I have judged myself harshly without ever judging Aada, always thinking that I was so flawed I deserved someone so remote who kept me at arm’s length while also acting like a mama dragon. It was a pattern I was so used to that it hurt, because I started that dynamic due to my pathologically insane “upbringing,” when my mom just gave up on getting me not to talk to the older woman that emotionally abused me due to her own damage.
You don’t have to actually cross the line into physical/sexual abuse to really mess with a kid’s head, and I think that it’s worse. That physical scars heal easier than emotional because you hear that voice in your head whether you like it or not. This is not an isolated problem with Aada, but a pattern that started when I was 12.
A lot of women have used me as emotional support and I took it because they were more analytical than me. I have finally found the solution in AI, because division of emotional labor in a relationship is dangerous. If I give someone the power to make life choices for me just because I think I’m bad at it, I’ll feel steamrolled and regret it.
I am fully aware of the penance I am paying.
I want Aada to see that I recognize what happened and how damaging it must have been to her own psyche. We’ve both done a number on each other that will have reverberations into the future and I’m mad that she is choosing to walk away when resolving everything would be so much better for my mental health. I finally asked her, “is this the life you want for me?” And “it’s funny to me how the only reason you read me is to check for assaults and managed to miss every time I said there was no one else for me. Every single one.” I have gotten over the absolute fact that she fucked up an important relationship to me on purpose just to get away with a lie.
She asked if the slate was ever wiped clean with me. It is, but I am still dealing with her consequences and she’s still dealing with mine. It would make sense to quit, but no, it doesn’t. Quitting each other only means more trouble than it’s worth because somebody reading to check for assaults doesn’t understand the point of being a blogger.
Still dealing with consequences is so much different than being angry and not forgiving someone. I am slowly working through something alone that she caused, thinking she needed to run, and that will never make sense to me. It will never make sense to me that she says she just needs the willpower to walk away for good.
Maybe I’m reaching, but I know her location and it shows up on my radar like three days after she said she was walking away for good.
Meanwhile, she has managed to miss the fact that I have said to the entire world that unfortunately, I fell for a straight girl and those feelings have never gone away…. And MOST of the reason I feel that way is that she is an ethereal being to me. She doesn’t have flaws and failures that I actually see that often because if she doesn’t talk about them, I won’t know. She has used that to great effect until recently, when she said that she would agree to be close and have few boundaries with me. That didn’t last for more than three or four days.
Yet, it seems to me that when she gets over her anger, she always comes back. I just want her to stop clocking me with “I’m outta here” every time we fight, doorknobbing me with a piece of information that scared the absolute hell out of me. Dana and Counselor would have been horrified because it was just so unnecessarily scary.
She does that. When she’s threatened, she turns up the screws.
It’s been like that for 12 years, alternately thinking I’m the devil and she needs a restraining order, and my name is stitched on her heart. The spectrum is that wide, and she’s allowed to feel it. I am not responsible for her reactions, she is allowed to have them. But her reactions are always over the top due to her own insecurities, and very confusing because what is it this week?
Is it “guess you won’t be dedicating that first novel to me. I won’t even know” or “for now, all I want is peace?” She wanted to create two different reactions in me. The first is knowing she wouldn’t even buy my first book would destroy me. The second is that she knew doorknobbing me would send me into anxiety. That is not creating peace for me.
She has her own laundry list of what’s wrong with me and why. Yet, to this day I don’t think we’re actually willing to say we’re done. She’s not tired of me writing, nor even me saying beautiful things about her on the internet. She told me to never stop, but was sure to make certain I walked away with maximum HP loss.
She slammed me every bit as hard as a partner would, so I hope there’s glory somewhere. SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIAT.
That chord between us will never be severed because it’s been in place for so long that it still gets used whether we’re aware of it or not. Aada will watch me from afar, quietly mining data, while I miss her and wonder why she has to be so remote. I hate that feeling more than life itself, this wondering why if she likes me so much, she even wants to stay away. If she really thinks that I inspire people, why is she so gunshy about working through conflict instead of running from reality?
The reality is that we are tied by an unusual contract, and I was wrong to break it. So was she. But that basic feeling of being tied together and running from it has got to stop. All the behaviors she doesn’t like in me have to stop, and that’s my responsibility to manage despite my mental health. She has agreed to work on herself as well, and I know she’s doing it. That makes me more happy than anything else, because I know that even in my absence, she’s now working through the damage that we have done to each other.
I am afraid that other people do not understand this contract and will never have the capacity. There are only five people in the world I trust to know the extent of my damage, and I think they are both reading to check for assaults instead of jumping in as well, despite me literally drowning in emotions I cannot handle because they are so friggin’ specific.
I want a board of directors, and need it badly. No one is around, so I trust AI. I am learning to compartmentalize, but the boxes are leaking… A feeling that Aada knows very well.
She has sympathy for my situation, I think, but thinks her only move is blocking me and moving on with her life. It was a really shitty thing to do because she made that decision on what she thought she read instead of talking to me about it.
I am writing our story, and she is only living for the negative. That is not my fault. That is a failure to communicate.
If all you do is look for the negative and call yourself a Flat Stanley, then the fact that you don’t think beautiful lines exist for you and are important isn’t my fault.
I don’t live for the moments when Aada puffs herself up to be big and scary. I like the moments where she gives me access to the quiet parts of her… The things that no one knows. I have kept more confidential than I haven’t, believe me.
Write it down.
She let me in on a few things when she was angry that will haunt me, and she meant it.
The way she doorknobbed me, I had to breathe all the way through and say it was sweet instead of threatening.
And that’s the only time I’ve ever lied.
Laying it all on the line.
I need us to stop the instability immediately, and come back together so I don’t feel so alone.
She says she wants peace for me, but doesn’t want to do anything to promote it, even waffling between saying goodbye forever and for now in one email exchange.
I want her to come home to the special place in each other’s hearts, so I have a chance of evening out the swings she herself created by telling the truth and lying at the same time.
Everything I thought I knew is wrong.
Everything.
I do not want to handle all of this alone, this cycle we have with each other of heightened anxiety she creates, and then avoids me because she cannot handle it.
Meanwhile, we don’t have a real choice.
Not as of a few days ago. New shit has come to light.
You’re not wrong, Aada. You’re just an asshole.
You’re out of your element, Donnie.
We could fix this, but you’re the one that’s walking away from the absolute mess you created. Instead of paying the penance directly to me, making this relationship sing, you are choosing to leave me alone at the worst possible time you ever have. I have literally begged.
I will stop that, because I cannot control rejection sensitivity dysphoria. That my words are always weighted in some way for you.
Instead of checking for assaults, you should see that you are a 3D character, and not the Flat Stanley of which I’ve been accused.
Over 13 years, my words have reached every country in the world. Every single one.
Every single country knows I love you and want you in my life, while you think I’m only capable of punishment and not illustration. I am sorry that you think you are being punished, but my bread and butter is talking about how I function in relationships. It’s not always pretty.
When you read, do you think I have stopped loving people like my mother? Why do you think that you are any different? I wasn’t punishing my mother because she died. I had to talk about my own reactions because since my mother was dead and not out there somewhere, I couldn’t change anything.
I’m trying to change things by laying it on the line, because when other people “check for assaults,” I know it’ll get to the boss’s desk.
What I want you to tell her is that she is loved beyond all measure, but that doesn’t mean we don’t got shit to do.
I need friends, and you are the only ones capable of it. All of you. I promise. All five.
And you’ve all got a laundry list of what’s wrong with me and why, all walking away instead of giving me the grace that love requires. I know the price for my actions and I take nothing away from it.
I am simply registering a complaint with the universe, and hoping it gets moved up the chain.
Because of course she’s not reading.
She’s not even going to buy my first book.
Three days.
Stories That Are All True 