If I recorded the beginning of a relationship, I’m going to record it all the way to the end. What struck me is when he said “admit it or not, I’m a better writer than you,” as if I haven’t said that before. I have said that I thought he should be teaching War Fiction at Columbia University. I have given him compliments that I have never given anyone else. So, again, my writing only matters to the people I love when I don’t portray them in a flattering light. I don’t portray anyone in a flattering light, even me. I am writing life as it happens, and life itself is a train wreck. Why should my little piece be any different?
Also, when you break up, telling your own story is what you do. You don’t go and threaten another writer for telling theirs. You create a blog dedicated to taking them down while they don’t bother to look you up because they just don’t care enough to read anymore. I’ve had enough. He doesn’t get the right to dictate how I move forward from this, and I don’t think I’ve shit on him nearly as much as he says I did…. as he said, he hates himself, so he goes through and picks out all the negative things I have to say and it outweighs all the good. The egg shells that he walks on are because he sees my questions as attacks, so instead of assurance, I get anger. I don’t have time for that, which is why his hate mail means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I don’t want this to be ugly. I was moving on with my life, and I don’t write for or to him, especially since he painted me in the worst possible light and I just let it stand, because that’s how he felt.
In truth, I did not say that he would end up alone. I said he would “end up alone in this.” I also said nothing about marrying a “crack whore,” I said that I thought he should settle down with someone who doesn’t challenge him, because my experience is that when you challenge him, he gets upset.
That is not what I ever want from a partner- someone who views me as attacking them when they just don’t want to give me information, and treating me like I’m an asshole when they’re avoidant. This problem isn’t limited to Daniel. When SuperGrover admitted she was doing it, she apologized (:::hug:::). Daniel can double down and respond all he wants to, but at the end of the day he also loved being praised and hated the part where I write about both the good and the bad. After having put up with that same pattern for 10 years, I cut him off at the pass. It is never going to work out, because I cannot have a husband that doesn’t listen to me and thinks that he’s a better writer than me. Whether he is or he isn’t, the fact that he wants to compete with me at all is problematic. I wasn’t aware there was some sort of competition, and I happily fold.
I wasn’t going to go through that journey with Daniel for 10 years, where I cower in fear of not rocking the boat, getting called a judgmental dickhead every time I brought up a problem to avoid actually talking about the issue. I did not want to be emotionally attached to someone who was avoidant from the jump. I’d been there already. I’d seen the signs. It’s not for me.
I’m not wrong for seeing if Daniel was right for me, and right in deciding that we’re not right for each other. I have the right to end a relationship for any reason, and I don’t feel like my entry was “shitting all over him.” He’d just broken up with me in my sleep, the most ludicrous thing I’d ever heard in my life, and I still managed to keep my shit together, as well as not being Ms. Petty 9000 and correcting his letter grammatically in red HTML. It’s a funny thought, but it’s not worth it. I just thought it was hilarious that he was so focused on proving what an accomplished writer he was and there were mistakes.
All I know is that he doesn’t have the right to threaten me away from writing my own story, just like I don’t have the right to threaten him away from writing his. There’s room in the world for more than one opinion, especially when your fans are people who don’t know you. People I know reading my blog is a side effect of how the Internet works. People I know read whether I want them to or not, and they form their own opinions about me by reading my writing instead of through conversation most of the time.
I’m fine with that, because they can choose to know one side of me, or they can choose to know all of me. People who choose to keep up with me based on my writing don’t know me. But it’s startling how they think they do.
I’m sorry Daniel is hurt about what I wrote, but most people don’t check with their ex to see if a blog post is okay with them. But I’m not sorry enough to take it down, and I’m not sorry enough to take it back. Especially since I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. I just let Daniel be Daniel………
………by doing myself a favor, and putting it on my web site.
Stories That Are All True 