The Magnificent and Frequently Distracted @theramblinggirl - Tumblr Blog

Sep 9, 2018

Preface: I wrote this about a week ago but was waiting to post it until I was ready. Or needed to. Both, probably? Anyway, it’s really personal stuff so don’t feel the need to read it if you don’t know me. Or even if you do.

Thanks.

I’m not sure who will see this. I’m not sure who will take the time to read this, let alone complete it. But I’ve been silent about things that were done to me for a long time and after finally breaking that the other night to people who were neutral—truly neutral, not just those who made attempts to remain so—I realized that talking lifted a weight. So that’s what I’m here to do: talk.

I’m not asking anyone to believe me. I’m not asking anyone to take action on my behalf. I’m doing this because sharing what happened was something I didn’t do for a very long time. In parts, I remained silent with the hope of protecting others from the drama. It was also definitely done for my privacy. With time, sharing became a little easier, and I realized it was needed.

One additional preface, I don’t do things like this lightly. I don’t like call out posts unless a person poses a genuine and serious danger. This isn’t even really a call out post, because all identities are anonymous, except for my own…sort of. It’s not like I’m giving out my full name and address here. It does, however, get deeply personal, which I hate.

I’m a pretty private person as a rule, so posting this is…I’m not exactly a fan. But, it’s also my way of getting out my side of things. Not to force anyone to pay attention, not to force a change, just to get it off my chest.

But given that it is personal, please take it all with a grain of salt. And please, withhold your judgments of who was “right” or “wrong.” At least until the end, if you can make it that far.

Where the whole thing starts is…fuzzy. I consider a lot of the basis to be important, before we even get to the “meat” of things. So here goes.

I started a group with the intention to play D&D together. I was also hoping to make friends, because it had been years since I was in any kind of regular group chat. The last time I was, it was with a person who was very toxic and did and said things that required years of healing on my part. It meant more to me than I openly admitted to most people.

And it started out great. Honestly, it was so nice to have that feeling of a regular group to go to again. We never really did end up doing D&D, due to my own mental health and schedule both going up and down. Plus, I had wanted to DM, which was an intimidating role for someone without much experience in D&D. I did always feel a little bad about never playing, even though to me, having friends meant a lot more than any game ever did.

I did meet my boyfriend through the group, who for the purpose of this post I’m going to call A. We started dating a couple months or so into speaking through the group and in our own DMs. We love each other and I will always be thankful for having met him, regardless of the circumstances that followed.

His best friend at the time, however, is and was a complicated person. It feels wrong speaking of her in the present tense because I don’t communicate with her anymore, but from what I understand second hand, it doesn’t seem like she’s changed much from the person I knew. I’m going to refer to her as K.

K had a lot of issues. I don’t claim to understand the depth or complexities of them, but they were evident from day one. She constantly joked about killing herself and hating herself, which got to be just as exhausting as it sounds. From what I’ve heard, K never really understood the effect those things had on people; that it made anyone who cared about her genuinely worried for her safety.

I would try as much as possible to say positive things when she got self-deprecating, because that was the way I thought to handle it. As we got to be closer and came to be friends, I would also ask her to try and curb the habits, because I knew from my own time in therapy that they only did harm. And I need to mention, when I say that she constantly made suicide jokes, I mean I don’t know that a day went by without at least a slight mention of it. My concern was warranted.

Around the month of December into January, it seemed to me like she was actually listening. K, A, and I liked to play video games together, but as A tended to get busy with work, sometimes it was just me and K. In those months, while we played GTA Online, she had stopped with the jokes as much. I even heard her say a few positive things about herself, particularly with her music which I had been trying to encourage. She had genuine talent. She likely still does—it’s not like that stuff just goes away because you cut contact with someone. Point is, the rampant negativity stopped. What took its place was flirting, and a lot of it.

K knew A and I were together, and A was not bothered by the flirtation. It seemed like a joke, just for fun. It was sort of a pattern of hers, even though she’s been together with her girlfriend (M) for over two years now. I don’t mean that as a negative. It was really just playful in most cases. She flirted with two other members of the group, G and S. She nearly tried with the last member, E, but he was so clearly not interested in even playing along that it didn’t really take off.

With me, though… Well, I don’t know that it started off being different, but it definitely feels now, in hindsight, like it was. More intense, somehow. And I didn’t discourage it. I played along, and then it kind of stopped being “just for fun.”

It became more sexual, too. Without disclosing full reasons, K had realized she wasn’t ace as she believed and suddenly spoke about it a lot more. She was increasingly forward. She spoke about how because her own girlfriend was ace she’d never get laid, which struck me as bizarre because I could have sworn M was demi. She made it sound like some tragic thing. When I told A, he was just as confused by it. Especially since K had only had this conversation with me.

After the persistent flirtations, I grew sort of confused. I told others and myself it was just a crush but looking back, it didn’t feel quite the same. Maybe some of the fear was worrying about it because I was already dating A. Maybe it was just the way the dynamic had shifted. I don’t want to undermine the potential that what feelings I had were real and the confusion came in elsewhere, but I know myself.

Even with my past relationships which were odd for reasons I don’t want to waste the time getting into, but I knew the crushes I had and the feelings I developed as time passed in those were genuine. My second relationship ended messily for things both my fault and my ex-boyfriend’s, but I never denied that I liked him for genuine reasons. I never felt this odd, sneaking suspicion that I’d somehow been made to like him by him behaving in certain ways. Yet, I do feel that about K, now. More on that later.

I talked to A, and we agreed to try out being in a polyamorous relationship. We talked to K, who spoke to her girlfriend M, and we all basically said “okay.” Except I don’t think I was ever really ready for it. I thought it was what I wanted, maybe, and was so indecisive that when I got the go ahead from A I just kind of leapt at it hoping it would sink in and work out. From what we’ve said in talks since then, he was in a similar boat in agreeing to it at all.

It went fine at first. I was really glad to feel wanted. That definitely was a huge part of it. I had been the fat kid most of my life, considered unattractive from my weight and then I was weird and anxious besides. Being wanted by not one but two different people enough that they wanted to date me? It was great. And I did like both of them, which meant all the more.

But that growth K had shown? Disappeared. It felt like it was even worse, maybe because I got used to not hearing how much she hated herself and wanted to die for a while. Or maybe it was really just worse. Except, the dynamic had changed. I couldn’t just react the way I used to. This wasn’t just my friend, then, it was my girlfriend and I wasn’t sure how to help. Maybe that was why it felt like it was worse, because to me, it was more. It was a heavier weight.

A also felt like he was pulling away from me. I was concerned that he was more interested in the other people in the relationship or, instead, felt left behind. I later learned he did it on purpose to give the new relationships a chance to gain traction, but it only felt like an anchor I’d been relying on for months was suddenly pulling up and not holding ground the same way.

Combine that with the fact that the other three in the relationship had all known each other far longer than I’d known any of them, the fact that I didn’t really know M that much at all and yet we were now sharing a girlfriend, and my hesitance to tell anyone in my life about the relationship because polyamory is still so stigmatized, I was struggling. More than I admitted to anyone because I wanted so much to prove that it could work.

With all of my insecurities and how K was acting worse and worse, I had already started thinking of ending it. But it had only been a month. I wanted to stick it out and give it a truly fair chance. I was new to polyamory and wanted to prove I could handle it. Who I was attempting to prove it to, I’m not honestly sure. Maybe everyone, maybe just myself. I just didn’t want to feel like I’d been wrong to try.

Here is the point where things really started to fall apart.

A told me one night over the phone how he and K “needed to figure out how to talk about sex.” Without getting too personal about it, it had been discussed between myself and the two separately and a little between all three of us. I was, however, confused as to why those two were talking about it alone. I had this weird feeling, but I didn’t want to assume the worst. So I assumed they were talking about their feelings on having it with me, and let him keep talking. It never sounded any different while he spoke, so I took comfort in that.

We had only ever verbally agreed, from my perspective, on three different relationships that would intertwine: me and A, me and K, and K and M. That was it, as far as I was aware.

The day that it all went down started with what would have otherwise been an insignificant argument. K had this habit of shutting down on people and then only answering to A. We’d experienced it just the other night, and I wasn’t happy about that in the slightest, but I wasn’t sure how to approach the issue other than saying how much it bothered me to A and leaving it at that for the time. K was still recovering from whatever breakdown made her go silent, so I didn’t want to approach it with her yet. But generally, we did all take care of each other. Including reminding the others to take medicine or eat when we needed to.

That morning, I was following through on that agreement. I was telling K to get her medication, since she was awake, and asking her to get food. If I remember correctly, she got the meds, and so I said because she was up, she should go get food, too. She just kept refusing me, but she did it in that playful sort of way. She liked to say “no” a lot as a game to make you argue with her. It was like a bit of hers.

Problem is, in playing along, I asked A to “come help me yell at K to get breakfast.” The moment A said a word, K responded with “okay :D” and just did it. The same as her emotionally shutting down, my word meant nothing, but suddenly A comes in and she changes her tone. I was pissed.

I was supposed to be K’s girlfriend. What I said was supposed to matter. If she’d really not wanted to eat or had some reason, she could have said so. Or she could have told me I was pushing her too much and she wasn’t just doing some bit. But I know how she was. The reaction to A was just as much a part of her bit as her saying no to me. With the little emoji and everything, it was her punchline. But it really, really hurt me.

I tried to say so. I asked “why it was so hard with me but A comes in and she just did it?” The response I got was “well you were yelling at me.” Which I hadn’t been. I know what me yelling in text looks like. It LOOKS LIKE THIS, AND HAS A LOT OF CURSE WORDS. (I’m honest about my potty mouth.) I wasn’t yelling. I thought I had just been playing along. I only said I was “yelling” as part of the joke.

It was really the fact that she favored A’s words over mine that got to me most. That she talked to A when she was breaking down and not me. Not even M, her girlfriend from before we decided to be polyamorous. And all that brought back the things A had said about “talking about sex.”

That same day, I had to drive my mom to the airport that’s about a half hour away. Before I left, I messaged A, first to mention how upset I was over that morning’s debacle, and then to ask the hard question. “Do you have feelings for her?” I couldn’t word it any other way. Everything else was too heavy, too real.

When I saw him answer “yes” I felt my insides sinking. I asked what he meant by that. “The same way I feel about you but less.”

I kind of wanted to scream, but my mom was at my door asking if I was ready to head to the car. I couldn’t stay or linger on it very long. I told A as much, and went to drive to the airport.

The drive back home was one of the hardest I’ve ever had. I blasted music and thought. And then I sobbed and screamed and shouted, because I realized what I felt. I felt like I’d been cheated on by the love of my life and the girl I’d only just started dating. By two people I cared for at once, with each other.

I had to go to the grocery store, I remember, because it was difficult to run that very basic errand while I was busy trying not to bawl my eyes out. My foot had nerve damage the previous year, which is one of the worst kinds of pain a body can experience, and the pain in my chest and stomach was on that same level. I think the way doctors put it is, “a pain so intolerable you cease any ability to function.”

I went to the computer as soon as I was home to message at A and tell him that I felt lied to and cheated on. I told him I’d decided the poly thing needed to be over, at least for a time. I didn’t want to close that door forever. I wanted to believe that things could still be worked out eventually. I needed hope. A said he’d decided on the same before I even got back to say anything.

I needed to talk to K, too. I don’t remember the start of the conversation as well. I did ask her at some point early on, because she’d done something similar with me at one point, not to make any self-deprecating comments or suicide jokes. (The similar thing was her asking me not to do my constant optimistic challenging because she couldn’t handle it. Which I did comply to when she asked.)

I know when I got to the point, it was basically the same question. “Do you have feelings for A?” Again I got a yes. I asked why I hadn’t been told. She said she “didn’t know” why she didn’t tell me.

I wasn’t the only person involved with her, however, in this case. I asked if M knew.

Apparently M had been told. And I lost it.

Knowing what I do now, it’s possible she meant that, from the beginning, the relationship was meant to include K and A dating as well as what I was aware of, and that M was told this then. The problem, regardless of when this was communicated to M, is that it never was to me; certainly not in any clear and unmistakable terms.

So again, the feeling came back. I was not valued to K as much as A or M. I was new; I was a passing interest at best and a fling at worst.

So I yelled. And I don’t mean “yelled” the way K seemed to understand it when I was telling her to eat breakfast, I mean yelling the way anyone would understand it. I was mad and emotional and no longer had a filter in place to stop me from cussing her out. I didn’t stop from saying that I felt like I didn’t matter as much to her, that it was like I was the afterthought.

And then she broke the agreement. I asked again why M had known and I hadn’t. She said, “It’s because I’m a terrible person.”

I don’t know if you can double lose it, but that’s more or less what I did. I typed out, so hard I could hear the hard clacks on my keyboard: “STOP. STOP IT.” There were expletives as I told her I asked one thing of her and she couldn’t even do that much. It went quiet pretty quickly after that.

Saying “I’m a terrible person” as a reason is a very easy way to remove real accountability. It doesn’t specify what you did wrong. It doesn’t even admit to any wrongdoing. It makes it sound as if something bad happening was so inevitable, it should have been expected. It doesn’t shift blame, but it doesn’t place it either. And a lot of the time, that sort of statement will make most people want to comfort the individual and disagree. If you don’t say “no you aren’t” it puts you in the place of then accidentally agreeing with what they said. There was a very serious reason I asked for her not to say things like that.

It was a rough conversation. I don’t need to tell you that, because it’s pretty obvious from any angle. It definitely wasn’t my proudest moment. It isn’t something I like remembering, and definitely not something I was okay with talking about for a while.

The worst thing I did, and I admit to this in the name of fairness, was that I messaged her either later that same night or at some point the next day to say, “I hate you right now. I’m not sure if that will ever change, but right now, that’s how I feel.”

It was…awful. I even knew it at the time. I was angry and let emotions cloud my judgment. I justified it to myself because of including the “that might change” concept. Either way, it was a terrible thing to say and I wish I hadn’t. I don’t claim to believe it would have changed the current situation or any outcomes, but it definitely was a step far over the line.

I talked more with A that night. He made an announcement to our group chat which was along the lines of “The polyamorous relationship is over and things are back to the couples that existed a month ago, before this started. The situation around it ending is kind of messy. If you want to know more than that, you are free to ask any one of us, but we all have the right to tell you only what we’re comfortable sharing.”

I’m going to take this moment to introduce the three other people in the group. S was usually the most silent of the group, and we were pretty sure they had a crush on G. G was very insecure about a lot of things, due to bad things that happened in the past, particularly bullying. E is my friend from before the group who knows G in real life and has since high school. He’s the only person I still speak to, aside from A.

Out of those three, the only one to message me about this was G. Not only initially, but at all. She asked if I was comfortable telling her what had happened, noting that she understood if I didn’t. I remember telling her I didn’t want to “drag any names through the mud” so no, I didn’t. It was also just a lot emotionally and I was still in the process of even working through it, so, yeah, really, no.

A and I worked on things. It wasn’t pretty. There was a lot of crying, a bit more screaming on my end that first night when the pain was still so fresh I couldn’t much handle it. Again, it’s…not something I’m proud of. Frankly, for how much it hurt him, I wish desperately that I could take back that night. But I also realize, in the scheme of things, it might have just been something we needed to go through in a way. The low point we needed to hit to know what we needed to fix.

And we did fix things. It was a long process, but we worked on the relationship and patched it up to be stronger than ever. (We still work with each other, like any good couple should do.) There was just one problem.

Because my introduction to knowing anything about K and A dating each other was talking about sex, it was all my brain fixated on. It attached hard and fast to the image of star-crossed lovers reaching for each other across the void and hoping to steal away. I pictured them longing for each other, and doing things I didn’t want to think about even slightly, all while cursing me for separating them. It was my paranoid anxiety soap opera, and god did it hurt.

At work, while trying to go to the bathroom when I needed to cry for a bit or hide at my desk while no one else was around, I made the decision I hated. I had to ask A not to speak to her for a bit. I struggled over it for a while because that’s THE thing that people say abusers do or bad girlfriends do. That whole “it’s me or her.”

The way I justified it was A) I wasn’t demanding, I was asking, and B) I would make it very clear that if he was uncomfortable with the concept, he had every right to say no to my request. And oh yeah, C) even if it was more like pseudo-cheating than straight up cheating, it’s different asking your boyfriend not to talk to a friend out of paranoia and jealousy and asking when it’s the person he cheated with.

The problem (that I didn’t realize existed until after the fact) was that my wording of “You can say no, you can absolutely say no and I will just have to accept that” sounded to him like “you’d better say yes or I’ll hate you forever.” A’s past is not an easy thing to talk about, nor is it really the point of this long, long post, but it does explain a lot of our misunderstandings and miscommunications. So while I was thinking he really was okay with it when he agreed to it, he felt like he didn’t have an option.

He did ask for one thing. We are all mentally ill, and those two were in a bad enough place at the time to be suicidal, they had been checking in just to make sure the other person was still breathing. I knew it would have been cruel of me to reject that, so I said that as long as it was just a simple message for that purpose, it was fine.

Even that didn’t really last, not because of A, but because K switched where she sent the message through one day to skype, which A didn’t check as much. Which neither he nor I doubt was on purpose. It was about two or three days before that part stopped, out of the one week where A and K were not fully in contact.

There was one other reason that A agreed to my request. K had said, even before I did ask for this, that if the two of them needed to stop talking for a bit that it was okay, and she just wanted A to focus on fixing his relationship. By the way she acted, it was as if she’d forgotten saying this.

It might have been a test on her part, to see if A said “I won’t let that happen” or made some other grand gesture to show K’s importance over me. Instead, A took it at face value. He trusted that his friend meant what she was saying. Now, yes, saying “it could have been a test” is pure speculation, but it is something along the lines of things K had done before.

One time, K stopped talking in the group chat for a couple of weeks just to see if anyone noticed. We did, but of course said nothing under the assumption that she was simply busy or didn’t want to talk. But she absolutely refused to speak until it was acknowledged, which only ended up happening because A told me all about it. I eventually had him say how much she was missed in the group so the silence would end.

So you see, for her to test A like I suspect would not be so unbelievable. Still, I fully admit I can’t know for sure.

In the week that followed the breakup, A and I took our time and healed. He admitted that he’d purposefully pulled away with good intentions, but clearly negative outcomes. I admitted I should have asked at the start for a clear definition of relationships instead of speaking of it in vague terms like “the poly thing.” He said it was understandable that I got mixed up when they were already so affectionate as just friends. I said I understood that he took the way I said, “you can say no” the wrong way, even as sincerely as I meant it.

The point is, we admitted to what we’d done wrong, admitted to outside troubles that affected us as well, and were patient with each other for the mistakes that were made from both ends. We got to be comfortable again, and frankly, our relationship was better for those difficult conversations. After that week, when A asked to speak with K again, I felt secure enough in our relationship once more and I was able to say yes.

Early on, I mentioned to A that, because I needed to distance myself from K, I was thinking of kicking her from the discord group. Mostly, I wanted to ask if it was too drastic an action or too cruel. These people were her friends, too, after all. Even if she could contact them outside the group, it would definitely send some sort of message.

According to A, however, K was likely to just do it herself and remove herself from the group. Apparently she even said as much. I left her be, so she could have a graceful exit instead of a graceless boot.

Yet, as the group was talking casually one day, over a week after the initial blow up, she responded to something. It was a short message, inconsequential, but I couldn’t handle it. I just couldn’t handle being around her in any sense. I kicked her then and deleted her message without a word.

Yeah, I know. That’s a terrible way to go about things. Emotions are a hell of a drug, and I was on way too many of them. I regretted doing it moments after, telling A to send an invite to her because I no longer was friends with her through discord. A refused, because he didn’t want to. I don’t remember if we talked about why, but I was wracked with guilt over it for a little while.

Still, no one commented on her being given the boot. No one dm’d me or A. The conversation just stopped dead for the night, but the chat picked back up later on. That was the last bad decision I can say I made, and all of it was in those first two weeks. When things were still fresh and I was still making sense of things and healing. I’m not saying that excuses everything, but it wasn’t done with the purpose of being cruel.

The only thing meant to hurt was the message about hating her. If by any chance K or someone who cares about her is reading this, I’ll say it now. I’m sorry I did that. I’m sorry I left that for you to read when I’d already left you with so much of my anger to deal with. Even though there are things you did to hurt me, or to hurt A, and even though I am still mad at you about a number of those actions, I cannot take any pride in cruelty of that level. I genuinely mean that I am sorry about saying that.

I find it a little harder to apologize for other things because, well, K sent mixed messages to A which got filtered through him to get to me. That she would “leave the group” but then never did. That she wanted A to “work on his relationship” even if it meant they had to not talk for a while. That isn’t to say I don’t realize they were harsh, but they were judgment calls I made with what I’d been told only to realize the information was maybe not as simple as I’d believed.

If things had ended there, with distance between myself and K and my relationship with A being mended, we might have been able to work with that. I had every intention to put things back together, too. A and I spoke at length about how we were each going to talk to K about the negative effects her constant mentions of suicide and self-hate had on us. I had a book my psychiatrist had recommended that I was going to give her the title of. I recognized pain in her that I’d been through with my own depression, and I wanted her to escape that spiral. My positive messages weren’t enough to do that.

A had even more than that. Their relationship had been heavily co-dependent for a while, so while them not talking was definitely a sacrifice, it also ended up being a good thing for clearing his head. He was going to put up healthy boundaries, make sure he was no longer the only person she relied on in a crisis, and no longer blindly accept blame she placed on him as if he deserved it. There was a lot of past between the two of them, and as friends, they needed to fix the things that were unhealthy.

Except, before we could even get to this, more things fell apart.

This is where things get more difficult to talk about. There is a lot more hurt ahead. To explain it simply from my perspective, the initial pseudo-cheating made me furious and heart broken, what follows this paragraph left me hollow, empty, depressed, and feeling like no one wanted me and maybe I deserved everything awful. I’ve gotten past a lot of that now, but still am at the point where even my anger is just bitter and tired. I’m exhausted by dealing with these things for months.

So. Here is where things really went to shit.

M messaged A (M being K’s girlfriend, for those who don’t remember the designated letters) about two weeks after the breakup. She had messaged him before, saying that she felt sad that things had ended, but she understood and hoped everything would turn out alright. This time, she had changed her mind, however.

She was mad, in fact, and mad specifically at me for how I’d spoken to K. She quoted no actual words, but said something about not liking how I’d yelled at her. M said that I shouldn’t try to contact her.

She also mentioned that A should feel free to speak with her about anything if he needed, but the one thing he wanted to speak with her about had to do with me. M decided that was the single subject she wasn’t okay with hearing about, but A went ahead anyway.

First, he mentioned how upset he was about being repeatedly put in the middle. It was a repeat offense from many people, which made it all the worse as it happened then. M apologized for it, but didn’t actually stop putting him in a position where he was forced to defend his girlfriend to other people. Second, A told M how he felt that I was being demonized for having emotions and reacting to them. M did agree, but said no more on it and generally avoided the topic. Basically, M said all the right things to avoid further arguments, but made no effort to rethink her position or show her remorse.

I felt kind of defeated because I had never had any reason to dislike M. I still don’t. Yeah, she got mad at me and maybe even hates me, but I did yell at her girlfriend. It’s not very complex reasoning, but it doesn’t need to be. I get it. But I had hoped that, of everyone, she would be okay. That she could work on her relationship with K like A and I had worked together.

That was a conversation I heard about second hand, so I can’t claim to understand fully what went on, but it definitely hurt. It was also a good start of the signs that K was not done with me, and was in fact talking plenty about me where I couldn’t see or defend myself.

It gets worse.

G, the one from the group who had asked for details on the breakup, had not been satisfied with me saying I didn’t want to talk. No, she didn’t come back to me. I don’t even remember if she went to A, but she certainly didn’t get answers there either. She went to the only other person who would know: K.

Now, I don’t know how soon after the whole thing happened she waited before going to talk with K. All I know is, once G got K’s side of the story, she didn’t need to hear any other sides. She certainly didn’t ask me or A for more details.

The only thing A heard from G was that she felt bad about the idea of playing D&D without K, despite A having already gotten the okay from K about it. We didn’t hear another word after that. Not even as she began to develop a lot of paranoia regarding me.

G had mentioned a lot how she was left behind with numerous different friend groups. It was something she was still sensitive and worried about. When she saw K get kicked by me “out of nowhere,” she became paranoid. G believed that if she said the wrong thing, I’d kick her next.

When she wanted to find out whether or not these fears held any water, she didn’t come to me or A, who would have been able to explain what had happened. Instead, she went to talk to K.

K had this habit of talking in certainties in a way that made you doubt yourself. Even if you knew she was wrong deep down, her absolutes gave no room to argue. One example of a more harmless occurrence was when I said I hoped, someday, A would be willing to watch something with me he had not wanted to watch due to it getting overhyped.

K said, without hesitation, “He never will.” And it hurt. I knew she was wrong, but suddenly I doubted that. It was such pure confidence in something that was actually kind of bullshit that I had nothing else to say.

When G went to K, saying, “I’m worried that I’ll be the next one kicked from the group just for saying the wrong thing,” the response she got from K was that same certainty.

K told her, “She’s already shown precedence for [removing people from the group], so you should just get out while you’re ahead.”

I didn’t know all of that until fairly recently. Here’s the way I learned about her paranoia.

I saw a tweet from her account one night that said, “When someone doesn’t seem like a particularly bad person, but you just don’t trust them.” With a reaction gif and all. (She’s deleted the tweet since then, so I am paraphrasing a bit.)

Here’s the thing: I’m a paranoid person, too. I’ve even tweeted about it myself! From February 22nd of this year: “Paranoia is a bitch, nothing is real, and insomnia sucks butt.” Followed up with: “What matters isn't whether or not it's rational, it's just making sure I don't linger on the thought and obsess. And that is super hard.”

She didn’t really take my advice, there.

I, however, wanted to know for sure that the paranoia was just that. I wanted it to be. I wanted so badly for the tweet to be about something other than myself.

I decided to ask E about it, who as I mentioned earlier had known G since childhood. If G had spoken with anyone about it, I was sure E was my man. I asked if G was okay and mentioned that I’d seen a tweet and wondered what it was about, and within seconds he confirmed my fears. It was in reference to me.

I was devastated. Sure, she didn’t say she hated me, but it definitely felt that way. It was out of left field when I had done nothing to her. The worst that had happened between us were those small tiffs and disagreements that any two people could get into.

After speaking to E, I turned over ownership of the discord server to A and left. I was crying again, telling A he could just go ahead and add K back in. He refused to, knowing I was just upset. But no one was talking to me and G kept defending K, so it felt like she was the one who was wanted while I was not.

The next morning, I already regretted leaving like that. It was another emotionally driven decision (damn that “F” part of INFP) and I missed having the security of a group of friends. Before I could take even just one day to make sure my head was clear before rejoining, G decided to finally open up to everyone else.

Now, I don’t know the contents of the message she sent. A refused to tell me because of the depths of how hurtful it was, how cruel it was, but he did give me the basic overview. She was relieved I was gone, because she was paranoid about getting kicked. She had felt like I wasn’t trustworthy. She was glad I had left, and to make sure no one had to give up their characters, she would be taking over D&D.

In A’s words (the she being referred to is me): “G asked me, having noticed that [she] was gone, why [she] was gone anyway. I responded that she had had a rough night and felt at this point that things would be better without her and so she left. G's response was a long rant back. A rant that can be summarized into ‘Good. They would be.’”

Those are the “nicer” versions I was given so my feelings didn’t get too hurt. I was crushed. That was the same day I was supposed to meet with S, the most silent one of the group. I couldn’t cancel on them, because they were already on their way. Honestly, A and I agreed, it was a good thing for me to get out and do something normal for a bit. Particularly, go to see a movie and grab some food with a friend. So, I went.

Black Panther is one of my favorite movies and I spent most of the time just…churning. My insides felt like a taffy machine stretching me and pulling me and never relenting. I hurt and I was exhausted and I just wanted to enjoy something. Instead I felt empty. The jokes didn’t hit like they should have, the moments that gave me a thrilling shiver up my spine before did nothing for me. Everything was falling apart.

I didn’t want to talk to S about it, because they were so solid. They didn’t deserve to be dragged into the drama, I thought, and I definitely didn’t want to end up crying in front of them. It was our first time meeting in person! What kind of impression does that leave?

But A convinced me. For the very reason that S seemed to have a solid head on their shoulders, they were a good person to go to. Besides, they would see the messages at some point anyway. Better that they know to expect something than just be totally thrown when I knew about them already.

I mentioned that I left the group, asking if they’d noticed. S said they had. I explained why, and the aftermath of my departure. Then I was caught very much off guard, because instead of shock or even slight surprise at hearing there were mean things said about me, S just sighed and said “yeah.”

They went on to say how the group had been left in the dark. How none of them knew what was going on and it hurt them. How I should have told them, talked to them, because they were concerned.

My first response was just…being thrown. Then I was kind of angry and defensive, but tried as hard as I could not to show it. That wouldn’t help anything. I was so confused it was also hard to focus on the anger. I was still at least a little indignant, mentioning how the same could be said of them. They didn’t talk to me.

It wasn’t really their business, anyway. It was my breakup, not theirs. Yes, it affected them, but only insofar as they knew all the parties involved. It wasn’t their breakup. It wasn’t. I kept thinking that, trying to see S’s point of view and understand the reasoning. Even when I said it wasn’t their hurt to handle, S insisted that it was.

Then they dropped another bomb on me. The “other reason they were upset,” they said.

I figured I knew the reason. Months before they had gone to A—my boyfriend I remind you—asking if he wanted to know who they liked. When A said “yes,” they told him it was G. I assumed they were also defending G’s hurtful words because of their crush. Not exactly fair, but at least something I could understand. People do strange things for love, certainly.

Except they had lied to A. The bomb that S dropped was that they had told the truth about liking someone, but not who. They’d been carrying a torch for me for a long time.

What do you say to that? No, seriously, I’m asking you, because I still don’t know what they expected.

I’m pretty sure I a little bit went the route of “I’m flattered but I’m seeing someone,” but it felt so ridiculous. Of course they already knew that. Besides, moments ago they had been defending something done to me that was immensely cruel and deeply hurtful. For them to say they had a crush on me but not even get a little upset on my behalf or try to comfort me was and is difficult to parse.

I was more empty after meeting them than when the day began. They half invited themself over to my house to watch another movie, which I didn’t want to watch at all at that point. Yet, I was weakened, beaten and defeated into this shell of myself. I just let it happen. Watched the movie then sent them home like nothing was wrong.

Afterwards, I went to A and recounted the night. He was livid for so many reasons and I was still numb. The timing of the confession, the reasoning of not being upset with G, the fact that he’d lied before…

Here’s the kicker about that lie. G had mentioned before of not only being unlucky in love, but of being bullied by boys in high school who would pretend to like her. She’d been through that whole shitty practical joke of asking out a girl and then laughing in her face when she said yes because the boy was never serious. And now there was S, pretending to like her.

It wasn’t even as if A had asked. S came to A willingly to tell him this lie. After that, they even played along with the false crush, acting like they wanted to get closer to G. Us idiots sat around hoping they’d get together and be another cute couple.

The timing of the confession with the lead in was another thing. The implication left in that was that they wouldn’t care so much that they were left in the dark if it weren’t for them liking me. It was very much along the lines of “friendzone” logic; because S had seen something in me and liked it, they were owed my attention and emotional energy.

My own anger about that situation took a little longer to sink in, just because of how thrown I was from the ordeal. I also had other, somewhat bigger fish to fry, so I couldn’t really deal with it at the time. Frankly, I couldn’t actually deal with any of it. I was prepared to just shut down. If I hadn’t had work to keep up with, I might have.

Both A and E got onto G about the awful things she’d said in the group chat after I’d left. These are more conversations I only heard about second or third hand and wasn’t directly a part of, but there are a couple of things I need to mention from them.

First is G’s wording to A. When she was explaining why she felt her paranoia, she said the words exactly, “she’s shown precedence before.” The exact words that K had used with her earlier to cement her feelings of fear. It’s not that the words themselves are unusual, but from what I know of G, they don’t sound like the way she talks.

Second, is that the discussions were actually very productive and went quite well from A’s perspective.

At the end of those discussions, G realized and admitted that she was projecting her feelings of insecurity from previous experiences onto me. It wasn’t because I’d shown myself to be a threat to her, but because she was always afraid of things falling apart in the group and seeing someone else be forcibly removed brought back that paranoia in full.

It was around this time that I broke down and asked A to message K for me. I’d deleted her on discord and she’d moved to a new twitter and tumblr, so I had no way of contacting her directly. I thought of skype later on, but at the time I thought I would just have to do it through A. In desperation, I asked him to tell her I said “I’m sorry for the way things have turned out.” I wasn’t ready to apologize for anything I’d done or said, but I was genuinely sorry about how much chaos had come to surround us all.

She sent back, through A, “It doesn’t have to be this way.” K went on to express how she found it hard to believe that I wanted to fix things because of how I’d removed her, but that was really just me needing space and not to be around her. It’s harder to get that kind of space online than in it is real life, so I had unfollowed her in the same way that I might avoid a party if I’d heard she would be there. We left off saying we might talk later, and I was given her new tumblr.

I felt more optimistic for the first time in ages. Someone wanted to fix things like I did, after all! Someone was willing to work with me. Maybe we could still get things back on track. G mentioned being willing to apologize as soon as I was comfortable speaking to her, too.

But there were things going on in the background that I wasn’t privy to. This is genuinely, I warn you, the worst part of all of it. Forget what I’ve done, forget what G did, forget what S did, and forget the initial upset that caused all of this. This is what made me look back on everything K had ever done with a new light. When I learned about it the first time, I immediately spiraled into a panic attack, and I was on all of my medication. This is that bad.

In the book “Looking for Alaska,” there is this quote that goes, more or less, “The only way out is hard and fast.” It’s a statement that the main character uses, after Alaska dies, to question just how much of an accident her car crash really was. The book leaves it as a mystery, whether Alaska committed suicide or her car wheels just slid in the rain. But it’s the words that haunt the main character into believing it was more on purpose than the police decided it was.

A was talking to K at one point about last names. She liked the surname of the character Alaska Young, from that book, and wanted to use it herself. Later, K mentioned she was going to use that connection to the book, leave the quote from above on twitter, and go silent.

Now, she didn’t actually directly threaten suicide, but that very much came off as a suicide threat. Especially considering how often she talked about killing herself, even just as a joke. Telling him that, thinking about doing that, served no purpose but to hurt him.

But it gets worse. I didn’t think it could until it did.

The night that I came to her in desperation, speaking through A, while I was feeling relieved by how well it had gone and the fact that I felt like doors could maybe open back up and we could all settle down again, K was admitting some things to A. K was telling him, my boyfriend who loves me, that it was a good thing I didn’t speak with her directly. If I had, she had similar plans with the “Looking for Alaska” quote, except she would have taken it one step further. She was going to say, in so many words, “I wanted to kill myself and it’s your fault.”

…

I. I still don’t know what to say to that. Even though she said to A that she was glad she didn’t and “probably wouldn’t have really gone through with that,” even though she said she was horrified to even think of doing something that cruel, and even though she never really did it… If it’s an intrusive thought of that magnitude, you keep it to yourself, in my experience. But she told A. She told the person closest to me who loves and cares about me and would never want to hurt me.

K must have known he wouldn’t want to tell me, but also must have known it was a burden A would have to carry in knowing. It did take him months to finally tell me. He especially hadn’t wanted to say anything because I was still so hopeful that things might get better. He didn’t want to crush that hope when it was the first bit of happiness I’d felt regarding the situation since our one week of healing.

The reason I mentioned this making me look at everything in a new light is that it showed just how deliberate K’s actions could be. Things I had previously excused as unintentional now seemed so purposeful. There were no accidents, only manipulation.

My willingness to forgive mistakes made way for more manipulative lies and actions. The fact that she seemed better about the self-deprecation at the same time that she was hitting on me more was no accident. The fact that she went right back to it when we were dating wasn’t, either.

Before I get lost in speculation, let me get back to facts. G did eventually apologize to me, which felt hollow because her words were basically lifted direct from the conversations she’d already had with E and A. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be done. If she got something out of apologizing to me, fine. I didn’t get anything. I probably never was going to get anything from it.

Then, for a while, it was quiet. A would bring up K every so often, but less when I mentioned that I just didn’t want to hear about her because it made me anxious. A had his own anger about the whole situation, about how I’d been treated and delayed anger over his own friendship with K. More abusive behaviors came to light. It wasn’t that they weren’t there before, but he was just finally ready to admit that the things K did to him were awful and undeserved.

She blamed him for a lot of things that went wrong, even the ones that didn’t involve him at all. It got to a point where he said he was having an argument with her weekly about not putting shit on him and giving him all this grief and guilt that he just didn’t deserve. She’d apologize every time, but never actually stop, so it was another hollow gesture.

More recently, they’ve barely spoken. A continued to grow, and had his visit with me. During it was when he got a message from G.

G said she was upset because he didn’t really “try” in their friendship. She reached out a lot on twitter, but A didn’t use twitter to communicate with people. When he went back into his chat logs on discord with her, he found a near-even split of who was starting conversations. G’s perspective was skewed from the start.

Then, she said it felt like “he chose his relationship over his friends.” That sounded to me like I was being blamed for keeping him from them, despite that being entirely his choice. A choice he made not because it was “me or them,” but because he was mad at them in his own right and not entirely comfortable speaking with them regularly.

Worst of all for A was how G had said something about “talking about this with the others.” We had both seen how well that turned out when she went to K with her concerns, before.

We didn’t talk about it too much then, because we only had about ten days with each other before he went back to the opposite end of the country, and didn’t want to spend that time in misery. So we had a brief discussion, then went to bed together and just kind of held each other. We needed the comfort.

I made a few shitty choices, yeah. Within about a week, I yelled at people, said some pretty nasty things, asked my boyfriend to stop speaking to the friend he’d pseudo-cheated with for a little while, and kicked that same friend from the group chat because I couldn’t emotionally handle being around her. But that was within two weeks of learning that I’d been cheated on, whereas the continued hurt in retaliation has lasted five to six whole months.

Forget about it being “pseudo.” The hurt I felt was the same as I would have gotten from regular cheating. Neither of them mentioned out loud or in text that they considered themselves to be dating as well. The assumption that I already knew never should have been enough. Not when it comes to a relationship in which trust and communication are the main building blocks.

The way the rest of the group responded was without compassion for my pain. It was without taking the time to speak with me or hear how I had been hurt. It was without even taking a moment to care how A realized his friendship with K had been abusive for far longer than he wanted to admit. Their reactions were focused mainly on how the falling out affected them and their lives and their feelings.

Yes, I am speaking here in anger, because I have a right to be angry. That was taken from me again and again as people assumed the worst of my actions and reasons. I was not only demonized as A said to M, but I was put on pedestals of varying heights. I was a crush, a dictator, a raving lunatic, a bitch. At no point did one of them remember that I was human and was not doing those things without reason.

But forget the ugliness of anger. Forget the spite. What about my hurt? My sadness? My loss?

In all of this, I lost a relationship. For a good while I lost trust in the man I love. I lost a group of friends, and in that all the potential those friendships carried. I even lost the ability to make new friendships for a while, so paranoid that it was just a matter of time before someone else turned on me. I’m still healing from that and working on it.

When I think about what could have been done differently, I don’t just think about how I shouldn’t have sent one message or another, but I think about everything.

How, if G had really wanted to run a campaign as she mentioned, she could have tried to run one with us. I certainly wouldn’t have minded. Maybe we could have bonded over the concept of DMing instead of it being this strange and unspoken jealousy I worried she held. We could have had each other’s NPC’s make little cameos in the other’s campaign for the hell of it.

I think of if K had given me time. How I could have apologized for the things I handled poorly and expressed my concerns for her mental health. We could have talked about her options for seeking treatment without needing thousands of dollars. I could have seen her grow and really flourish in the things I knew she had talent in that she loved.

Maybe S didn’t like G, but if they’d been honest and tried to move on because I clearly wasn’t available, they could have dated other people. Maybe they’d get a cute girlfriend and introduce her to the rest of us. Maybe she’d join in some sessions, maybe not. It’s not like I want them to stay alone if they clearly desire some sort of romance.

M and I wouldn’t have to be friends, but we could have at least been civil. I could have heard about her through K and genuinely said how glad I was when I heard she was doing well.

I said in the beginning, you don’t need to believe me. You don’t need to take up arms on my behalf or on theirs. At this point, it would be best if all of it was laid to rest. But now, finally, I’ve said my piece in full.

So, there, I’m done. For whatever that is worth.

#delete later #personal

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