This is my way of burning the Maia bridge.
I have been, until a few days ago, Maia’s friend for almost a 5 year span, nearly uninterrupted. There have, however, been times when we “stopped talking” and yet I still kept coming back when she inevitably realized that she needed me for something after all. For that reason, I’m sending this to you now. It’s my way of finally burning this bridge that I keep crossing back over like some kind of damned fool.
You may know me as the original writer for Tardispony, the original creator of “Ginger Doctor”. The same one from whom she usurped control of the project without my consent, etc, etc, I think you all mostly know the story. Those of you who don’t… well, don’t trouble yourself too much in looking for it. It’s only one drop in the proverbial ocean of misery that Maia has left in her wake as she charges headlong through people like a bull in a china shop.
Let me tell you, though, that the Ginger Doctor incident was one thing she did that she sincerely regretted, but not because it hurt me… no. In retrospect I know why she regretted it. She regretted it because she couldn’t find anyone else who was willing to work with her on any of her projects. She refused to acknowledge that she could ever be at fault, and was just generally a miserable person to work with; it was obviously that all these other writers are just horrible.
In my naivety and my late-teens to early-twenties arrogance, that’s what I really wanted to believe. I was just that good. She played me like a fiddle, truth be told, and I think I’ve known it for a while now, but only recently come to accept it. There were too many things that went wrong in my five years of friendship with this person to be able to recount all of them. I’m sure I’ve even forgotten a lot of them myself.
So, let me fill you in with the tiniest little bit of backstory.
I. Am not good with people. I have trouble reading them, I have trouble understanding them, and I find prolonged interaction with them to be extremely tiring. I’m an introvert’s introvert, and make no bones about the fact that my proclivity for solitude has left me somewhat more socially inept than most. For the majority of the five year time I have described, I had at most 3 friends at a time. Most often, just two. For a brief, particularly terrible span of time about a year ago, only one.
The reason I bring this up at all is to lend context to the events I’m about to detail, which preceded the final crescendo that compelled me to leave this entire half-decade long chapter of my life behind in a smoldering pile of ash and regret. To some of you this may seem insignificant, but consider it the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Around January, I found a new friend via Discord, and by pure happenstance it turned out he was in the same state as me. Just a few short miles, in fact. Naturally, we started hanging out, and that one new friend turned into several new friends. Soon enough I was invited to join in on a Pathfinder game, because nerds bond over nerdy things.
Maia and I had been Roleplaying partners for the entire time I’d known her. She’d become more than a little possessive of me. One night while I was enjoying the game with my new friends, she asked why I hadn’t been responding to her as much – a common complaint whenever I was doing anything except paying attention to her – and I replied honestly that I was playing Pathfinder, which I described as being “like DnD”.
To say she went ballistic would be a massive understatement. She went on an hours-long tirade about how much she hated tabletop roleplaying games because someone once kicked her out of one (or some other equally vapid reasoning), at the conclusion of which she told me that I could either play Pathfinder, or keep talking to her, but not both.
I, however, surmised that there was no way for her to tell if I was still playing pathfinder or not. So, in an effort to simultaneously keep her happy and also continue spending time with my friends, I persisted in going to weekly game nights. Unsurprisingly, she was none the wiser. It’s almost as if, like I said to her, what game someone else plays in private and in their free time has no impact whatsoever on other people. Curious, isn’t it?
Now, fast forward another few months to more or less the present. Pathfinder has really brought together a fun group of friends for me. A few of us run our own private game via Discord with more casual, daily sessions. I don’t stop talking with Maia altogether, but I do start doing things in my life besides just talking to Maia. I start going out to be social in public with my friends, I start going out for dinner, I start trying to train myself to get a good quality job instead of the usual dead-end stuff I’ve lived on for years. Things are looking up for me, and even my depression (a companion of mine since I was 13, amounting to twelve years time as of this writing) has started to get better. This, to me, seems like something where a friend would be overjoyed, no?
I understand that people have their own issues, and I won’t get into her private issues too much since they have no relevance to this post, but I will say that she was so absorbed in her own issues that she couldn’t even congratulate me. Instead, she took my good fortune as a slight against her, and began to berate me.
This was the moment when I’d had enough, and finally told her in no uncertain terms that I was done.
That was the 10th. I waited this long to be absolutely sure that I want to burn this bridge, and I do. My life has only gotten better since no longer having her in it. By posting this here, I state my unequivocal intent to never, ever let this toxic human being back into my life for any reason. She lies, she deceives, she uses, and she blames her own victims when they call her out on it. She seeks out those who are vulnerable or ignorant, and preys on them like a parasite.
To any reading this who may have just found Maia, take it from someone who spent half of a decade obstinately sticking by her side and doing everything in his mediocre power to make her life easier.
Proof is available to the moderators of this blog upon request.
Thank you for posting your confession. I am truly sorry for the experience you have been given by Maia, and hope your life is getting better for it. As always, I do ask for proof, and the more evidence that is given, the better it is people are aware of the sort of behavior those who have submitted here and I are legitimately complaining about; something Maia has not addressed at all to this very day. If you can provide such at your own time and convenience, it would be much appreciated.
