I did not hear from Aada yesterday, I just thought it was a possibility because news travels fast. If she already knows about these blog entries, she’s surrounding herself with other people. When I am clear-eyed about the writing I do, I know that past behavior is an indication of future. If Aada read me every day for 12 years, she didn’t stop just because she stopped reaching out to me. That’s because other people in her life read my blog and she won’t want to be behind them. It doesn’t have much to do with me, actually.
And in fact Aada’s lie has nothing to do with me. She needed it to make herself feel better, but I don’t know why. My guess is that she was feeling a little overshadowed and vulnerable about it, so she told me details of someone else’s life for years……….. Then tried to control every possible outcome so that no one would find out she lied.
There’s no evidence to back up any of her claims. None.
I’ve told you this already, but I’m still sitting in my bedroom in shock.
I have group therapy later, and that will help me compartmentalize and stop thinking about all of this. Michael assured me that I needed to put all the responsibility on Aada, that I wasn’t the one living a lie. I was living on what I thought was the truth. Aada changed my reality, and feels responsible for my maladies.
I don’t think that’s unfair of her, given the situation. What she told me, that she was a part of the intelligence community, might be true. I’m also sure there’s an AI that can do her job for her. But she is nowhere near the super secret agent she pretended to be.
The working title for the project is “The Spy Who Catfished Me,” but I’m leaning towards “Hacking Aada,” due to the internet aspect of our relationship, and how over time we retreated from the rest of the world and started working each other. We each had the other over a barrel with our shenanigans, because she was rightfully avoidant and I was deservedly anxious.
You don’t lie without protecting the path.
I was blocked by Mummo and Heytch, so there was no way for me to get together with them and assess who was really whom. It’s so hard to bullshit a bullshitter, and that’s the source of my shame and embarrassment. That I’ve been dismissive of everyone in my life because they didn’t have Aada’s street creds, therefore her opinion is “bigger.” I have stayed in that headspace for over a decade, and it didn’t make me popular, I’ll tell you that much.
Then, in an ominous turn, I started buying Jonna Mendez’s books, thinking that Aada was one of her recruits. I felt like I was trying to out-spy a spy…. Looking for comfort in her story because she fell so hard for Tony, the person I thought Aada was in real life.
Morgan Freeman: She was not.
It’s a case of mistaken identity, because all that care and connection should have been reserved for someone else, the person whose story I was actually following. Aada’s position is indeed classified, and I will continue to say it because Aada’s lies were so effective due to being hidden behind that curtain. I could believe she did whatever I wanted and she couldn’t confirm or deny.
So she didn’t. She stonewalled me every day, and had strong reactions to my guesswork. That’s because my guesswork was for people whose lives were far and away more complicated.
I did research on what it was like to be a broken child accepted into a system like CIA so that I could be a better friend. I did triage to see how much anxiety she was feeling, and was surprised when she always said she felt none. It makes a lot more sense that she was not anxiety-ridden given that she wasn’t doing half of what I thought.
But Mummo was.
Aada got tears that did not belong to her, nor can I really say that they were for Mummo, because we have not been in contact. As for Aada sticking by me, there are so many times when she should have given up and ended the relationship earlier, because I was a basket case and I never would have known that I was fucked up over a lie. I am thinking that she has thought the same thing, because she has regretted telling me she was CIA every day since.
To be clear, Mummo isn’t CIA, either. That does not mean she’s never been in danger. It’s just that Mummo is closer to espionage and actionable intel than Aada ever has been…… You just wouldn’t know it according to her.
Aada sees every entry as a threat and will fight me tooth and nail on this one. She thinks that all of this will blow back on her professionally and she’ll be in danger of losing her job. Meanwhile, I cannot control those consequences for her and I think her fear is too great. I forgive her, so everyone else should, too.
It’s not up to me to protect Aada from her consequences, because the fact that she continued to lie is what will sink her and not anything I’ve done should it come to that.
Say Aada was telling the truth all that time, that she is the field agent and trained interrogator she played on TV. Isn’t it better that I tell you her story is a pack of lies so she can keep what little cover she has left? I have no idea what she tells other people in her life, but I’m betting I’m not the only one she’s used this little trick on to make herself seem more important than she really is. It is not my responsibility to clean up that mess, and it never will be.
I have never manipulated her. I have never lied. She thinks that I lied because I published an e-mail I wrote to her after I’d told her I’d deleted all her emails to me. It wasn’t that I lied. It’s just that I did delete everything in my Gmail account and found that letter in my Outlook account after she blocked me.
I published her words after she blocked me because there was no one to ask, and she didn’t have a problem with me publishing anyone else’s takedown of me for her own entertainment. To be fair, I got a thrill out of posting other people’s criticisms because it always caused Aada to react like a mama dragon.
She just never turned that mama dragon on herself and asked herself whether she was causing me harm. She turned everything around so that I was the only manipulator, I was the only one who had done wrong, and that I betrayed her by catching her in a lie.
She wasn’t sorry she lied. She was sorry she got caught.
That’s why it would take a mountain of work for us to be successful. If we do make up, it will be because we declared our former relationship a total loss, and started working on putting our relationship back together as a salvage title. It’s not bad to fix a write off as long as the work is done right.
Why do I insist on being kind and hurt at the same time? Because I know that in her heart of hearts, Aada has already forgiven me and moved on, compartmentalizing her feelings so they don’t leak out. But if she’s half the friend she said she would be, she’s cried over my situation more than I know, and probably stuck with me because she saw how affected I was in my writing.
She loved being adored, but hated when I talked about problems in her relationship because I wasn’t representing her side of the story. I couldn’t until now, both because she wouldn’t tell it and I had to wait until I heard the real truth. Michael has never manipulated me, and has a vested interest in keeping me healthy. I don’t know why, because he’s a Republican.
Yes, I have Republican friends. I had to get over it. You will, too.
For some people, this will be the biggest shocking thing I say all day.
There’s just a tie that binds Michael to me in a way no one will ever have. As he says, “HSPVA 4 LIFE.”
Stories That Are All True 