PERSON, EVEN ONCE. What’s more, he’s Christian (hence the obsession w/ marriage & ownership of women) & he goes so far as to say that something about me challenged his PIETY? In what world does this tactic work?!

I deflect again. I don’t want to talk about belonging to this lecher, that idea disgusts me & I’m trying to show him that by not responding to it. But he QUADRUPLES DOWN & puts the image of us kissing in my head. That’s so fucking offensive to me that I end up blocking him for almost 3 years. I’m asexual, demisexual, & bisexual. The idea of being touched by someone I’m not in love w/ is repugnant to me. But he has no filter. He’s telling me he’d kiss me, & please me. @ this point, I wanted to cry & throw up. Victor was right next to me & I asked him what I should do, because I was upset & terrified, & we agreed I should block this person because he refuses to take a hint.

Just to help any readers who are not sure whether or not they should try this on a person, let me be clear: do not ever tell a person who’s not attracted to you that you would “enjoy” them. You sound like Jeffrey Dahmer.

Then, 3 years pass. We have a mutual friend who reaches out to me & says “Hey, So-&-So doesn’t know what he did wrong, can you tell me? Can you tell him?” & I agree. I tell the mutual friend & then I reach out to the lecher so I can explain why & how he ended our friendship.

I don’t like this apology, but I figured if I accepted it I may never have to speak to him again, because his apology did not indicate that he had any idea what he was even talking about. I think by now we have all heard that apologies which are just words mean little to nothing – actions are what make an apology count – but this man isn’t even trying. He doesn’t say what he’s apologizing for or how he’s going to change his behavior. I am afraid that if I speak to him again, he’ll hit on me AGAIN, because he pretends to not know he did it in the 1st place. Henceforth we have an extended illustration of the backfire effect: I will present him w/ a side of the story that illuminates how he was in the wrong, & it will make him believe even more strongly that he was right to say those monstrous things to me 3 years ago.

Here’s a transcript of what he says in the 2 voice messages:

So…asking you to explain why you feel what you feel because I don’t understand it is not lacking value of you. That’s trying to get the clarity I need to give you the accountability you want. Um. I did not realize that telling you that you were valuable & that I would keep you if I had the opportunity was an offensive thing so I need your help to process your feelings, your vantage point, to give you the accountability you’re asking for.

I do not think of you as some small child or some person that doesn’t deserve to be regarded & historically I have been going back & forth on where my devaluation of you occurred so that I can see that thing & correct that thing because if I did it to you I’ve probably done it to other people. So my valuation of you is such that I’ve gone back & I’ve talked to every woman I know, asking them to correct me where I need correction, because of you Megan.

He asks for clarity so he can be accountable, but he’s also completely illiterate. I wasn’t saying I am treated like a small child by him, I’m saying that he apologized like a 2-year-old. That went completely over his head, because he’s so arrogant. STILL, he says he wants clarity & to be accountable, so I try to explain the now-3-years-old situation (a situation which is older than the mental age he is when he tries to apologize) to him.

I’m also fairly certain that he’s never spoken to a woman about these messages & shown them to her. I have shown these messages to most of the women in my life, & they all agree that he is hitting on me, & virtue-signaling to boot. If he showed this to “every women [he knows]”, surely 1 of them would have picked up on the fact that I am not responding to the vile picture he’s painting & told him. He’s an outright liar or he’s committed the lie of omission by never showing anybody the messages in question.

This man is SO EAGER to not be accountable that he starts defending himself before I even respond! Why would you lead w/ “a fix is next to impossible” when I haven’t even told you the thing you wanted clarity on yet? When you haven’t even assessed whether or not you can fix what you’ve done? He LIED when he said he wanted accountability & he lied when he said he wanted clarity! I should have accepted his cloying “I wish you the best” as the send-off he meant it to be. He did NOT want to hear what I had to say next, so he didn’t hear it.

Here we go again – he’s putting words in my mouth. I never said that he asked me to be w/ him. That’s what a come-on is though; it’s implied romantic or sexual interest in another person, & “I’ve had a crush on you for 7 years” IS IMPLIED ROMANTIC OR SEXUAL INTEREST. He never once mentioned my “value”, but he did mention my looks & the idea of touching me. Hitting on someone online is SO cowardly, I can’t stand it. This is why sites like datingappgarbage exist – because idiots like this think they can get away w/ saying whatever they want through any online portal & it will keep them safe from scrutiny. That’s not true. I may not be revealing who this person is, but I can certainly scrutinize their aberrant behavior. Also, not to be a broken record, but is this man REALLY TALKING ABOUT OWNERSHIP AGAIN?! Who says something like that? That alone tells me we are not @ the same station in life – men my age don’t TALK THAT WAY.

For what it’s worth, I don’t know how old this guy is, I just know he’s more than 10 years my senior, & that a 23-year-old or a 29-year-old don’t have the same life experience as any but the SADDEST 34- or 40-year-olds. Why would I want to be w/ someone who is a decade older than me & is still this childish when they get called out?

He CONTINUES to be condescending, & what’s worse, now that I’ve told him I believe people reach stations in life, he ONLY hears “age gap”. The rest of his argument is a straw man. He doesn’t bother asking me what I mean by stations even once. For you, my audience: I mean that playing fields are leveled by experiences. 2 people who’ve each been divorced once each are likely to be @ the same station. 2 people who graduated college a decade or more ago & are still finding their career path are likely to be @ the same station. 2 people who are in highschool. 2 people who are retired. 2 people who are each single parents. It’s not a hard concept to explain, but god forbid this reprobate take any actual interest in the thoughts in my head. He makes this about things I have not once indicated, because if he pretends the issue is about something else then he’s off the hook; hence, a straw man argument. He makes this about whether or not he forced a belief system on me, or whether or not he asked me out. If he were capable of listening to me (or reading between the lines 3 years ago), he would hear me saying “Your comments were unwelcome & I want you to apologize for making me uncomfortable.” If he had asked women what he did wrong & showed them this interaction, they could have cleared it all up then. Instead, he ENTHUSIASTICALLY defends the nasty things he said as “compliments” then thanks me again, because he really doesn’t want to be accountable, so he wants the conversation to stop.

He doesn’t even acknowledge that I answered his question. He asked me if this would’ve happened were he younger & I said “YES!” & he ignores it.

I do not like being spoken to like whomever he thinks I am. I am not mawkish, impressionable, or easily fooled. He’s barking up the wrong tree if he thinks I’m going to stop arguing just because he thanks me for what I’ve had to say. I won’t stop until what I’ve had to say is understood.

Again, it’s a really cowardly move to hit on someone whom you know does not like you over the internet. It’s also a really repulsive move to put graphic images in their head. That’s why dick pics are unwelcome – am I the only person seeing the correlation?

Transcript of the voice messages:

I disagree. I respect the honoring yourself but you missed the entire point of that message. The bottom of it completely says, “Please stop w/ the ugly self-talk” you were telling us. You didn’t have to agree w/ me & what I said based on your “I’m too old” disposition, but that statement was CLEARLY said to counter all the negative self talk you were giving us @ the time.

Again, because I said that, you have to weigh into consideration that I never pursued you in any space or any way other than to tell you I see your value & worth. So I agree w/ you that we should stop this because your disposition about this I’m inappropriate because I’m too old. You can’t hear anything else I say because that’s the belief system you’re operating from, & I respect that. So be well Megan & thank you for the input.

I can’t believe how many times he is lying to himself & to me. I did not miss the point of a message that starts w/ “I have a crush on you”. & I didn’t post negative self-talk, I posted about feeling beautiful & every female follower (as well as many male followers!) I have told me that I look cute.

He’s also obsessed w/ the idea that he never pursued me. Hitting on someone is pursuing them. Period.

I should add that this man has so few boundaries that he once tried to set me up w/ a different, more age-appropriate man, AGAIN when I wasn’t even single. He doesn’t respect me, he doesn’t respect my partner, & he’s too stupid to know his place. He reinforced my side so many times: when he knew he shouldn’t confess to his crush, when he tried to set me up w/ a different young man, when he “asked every woman in [his] life” what he did wrong, & when he admitted that his relationship w/ a woman 16 years his senior didn’t work out. I wonder why? Could it be because you devalue every woman you speak to & treat them like an object that should be owned?

You’re not forgetful. Memory is a simulacrum – memory is actually all about attention. Every time you attend to something your brain runs electricity across that path. Then, recall is like your brain picking up spaghetti w/ a slotted spoon; it’s trying to pick up all the clumped-together strands, which are those pathways. The more you attend to a pathway the stronger it is & the easier it is to scoop up w/ the spoon. This also works when strands are long, which they become especially if you connect this path to another through association; if you do not associate the path on purpose, your brain will do it for you & sort this information as “unimportant” so that you have the feeling of “forgetting” it, when in reality it’s mixed up somewhere in there w/ all the other times you experienced something similar to this. All the times you’ve been told something or done something overall subtly influence everything about the way you think the world works, because they’re dependent on each other for meaning. You typically can’t forget if you try not to; although you may have trouble w/ recall which only means you need to examine & rearrange those implicit associations before something ends up seeming meaningless. But no, you’re not forgetful. You aren’t attending.

How is it that in 6 years of friendship – almost half the lifetime of this blog – I never once wrote about this person by name? She was really that fair-weather of a friend?

It’s been 9 months since the ridiculous end to my friendship w/ S, & I’ve come a really long way in terms of redirecting my energies back onto myself, my self-improvement, & ultimately my self-esteem. But recently, I had a conversation about the betrayal & I realized what a long time it has taken me to realize I made a shitty friend in the 1st place. She was basically a walking red flag – but, my insistence not only that people are good, but that she specifically understood me left me twisting in the wind the entire time.

So I’m trying to reexamine & reframe all the backstabbing by asking myself – okay, what does this say about me? What does the fact that I pretended I did or did not care about the below mean about my stunted emotional development, & how can I have more integrity in the future?

What did S do wrong?

1. Working backwards for the sake of clarity, the 1st thing she did wrong was simply entertaining a relationship w/ my ex – especially holding out that I would stand for it. That’s not something any of us expect of our best friends, right? But I discussed this w/ many people over the past 9 mos, & the survey results came up pretty 50/50. In general, polyamorous people didn’t see the issue, whereas my decidedly-monogamous friends saw a violation here. However, it wasn’t a violation of her taking away someone I loved (in him). So why did I feel violated?
   • I believe that I lost all the good graces of Z when he learned that V & I were together after the end of the relationship. I do not know when he found out, or how, but I know that S discussed it w/ him on multiple occasions. That was the betrayal – airing my personal business. In order to take control of this business back, I told Z how long V & I had been together – including the affair. It didn’t make me feel better. It was ugly.
     • What ultimately makes me feel better is knowing that I made the right choice between these 2 men. I’m finally in love w/ someone I can sacrifice my vices for, & in a relationship worth improving myself for, w/ a person who accepts influence. I think what I never wanted Z to know was how much better off I am – as that seemed like insult to injury after the affair. So knowing that S was going to keep tabs on me – intentionally or not – & relay things to Z ultimately made me feel I had lost control of the way I am perceived.
       • She did take away someone I loved, in her. That made me feel violated.
2. Going further back in time, she absolutely never picked me over anyone or anything in her life. She never supported my work in theater, or my performances in bands, or my personal growth in my career. Why did I feel neglected?
   • Her preoccupation w/ Z is very apparent in hindsight, because she used to constantly listen to his music or watch the only YouTube video there was of both him & me. But if I was working on anything – even this blog after the 1st part of our friendship – she ignored it. Even when Z & I worked together on a theatrical performance, she never showed up. I think this may have been because she had her feelings for him back then too, but still. As someone who read her chapbook, picked up her article in Westword, helped her write songs, read the books she recommended, & even went to a poetry reading (or 2?), I can’t understand why she neglected me in kind.
     • What I have learned is that nobody should get this level of attention from me if they aren’t able to reciprocate it. People can choose not to show up but trick you into thinking they’re there by constantly making requests of you. I’ve already detailed a few posts back all the things I did for S, but the conversation I had the other day where she came up again was w/ a former roommate of hers, who said essentially living w/ S was a nightmare. She did as she pleased @ all times & made no effort to be compatible w/ the people who took her in.
       • I felt neglected because she used me, & used people I love.
3. In the same vein – I never witnessed her respecting people she claimed to love. I felt disrespected on their behalf, some of the time.
   • She had multiple emotional affairs while she was married & I was always there to stand by her & try not to judge her, but I did think she should end her marriage if she couldn’t love M. M, for their part, believed S should @ the very least stay away from a 3rd party, J, who had a sexual history w/ S & was all-around bad news. As soon as the marriage ended, S ended up trying to make it work w/ J, getting her heart broken, & then coming to me to pick up the pieces. She wasn’t capable of listening to the clear & salient advice from someone she had married.
     • I learned from this that you should really watch the way your friends treat people they claim to love, & you should never assume that you will be the exception when their selfish behavior hurts others. If they are willing to talk trash about or abandon their children, parents, spouse, or cousins in pursuit of a perceived freedom, then they’re willing to talk trash about & abandon you in pursuit of whatever they want.
       • I felt disrespected or as if I had to stand up for people in her life all the time.
4. Last but not least, I found out recently that she lied to somebody about not having custody of her child. I can’t verify which of these stories is true, but either she let her child go conscientiously so that she could get on her feet, or her child was taken away from her for neglect.
   • I don’t know what it’s like to be a parent & don’t know what S needed @ the time that custody of her child changed hands. I just know that there are 2 versions of the “truth” out there, meaning that S has lied to somebody for the sake of image. & that made me look back on our entire friendship & her obsession w/ being highly-online, highly-sexualized, highly-conspicuous &, like me, highly-self-revelatory (online) about her personal struggles.
     • I don’t want to be so conspicuous from now on about my personal life. Over the years I have used this blog less & less, & the readership has dwindled to 1 or 2 people. But I know that I will want this record of my life when I’m older, & I genuinely hope that the whole of it is something I’m proud of in my old age.
       • That said, I couldn’t bear for lies about me to float around either by my own design or by way of rumor. I will endeavor to keep using my blog & my intimate relationships to tell the truth, so that nobody else ever feels like they fell for a false copy of me, as I did for S. To bring it full-circle, I’m glad that my reaction to S’s infidelity was to finally come clean to Z about the length of my infidelity. He deserves that, & my worry that I was rubbing salt in his wound – while probably true – was not as important as the exchange of facts.

My hope for Z is that he’s happy & successful in love & in work. My hope for S is that she eventually learns how to honor people other than herself. My hope for myself is that by the time I reach the 1-year mark from the end of this one-sided friendship, I will have cultivated reciprocal relationships. I’m working on not sticking my neck out for people who take me for granted, while simultaneously pouring into those who have aided me, listened to me, shown up for me in ways that S won’t be capable of until she changes. Especially anyone who still reads this blog – reading this is 1 of the most selfless things I can think a friend would ever do, because they don’t get anything out of it, but I receive their replies w/ affection, gratitude, & a sense of emotional debt that I am all-too willing to repay.

I am no Scrooge but I am so fucking sick of Christmas right now.

Last month my Thanksgiving was cancelled due to my friend who intended to host having COVID-19. Totally grateful to him for being forthcoming so we didn’t attend, but ever since that day everything has caused me to want to pull my hair out. I missed my favorite holiday, the last vestigial respite before all hell breaks loose, & I am so goddamn tired.

I had a conversation w/ a customer today whose lack of foresight is somehow my problem. See, he’s a customer who has customers, whose customers buy a lot of nifty gifties for Christmas, but he doesn’t produce shit. My company produces what his company sells, & he keeps sending me Purchase Orders that literally say “Entered: December 6th, 2022”, “Expected: December 6th, 2022”. Nevermind that his company is across the country – not across the street – & he has to send us his branded packing materials for us to pack his branded products into before I can get even a single line item off the ground. It’s infuriating.

I finally have an incredible staff @ work, but my boss has asked everyone to work a 6th day the 1st 2 weeks of this month. Last year the employees I had barely worked 6 days a week COMBINED, but we didn’t have a corporate order campaign going that required constant backstock. Working a 6th day each week means I have not had time to go shop for my own family, because I’m too busy making sure that everybody else’s family gets what they asked for (hint: it’s flavored salt – that most of them won’t even use).

& it’s not just the work demands that I find demanding. I have friends I haven’t seen in a month, & other friends who can’t make our plans, & other friends whose messages I can’t respond to for days on end. I have a mother who asked me what Victor & I wanted for Christmas when we don’t want anything she can afford (we want a house! She is not responsible for contributing to that desire!) I have a father who’s been in the hospital since the weekend before Thanksgiving, who hasn’t even listened to the audiobooks I got him for his September birthday, even though all I’m trying to do by sending him books is literally save his life. I am cold all the time, I’m tired all the time, it’s dark all the time (fuck you, Daylight Savings Time, I thought we passed a law to stop doing that), & I’m still grieving what my best friend did 3 months ago.

I know that as a person ages their perception of time speeds up. & I do feel like this is all happening really fast. 3 months ago I was desperately clawing my way through the workday in the face of the worst employee who has ever lived, ignorant of the fact that I was about to uproot about like, a quarter of my support system by responding poorly to bad news, unattached to any kind of goal-setting behaviors, & completely w/o responsibility to myself. But now I’m trying to be responsible, I never have enough time.

I started tonight trying to write out a list of my goals & how achieving them/not achieving them makes me feel, because I finally have identifiable goals again, but I quickly got lost in the perfectionism sauce. I can’t explain how it’s going to feel when I don’t check off literally every thing every day, because I can remember how it feels TO check off every thing every day. Maybe that’s correspondent w/ having enough daylight hours, or maybe it’s just correspondent w/ doing less. But I wasn’t happy enough when I was doing less.

I wasn’t happy enough when all I had to do was a good job @ work then a mediocre job of being a girlfriend @ home. I wasn’t happy when I wasn’t singing, dancing, writing, learning Spanish & taking care of cats. So then why is it that now I’m singing, dancing, writing, learning Spanish & taking care of cats I still feel an utter sense of defeat?

I’m trying to do the holiday spirit, I really am. I baked a pumpkin pecan pie for Thanksgiving. I bought an $8 secondhand artificial Christmas tree. We hung the lights, the stockings, we bought eggnog & went to go see a Christmas movie in the theatre. But a huge difference between who I am now & who I was 2 Christmases ago is that my entire life’s essence seems to be driven by this job. If I don’t have a sense of fulfillment @ the end of the workday, it’s hard to muster up a sense of accomplishment after that.

I used to work 2 jobs, necessitating some of that work be second shift. It was amazing to have an entire “day off” before I went in, removing the need to get anything & everything done @ work once I arrived since I almost always already had a sense of achievement before I got in each day. I want that back. I want that back w/o being the kind of person who gets up @ 6 AM.

Because damnit, half the year it’s still dark @ 6 AM! WHY CAN’T WE MOVE CHRISTMAS TO JULY.

I accidentally trained 1 of my closest friends to take me for granted.

To be more clear, I have a habit of training people to take me for granted, but the last post & the last year really made it obvious how much not setting boundaries around what I can give is exhausting me.

In 6 years in no particular order, I gave this person a place to live (w/ me), money for bills, help assembling & organizing an apartment, a place to stay between homes & after sexual assault, psychedelic mushrooms, a laptop, a 2nd place to live (this time w/ friends of mine), an idea for a wife (that 1’s hard to explain, trust me), & a job. In return I think I slept over @ their place once whenever I needed to get away from my ex. I know that airing out the laundry list of favors here sounds like I think I’m owed something or – god forbid – that I think friendships are tit for tat. But I legitimately thought I was buying that person’s respect w/o telling them my boundaries (read: expectations), & therein lies the rub.

I also had not told myself my boundaries or expectations around this person. I rarely do.

I go back & forth on whether or not all of the above was given earnestly. I think it was – it felt like the truth of my soul @ the time I did any of it. My love language is probably acts of service & to this day I still thrill to accomplish anything for others. So then why did I crack & respond w/ such extreme anger when they came out as needing to explore dating my ex (w/ whom I have too much baggage, & therefore about whom I don’t really want to hear all that often, especially not from someone whom I tell all my secrets to)?

Because that was a service I don’t know how to provide. What was it supposed to be? My blessing? They can have that. But what they can’t have is any more of my time.

The overreaction was also so much to do w/ everyone else who took advantage of me this year, & how many straws it takes to break the camel’s back. Spoiler alert, 2/3rds of the people who fucked me over worked for me – @ a job where, until this summer, I was commanded to offer my friends part-time jobs, instead of hiring qualified individuals who would actually, y’know, respect me as their boss. Good news is I’m finally allowed to hire people who don’t know me as a giver & a pushover & a compromiser, & so far everyone hired on this new premise has been 10x smarter & 50x more capable than my “friends” were, so, small yay,

The poor-boundaries-setting & the people-pleasing started when I was a kid, & I’m unlearning it, but my year of poor-boundaries-setting-&-people-pleasing-resultant-in-explosive-conflict started last September. The above-mentioned Pavlov’s daughter was on their way out of the job, mentally especially & eventually physically, but the spice warehouse is much busier than you can imagine during the quote-unquote holiday season, so I had to bring in backup.

Seriously, the only place I’ve ever worked that was busier leading up to Christmas was the Costco tire shop, & that was people getting winter exchanges regardless of the weather.

The backup I brought in ended up being illiterate, ADHD-addled, BPD-outburst-prone, & lacking in executive function. For a year, I covered their mistakes about 50% of the time, because the emotional toll it took on me to point out those mistakes the other 50% of the time was not worth it. Imagine telling someone to do something for the 10th time & they say that they’ve never heard of the task. Imagine someone crying because you’ve asked them to lower their voice while you’re reading & writing emails or balancing the invoices, & they haven’t, so you’ve written them up for it. Imagine – I shit you not – someone who took it personally once whenever I alphabetized the ingredients (for ease of use? Don’t we all know the alphabet? Isn’t this easier than wandering around by faulty memory?).

That person’s been gone for about 2 weeks & my partner cannot stop stressing how much less stressed I am. I am so, so much better off, but if truth be told I never would have been rid of this staff member if I hadn’t finally started documenting the errors I didn’t have the emotional energy to address out loud. Because also what was the POINT, any time you tried to correct this employee out loud, they excused themselves either by way of forgetting prior instructions, lying (I suspect) about what they were told to do, or making an emotional argument for why they shouldn’t be tasked w/ doing the full extent of their job because other people made (usually irrelevant to this employee) mistakes. Writing it all down – as has been my custom my whole life when in conflict – was the best way to show them they weren’t a good fit for this incredibly literature-heavy, software-heavy, change-heavy, detail-heavy job, & the minute I started writing it down, they left.

The year in which I lived this bizarre agony (w/ someone I still consider a friend, mind you, who simply wasn’t working out @ work) marked two other failed friendships about halfway through. 1 in February, 1 in May.

In November I recruited a friend-of-a-friend to work w/ me – they’d been there about 3 months whenever it became evident that they were never going to be able to do manual labor w/o seriously riling all my empathy. Couldn’t stand for hours, couldn’t lift more than a few lbs, but worst of all was they were wicked smart & had the capacity to manage the inventory software. Had they done it, that would have freed up so much of my time to stand for hours & lift more than a few lbs in their stead. God, I wanted that to happen. I just wanted something – ANYTHING – taken off my plate. Instead, I discovered that, out of love & sympathy for me – whose job was not getting easier whatsover w/ these 2 as employees – they were trying to unionize the 3 of us.

Oh my god, I saw red. The idea of these 3 people, where 2/3rds of them can’t actually do their jobs most of the time, unionizing? Having their jobs protected even in a case where I’m still walking on eggshells w/ 1 & laying out the red carpet for the other while managing 100% of my assignments & 50+% of theirs? I see that this employee was trying to help me by rallying for protections like healthcare & PTO, but I couldn’t fathom going to the doctor or taking a day off anyway. Not when neither of them could do anything right, couldn’t finish what they started, & didn’t respond well to criticism to boot. Every single time I was gone, I came back to seemingly more work than I had left. Except instead of work in the form of new tasks, it was in the form of investigating & rescinding ignorant mistakes, which were always made if I was gone for even 1 day.

This work-year took so fucking much out of me. It took almost 100% of me out of me & left a weird monster in my stead.

When I found out they wanted us to unionize, I did the same thing I always do! I’m so tired of responding this way! I told them it was all right – interesting, even! – a good idea, even! (I mean healthcare is a good idea, right?) But when I discovered that what was desired of me was to become the leader, including recruiting the other problematic employee who was not capable of their job, & that in order to do this I had to devote unpaid hours outside of work, I lashed out. I thought I was encouraging someone who was exhibiting leadership skills, not somebody begging for a leader. I just got so mad. I told them they wasted my time. I eventually told them they weren’t doing half their job. Even though I didn’t call names or, I think, make unfair accusations, the fact that I reneged on my interest in the union was a betrayal in their eyes that was not worth discussing. We never repaired the rift & shortly thereafter, they quit.

Did I mention I was watching their cat, too? & driving them to work? They had just moved here, & after the fight I thought maybe fostering their cat for another few months as requested would foster enough goodwill that I could be forgiven for my temper eventually – but, as happened w/ Pavlov’s daughter, not telling someone calmly what viscerally grieves you about the way they behave results in them continuing to push the envelope, believing it’s all okay w/ you. Anyway, when they were ready to re-adopt their cat, I asked if we could call a meeting of the minds to discuss the rift. I got a letter back about how the union was the most important thing & I wasn’t capable of expressing my displeasure @ the idea in a mature way. They sent a mutual friend to pick up the cat, never paid me back for the care I provided to the animal, & presumably blocked me. All because they couldn’t see how a union effort would further destroy my last dregs of sanity by protecting out-of-place employees. The day the cat was picked up was also the day we ended up firing an employee for time theft, so that just goes to show you how ill-advised the union idea was.

But there’s a 3rd person I befriended this year & quickly unfriended, & his story is weird.

Not to get too into it, but I got shunned by an entire other employer this June. In short, I was hired to host a twice-monthly game of music bingo @ a brewery on Tuesday nights, but w/o manager oversight, the bartenders sabotaged the game by playing music over my game playlist. Customers couldn’t hear the songs that belonged to the bingo game over the other music, so they didn’t play, & when the manager reviewed the numbers it was determined I wasn’t doing anything to help sales. No shit! Had I not been so deferential, I probably would’ve confronted the bartenders. Instead I opted to chat w/ the manager, who said the bartenders were wrong but I was still a sunk cost. I was let go. It sucked.

But the hosting gig, short-lived as it was, found me an even shorter-lived new friendship. A guy who was attending regularly, a friend-of-a-friend, invited me to play board games a few times & trivia once & to see a movie & to go grab lunch, & I did all of this willingly enough. I’m not normally 1 to shirk new potential friendships. But I don’t want to see anyone even twice a week – I’m not an extrovert – & this guy was trying to make plans for every other day. When I finally started to pull back & reject invitations, he pouted in that way you can only do in a text. I said “I don’t want to go to X event, I want to relax @ home instead” & I got the “Oh, ok.” I further explained myself (why?!) & again got the “Ok”

I responded: “Hey [name] just a friendly message saying I’m gonna block you because the way this conversation is going is incredibly toxic. You shouldn’t give me the text version of the cold shoulder for normal preferences or boundaries! Especially when I’m being upfront about them! Work on yourself & good luck!”

I was really proud of that message. It was clear, & while it probably wasn’t necessary for me to let him know I was blocking him, I also didn’t think this was a point that should be argued so I wasn’t gonna sit around waiting for an argument. Later that day he had our mutual friend check on me in case I was unwell, which I did find funny, but I went through the trouble of telling her that no, I’m not unwell, I think he’s trying to get back in my good graces by pretending I need attention when I need the opposite. Then I went to see Modest Mouse.

@ the end of the day I am still figuring out what is going on w/ these needy types I’m attracting. My partner is like me – he sacrifices of himself to give to others, generally constantly – & the friends I have remaining I think do the same. But everyone else around me seems to be better @ saying “No” before they lose their shit, & I can’t really seem to say “No” unless it’s to someone I barely know or I’m incapacitated w/ drink.

I could’ve told Pavlov’s daughter a million times to look forward for relationships, not backward, & maybe they would’ve known before doing it that I wouldn’t like the idea of them dating my ex. Because they did have an unnerving habit of dating from their past that I never thought was healthy. I could’ve told union organizer w/in weeks of hiring them that they should – for my sake – consider any other career path, given that they couldn’t do physical labor & didn’t seem interested in mental labor (seriously, I’m still correcting mistakes they made way back when, 6 months later!) & I could’ve regularly told my ADHD-addled BPD-outburst-prone friend – for MY OWN SAKE – all the things they did wrong as we went & it would’ve resulted in me expunging them & hiring new people sooner. It also probably would’ve ended the friendship but, I would’ve preferred to keep Pavlov’s daughter over ADHD-addled & that is okay to say & if I had practiced setting boundaries w/ both I think it would’ve worked out that way.

I could’ve had more to give to myself if I wasn’t giving it all away to a bunch of ingrates, & I might not have perceived Pavlov’s daughter as an ingrate if I had spent any time giving anything to myself to work w/.

I started an EMDR regimen that I hope will help me get to the bottom of this pattern. I don’t know how somebody becomes a people pleaser so I especially don’t know how to un-become 1, but god would my life be easier if I just figured it out. I’d probably divest myself of shitty friends in favor of good ones way, way more regularly. Because waiting 6 years to say goodbye to someone when I suddenly perceive their disrespect, makes me wonder if I did the right thing, & if they disrespected me in the 1st place.

I’m writing this @ The Process, a creatives’ space in the same zipcode as my warehouse which hosts a weekly writers’ group. It’s the ideal place – several rooms, snacks, quiet, outlets, a place to put your phone away. I can think of a few people I would like to bring here if we were still in contact.

This story has 5 protagonists: The Podcaster, The Publisher, The Producer, The Programmer & The Peacemaker.

When I was 21 I betrayed my older sister’s grace by entering into a relationship w/ her ex-partner, The Programmer. Despite knowing they were together 3 or 4 years & were very serious, I proceeded to date The Programmer for 3 or 4 years & it became so serious that, y’know, I went bankrupt & to jail about it. The Programmer was not right for Sibling & was not right for me, but we have all since made peace & The Programmer is a sometimes-part of both of our lives. You’d think I would learn from this experience how much it hurts for someone you love to put themselves through a relationship w/ a person you’ve warned them about. But I didn’t learn that until like, 2 weeks ago, & the person I love is not even in a relationship w/ the person I thought I warned them about.

Fast forward to the end of the relationship w/ The Programmer, when The Producer & I dated for 3 years, 4 months. If “dating” is from the 1st to the last time we had sex. I’ve been dating my new partner, The Peacemaker for 3 years, 4 months as of the 1st draft of this writing, if you define it the same as above. But the catch is, 4 of those months overlap. I had an affair behind The Producer’s back, & I’m about as fucking proud of it as I am of dating The Programmer all those years ago (read: I’m not proud).

But if you count “dating” from somewhere else – something that’s not sex – I have been w/ my Peacemaker for much, much longer. (Again: not proud.) I have loved him from some nebulous point about 4 years ago where I realized he gave a shit about what I wanted, needed, enjoyed, & hated more than The Producer ever even pretended to. Sometimes it felt like he gave a shit about me more than I did.

3 weeks ago, The Podcaster & I went out for a meal. We had the same wonderful time I always expect to have around this person, laughing, sharing advice, we even had an emotional interaction w/ a member of the restaurant staff who was moved by a story The Podcaster was telling. As you would expect, The Podcaster can really tell a story.

After boxing up our leftovers, I walked The Podcaster to their car & they asked if they could share news w/ me. News that scared them to share. What was I to say? Sure. This is my best friend. I don’t know what I expected then but I have since convinced myself that I should’ve expected the shoe that dropped. After all, we had all roomed together. The Podcaster confessed romantic feelings for The Producer, who lives half a country away & is not someone I would ever expect to want something long-distance but uh, what do I know.

So at 1st, when I got this news from The Podcaster, I was not completely shocked but actually really grateful they would warn me about their feelings & intentions. That seemed loyal as fuck. We went over it a little – not exhaustively – but enough that I could get the picture. The Podcaster has had feelings for The Producer for 6, nearly 7 years. My breakup w/ The Producer was painful enough for me that it discouraged The Podcaster from pursuing those feelings. But hey, lots of time has passed, The Podcaster has a lot in common w/ The Producer, so they’re “talking.”

I fawned. I actually learned from The Podcaster that fawning is an amygdala response, like fight/flight/freeze. Instead of listening to how I & my body felt about this, I couldn’t tell how I felt about this, but I emphatically wished them luck as friends or in an eventual romantic relationship, & was very clear that I was okay w/ it, & then on the drive home I called a friend to calm down. Puzzle pieces were falling together. Bleached & bruised but fitting against each other still nonetheless. 2 people I brought together couldn’t resist each other. Was it 1-sided? Yeah, maybe, kinda sounds that way. Was it irresistible for the person on that 1 side? Also yeah.

I couldn’t articulate anything for a couple days, & then I tried articulating 1 feeling: anger. The childish, “how could you do this to me” monster was as ineloquent as you would imagine him to be. I emailed them both in the middle of the night, & as is so narratively commonplace I expect you to fill it in for yourself, I was not sober. I told The Producer their singing voice is abysmal & that I knew they never loved me. Why did I know this? Oh I dunno, mostly because I had to pursue them in the beginning, middle, & end, & I didn’t think they ever cared enough about the relationship to work on it. I told The Podcaster they were a freeloader & that I knew they only cared about being in romantic relationships, not friendships. Why did I know this? Well, they did harbor these feelings for The Producer while I was dating The Producer & The Podcaster themself was married.

I also told them both to die. Like I said, a childish monster.

I’m honestly never going to stop being impressed w/ how they both reacted. The Producer ignored me – something I’ve been accustomed to since we were dating, which was quite easy to brush off, but still, surprising I didn’t get a rise I suppose. But The Podcaster, whom I tried to block, kept reaching out to me. No apology, because why would they know this is painful for me? Finally I had to call & say “That’s it, our friendship is over,” to which they responded “I think we’ll make it, & I’ll be here.”

That resonated. Maybe this was not the same situation as me dating The Programmer 10 years ago & hurling Sibling into alarm & dismay. Maybe I could come around to the idea of those 2 together. Friends would even be okay, even though The Podcaster has been rushing to defend The Producer for months (another tip off) & that always stung a bit. But 1 thing was for sure, I didn’t think I could come back from all the nasty things I said. I started this blog post & published a draft w/ their names (the mobile site is better, actually, than the desktop site in this regard. The “view” button on the desktop is next to “publish”, & if you’re messed up enough to just keep hammering it, you post w/o viewing. The mobile site instead forces you to a landing page to make sure you wanna post). My Twitter, which almost only exists to automate tweets about this blog, tweeted it.

Oh. So.

I deleted that.

But, & I don’t know how, The Podcaster saw it. & they were furiouser than I’ve ever seen them. The “I’ll be here when you’re ready to talk” mentality was utterly out the window & when I tried I was sorely rebuffed. The messages I received after that were chockful of sickly sweet “I love you, but” statements & pleas for me to understand that the two of them have always been friends so the romantic feelings were a natural growth from that. That was silly though – that was just like The Programmer & me; I wouldn’t have been in any contact w/ The Programmer if not for Sibling & The Podcaster would not have been in any contact w/ The Producer if I hadn’t invited both to live w/ me for several months while 2/3rds of us were dating.

After the post, talks w/ The Podcaster got nasty. At 1 point they were actually laughing me off & telling me to get over it, & telling me that I’m imagining things. Hypocritically telling me to piss off when they didn’t respect my initial withdrawal. I wanted to reach a mutual break up, but instead I drove out to The Podcaster’s house & returned every silly little gift I ever got from them. & you know what? Some version of this is the move I wanted anyway.

Talking to my family & The Peacemaker, & The Programmer for that matter, I am reassured that the unspoken boundary of who The Podcaster should & shouldn’t be romantically pursuing is clear to everybody outside the equation. Why would I want to constantly be reminded of somebody who harmed me, whom I harmed in return?

I don’t have any reason to believe that someone who would pursue your ex partner actually respects you or your friendship. I got lucky once when Sibling forgave me & let me back into her life after I dated The Programmer & it ended terribly, but I don’t expect to get lucky in that way twice from any corner of the triangle. &, besides, there’s always the fact that I did cheat on The Producer w/ The Peacemaker. That makes The Publisher the abuser to The Producer’s victim role, & The Publisher is the person I warned The Podcaster about.

You can’t be friends w/ the victim & the abuser.