December 18th 2010
Edited transcript of
private video blog post
I keep flip-flopping about how much of what you wrote actually deserves response. But the point of starting this blog was some means of communication between us with enough buffer that I thought would keep from wounding each other with our words and throwing hurtful accusations at one another. I was wrong, but I’m going to respond to everything you wrote, most of it at least. This will be long, I’m sure, because it was a long email and it’s a lot to address.
A lot of this discusses your very low opinion of me and your accusations.
First thing, I want to make it very clear that throughout this email and most of your emails you accuse me of purposely lashing out just to hurt you, just to get at you. You accuse me of lying constantly, of deceit, of purposeful attack on you constantly. You think I’m trying to get a rise out of you, you think I’m trying to make you angry. You think I like doing this, I like seeing this happen, I’m enjoying this situation. These are things that you constantly and incessantly accuse me of.
Look back, look back on everything I’ve written you, especially look back on this blog. Make a tally, I haven’t accused you of a god damn thing. I have spoken facts, I have explained how things have hurt me. I have conjectured on perhaps what’s going on because I don’t know.
You say <in reference to a comment by a stranger on one of my flickr photos>:
… some guy you have as a contact, for a very obvious reason that has nothing to do with art.
Displaying your low opinion of me. You think… what? Do you think I’m cruising on flickr?
You say:
“now it’s even more plainly clear what you like to hear from viewers, I don’t care what you have to say about my thoughts and I care even less about your new friend.“
So you infer that I like to be what you see as degraded, and you refer to this new stranger, this guy I don’t know on flickr who made a two word comment, as my “new friend.”
You say:
“I see art as more of cartooning and painting, you while you think guys who hold towels over their crotch and euphemistically tell you they’re touching themselves to your photos is I guess artistically gratifying but no, I’m not going to let you get away with making me pretend it’s something different.“
That guy had a bunch of photographs that were actually artistic and good.
You didn’t see them. I can understand how you would come to a different conclusion. However, I’m not going to make you do anything and I’m not trying to. I doubt I’ll change your opinion that he might have had other decent shots, but don’t assume that I’m making the same associations that you are.
To me, being that it is a photograph of me naked with my back extended in an arching curve, the word “sensual” is not an inappropriate word to use.
To admit that there’s something sensual about my photographs is not to admit that I’m degrading myself or allowing others to do so. But this is the first thing that you’d leap to, that I like being degraded. This is your opinion of me.
You go on to say:
“how stupid do I feel that I’m giving you the respect you read or looking at whatever you want me to but have to see that as well.“
You’re blaming me for this man’s comment. You accuse me of having acquisitioned this guy as my new “naked man” and suggested we do a shoot together based on his two word comment. You essentially attacked me and my character because someone else used the word sensual about my photograph.
Your suspicion and constantly feeling threatened and attacked is getting out of control. It’s getting more and more outlandish. It’s getting more and more the automatic response to anything.
You say:
“I still think of all the much more current events than the ones you find relevant to speak of, which, hypocritically, when I bring up the heaping load of events that you just
simply stopped talking about, you say that was years ago, as if all of your examples aren’t even behind those.“
I’ve been trying to explain to you how I interacted with the significant figures, the dating or pseudo-dating (or whatever) people that I’ve been involved with. That seems to be where your issues of comparison come from.
Fact: in the five years before I met you, I had sex just two times.
Fact: I’ve slept with nine men in my entire life. That is from age 16 until this point in my life.
Nine men, over almost twenty years.
(I’ve been with about as many women. I feel like the lines there of what exactly is sex and not is a little bit blurry.)
Then you mention <Abusive Man>. You mentioned the way the picture was taken of he and I, that I was flaunting pictures of him.
“photographers only do that when they’re thrilled to be standing next to the person they’re with. Only to tell me some time later he hit you. Bullshit. Or, it’s not bullshit and you liked being hit. Or you like the idea that you knew this would anger me.”
Do you see the words that you’re writing to me?
Really?
You see this as being the only three possibilities, that I’m either fabricating the story – why?!
that I enjoyed the experience of being physically accosted,
or
that the notion of my telling you about a traumatic experience I had was done so only to watch the effect it had on you.
Let me explain to you the <Abusive Man> situation. I ended up meeting him, hanging out with him a couple of times in the city, I was visiting him on a regular basis, we’d hang out.
He was impotent, and I had no sex drive.
I was living with my dad. I was lonely and trapped. He was living in this empty house that used to belong to his grandfather, he had to watch over it until it was sold. He was in some ass end of suburban Queens and bored as hell. We started hanging out, seemed like we were well matched. He had his friend’s girlfriend living there too, and the more difficult things got with my dad, I left, and I stayed with <Abusive Man>, who had offered numerous times that I should stay with him, no strings attached, and so that’s how it was.
There was some making out sometimes, I liked the guy, I wasn’t attracted to him ever whatsoever. Not physically, but he was smart, and I really enjoyed his company. He got upset that I wasn’t affectionate enough, at which point I said I was going to leave, because clearly if that upset him, it wasn’t fair to him for me to stay in that situation, if he wanted more than I was possibly going to give. I’m not an affectionate person and I wasn’t into him. I was preparing to leave without having any idea where to go, at which point he begged me, with tears in his eyes, to stay, and told me that his parents, based on all of the help that I had given in fixing up that house to try to get it sold, had decided that when the house sold, they were going to get me health insurance.
This was the first trapping lie.
This was the first move of completely isolating me and making me psychologically dependent on someone who was a monster. It was a lie and the insurance never came, but I thought it was, and that picture that you’re talking about was when we were leaving that falling apart, crappy, dog-urine smelling house. The house had been sold, there was a huge chunk of cash hovering above our heads, and we were going to go and leave that place, find an apartment, knowing that we had the first year paid up front.
It was an exciting day.
I thought things were looking up.
Instead we ended up getting an apartment that was a stupid idea from the beginning, but he wouldn’t listen to me when I told him it was a sheisty deal. We ended up tied into an apartment that was never completed with a landlord that was abusive and crazy; a guy who ended up turning off our electricity and our heat, who starved his dog to death, who would do construction at 2 o’clock in the morning.
There were a good two or three months in there, towards the end of us living in the suburban house, that we actually referred to each other as boyfriend or girlfriend. But I think a week after signing the lease for our new future apartment, he broke it off, and so we spent the duration of our time in that apartment unattached to one another, with separate bedrooms, but he wouldn’t let me go.
I didn’t get the health insurance and I ended up trapped in a house with a piece of shit.
So thanks for pointing out that photograph.
I had since deleted it.
I normally I keep painful things for the sake of posterity, because I think that’s important for some reason. It also took me a really long time to understand exactly how hellish that situation was, because when I was in it, I didn’t see it.
What set him off and made him attack me was the fact that I calmly mentioned, in a snide manner, that it had all been bullshit, the idea that I was going to get insurance.
“That worked out real well, didn’t it?”
I think that was exactly what I said.
But after he attacked me, no one had any place for me to go. At that point I’d already been with him for a year.
I was psychologically trapped. I didn’t have anybody. I was isolated from everything, I had no money, I couldn’t even use a metro card most of the time, it was exciting if once a month I could scrounge together twelve bucks and go to the thrift store. There was one friend who actually visited me, but she was living with her folks, so when <Abusive Man> attacked me, I didn’t have anywhere to go, I didn’t have any friends left anymore.
And I didn’t really think I deserved help, because I’d gotten myself in a stupid situation, I knew what an ass he was, and I looked back wondering how I just walked into something like that, I made my bed, I deserved to deal with it myself. No one was offering me a place to stay. I got into that situation for the health insurance, and he didn’t get it for me, but right before he attacked me I was going to get ghetto care, and that was what was important, that was why I made every decision that I had made for the past like eight years, so I went back. It was also to punish him and make him feel like the piece of shit that he was, because if I left, then he would have an apartment to himself, and he wouldn’t have to face me, and he could pretend it didn’t happen, but I wanted him to know, I wanted him to feel like a piece of shit, I wanted him to feel guilty every single day. So we were miserable.
I hadn’t gotten into the details before, because clearly you don’t like to hear it, it makes you upset.
But even so, those are the three possibilities that you think of? That I’m lying, that I liked it, or that I said it just to anger you?!
I get that you’re not used to caring about people, I get that you feel emotions and you don’t always know what to do with them, I get that.
I get that you feel like something has to be done, but explaining to you something that happened to me is not me trying to hurt you. Most people don’t react in that fashion. If you had explained how this affects you, I could have tried to adapt, I could have tried to take that into consideration.
But you have to understand that because I tell you something that hurt me, or that upset me, it’s not an attack on you. That’s not how most people interact. That’s not how communication usually happens between people. That’s not how most people take other people’s hurt: as a personal attack, as emotional warfare.
I’m sorry if it feels that way to you, and I’m not saying that it doesn’t, and I’m not saying it’s invalid, but you have to understand that it’s not something that I am doing to hurt you. I am not trying to put you in emotional pain. This is not my intent. But time and time again, you accuse me of having malicious intent for everything that hurts you.
And a lot hurts you.
And I know it’s because you don’t care about many people, and that you’re not used to it.
You go on and say:
“well you sucked face with your girlfriend as you both nested your asses in that bald hack artist’s crotch, and oh yeah, you told me you had sex with him too, and well, just about all of your other friends.“
Nine men. I have slept with nine men.
<Abusive Ex-Girlfriend>’s another one. At first it seemed great, but then once we actually settled down in our own place, once there wasn’t a roommate who was an audience, she turned into a shrew.
She was not bisexual, she was a cam whore, and I got sucked in. She didn’t kiss me. She didn’t like to. She told me this.
The only times that she did make out with me is when we would go to these events with all the people that we knew online. And we’d all get drunk and there would be lots of cameras there, because everyone would take pictures to show, you know, the friends we had in L.A. or London about what we, the New York crew, was doing. Hey! It was like a party. It was fun. And so <Abusive Ex-Girlfriend> would make out with me there. Those pictures of me with my ass nestled in wherever. It was usually just for the excuse of taking a ridiculous shot.
<Abusive Ex-Girlfriend> was the last person I had who was an actual significant other. And on our one year anniversary, I don’t even remember what set her off, she physically attacked me. I was coming out of the shower. I was naked in a towel. I ended up with a swollen lip and scratches on my face. And as I was trying to get myself out of there, she approached me in the bathroom, pinned me against a wall, trying to goad me into attacking her back with her face inches away from mine, going, “What? What? What are you going to do? What?” I refused to touch her, but I spat right in her face.
These are the ugly truths.
I don’t really like to think about the fact that the last two people that I chose to be close to ended up physically accosting me. Two in a row? What does that mean? What does that mean about me? Do I do something that instills that kind of reaction in people? Is there something wrong with me? What is it about me that ends up attracting people like that? Do I do this to myself? Do I make people hit me?
These are the things that I have to wrestle with.
So thanks. Thanks for that high opinion that you have of me that I can heap onto the lot. Thanks for feeling so put upon that I’m doing this to you.
Oh, and that “hack bald artist”? I was friends with him. We went on two dates. It was actually proper dates. I got drunk and went home with him, but we were loaded. I was too drunk to have sex. It didn’t go anywhere. We remained friends. We knew a lot of the same people. He actually warned me about <Abusive Ex-Girlfriend> and suggested against it. I should have listened.
<Abusive Ex-Girlfriend>, she’s married with a baby. That artist guy, he’s married with two. How much do you think they think about this? They have all these same photos. It’s something that happened. It’s a part of who I am, but it’s not currently relevant. It doesn’t keep me from progressing. It hasn’t kept them. They’re married with kids living lives of moral togetherness.
You go and say:
“I have told you many times that your excessive mention of this stuff when we met was why I got a bit tired of it. Then you just dropping all the stories and talking about further past events in their place will forever be a deceitful characteristic. I get you think sex is a party favor and you don’t have to keep speaking your stories like sexual merit badges. I accepted that. I like you and I won’t judge you.”
Clearly.
“But you judged sex and yourself over and over. I was trying to get you to stop talking the way you frequently did. You don’t seem to get it, Rachael. I accepted you fully, but you made it very clear that sex wasn’t important to you. It was barely worth consideration. You made that clear. It’s not fair that you made me care and listen and believe all of this sex is just sex. Then you tell me that I mean something. It’s not fair for you to be made to believe that sex is just sex and then I tell you that you mean something.”
Are you offended at the idea that I didn’t feel like for the past two, three years that we were just fucking? That’s upsetting to you? Do you feel duped? Have I taken advantage of your honesty by having feelings?
I’m sorry if my confidence in the idea of experimentation and my frankness about my past seems elitist. I’m not ashamed, but I don’t judge myself. You do.
I don’t think sex is a party favor. You don’t get me because I don’t think that way. The fact that you think as such is depressing and hurtful and it shows that you understand
me very little.
I don’t tell my stories like merit badges. Part of it was me telling you so you might understand where I was coming from, my relationship with sex, and clearly haven’t understood. I don’t think sex is a big deal, but I have not had nothing but meaningless sex all my life. I think it’s something that adults should be able to talk about frankly and not be embarrassed about.
And yeah, sometimes my sexual partners were people that I just considered friend. But how is that different from you? <Your friend’s cousin> is your friend. You’ve made it very clear that I am nothing more than friend. I’m guessing that you have a lot of people that have not been girlfriend because you seem rather adverse to that term. So, what’s the difference?
You go on.
“I understand your qualifiers. You have the nerve to tell me that you can do all that stuff because it’s biological scientific detachment, not really sexual kind of stuff. But then me, Stefan, is supposed to believe that out of all of these things, all of these people and your sexual relations with all of them, I don’t care what stories you edit out of your later and recent writings. I know everything you’ve ever said, linked me to, showed me, and told me, and there’s a lot more I didn’t say“
Before I finish that thought of yours – You mentioned stories and links. When I hear you tell me stories back that you think I said, partners that I’ve had, in almost every instance there’s some degree of twisting and distortion. Your mind has twisted many things, blown them out of proportion, significance, and the frequency of my sexual past.
You often mention what I linked you to when we first started conversing online as some significant indicator. Yes, I did link you to that video of the goatse girl. That had meaning for you as to my relationship with sex? That was the equivalent of Two Girls One Cup. I showed it to a friend a few months prior and she sent it to half her friends. It’s so disgusting it’s not even sexual.
Again, this is what you think of me? These are the signals that you really thought that I was giving out on purpose when we first met? Why are you even interested in engaging with me ever if that was really something that you thought was indicative of me sexually?
I’ve never been unfaithful to a partner aside from kissing a boy when I was 17, when I was “going out” with another boy that I never saw. Yet, you live under the assumption that I’m incapable of being sexually devoted.
You’re unable to accept the fact that I’ve been with nobody but you while we were in what I thought was an exclusive thing, and I was only with someone else once I was told that it wasn’t exclusive and that you didn’t want it to be and had no interest in being involved like that with me and rejected me. When I was then with someone else, it was depressing, sad, and disappointing. I still only desire and want you.
But that’s not possible to you because you go on to say:
“am I to believe that you truly mean it when you say I’m different than all of these people? Am I? Really, Rachael, you expect me to believe that, that you cherish the conversations, our time together, the creative things we did, the kissing, the debating, the agreeing, the sex, as if I’m different than all of them?”
Yes. Yes I did and yes you are.
You think I didn’t cherish any of those things? Again, if you really believe that, then stay away from me. Why would you even want to engage with me if you really believe that? If you really believe that I don’t cherish any of these things, then do yourself a favor and stop hurting yourself by even talking to someone that you really believe thinks so little of you.
But if you ask me, yes I did, and yes you are different from all of them.
It’s not implausible, not at all. Why should that be so hard to believe? You and I are not normal average people. Why is it so difficult to consider? It’s not mathematically implausible. It’s not emotionally unlikely.
Looking at what you know of my history, at what I’ve told you, at what you yourself have accepted as truth and the way I’ve interacted with people in my life, it’s clear that you are different.
Almost every single person I’ve ever dated has complained of me being Spock-like and not affectionate enough. I have broken off things between myself and almost every single person I’ve been involved with. Within months, I have invariably been disappointed, bored, or desperately wanting to get away and feel suffocated. Whatever spark that I may have thought I’d had with someone, it has always faded into a fantasy of wishful thinking or, more often, some degree of facade on the part of the person who seemed so appealing due to their deception. I had a boyfriend last six months as a teenager. I had a girlfriend last just a year and that was only because we’d been living together. Aside from that, any person that I tried to date, after three months, I’d get sick of them and realize that I’d rather just be alone. I spent most of my adult life single and not sexually active. When I was active, yes, I was a very experimental person, but that doesn’t mean that I was a slut and it doesn’t mean that I was with everybody.
Why is it so hard to believe that you were different from the very, very beginning? Why is it difficult for you to think that just that first night you spent at my house, I was thrown by how drawn to you I was, the first night we hung out? Why is it impossible to consider that we might be more suited for one another, more well matched, more perfectly paired than anything I could possibly have even dreamt of?
Do I need to break it down and quantify it?
How many people will find an enjoyable evening in sitting quietly next to each other drawing and internet browsing while watching something educational? How many? And of that, how many will prefer doing that than spending a night out at a bar? How many of those people would watch <Cronenberg’s> Spider sitting next to me and understand and know what I’m loving and seeing in every single shot of aesthetic perfection? And will understand the difficulty in just getting out of bed and facing a life every fucking day, or will understand the difficulty in just making plans, will understand how unnatural it is to wake at dawn instead of going to bed at dawn, will find more joy and glee in someone drawing a picture for them than anything money could buy, will understand why one clings the small joys in life so desperately, will understand the pride that strums a chord of childhood in seeing your dad play in front of other people, will understand the important relationship that exists between dad and music, will understand and see what makes things like Columbo or The Prisoner so much better than anything that people fawn over now, will think of each other in the myriad of small ways that we think of each other every single day, can understand and appreciate perfection of childhood joy and purity, while fully understanding the dirty and unkind world that surrounds us. How many people will talk on the phone at 7am until sleep feels close? How many people can pose each other about, covering each other in various substances and fabrics just for the sake of taking a photograph at 4am? How many people understand how Chuck Jones is more amazing than everything CGI ever put together ever, understand that sitting quietly and listening to the footsteps of others to leave so you can finally feel comfortable leaving your room, not wanting to face another human being? How many people would or have cast aside their own self-preservation for the sake of each other as often and selflessly as we have?
Each of us have spent the last of our funds for the sake of making the other happy, your amounts clearly eclipsing mine, but all in some trivial and brief way, more often than most people would ever consider. I mean, we’re not people that have bank accounts, you know, we’ve got a checking account that’s usually just for the bare minimum, and we’ve both spent everything that we have just to have a nice meal, just for that moment, just to make the other one happy. How many people would do that? How many people would go to zero for each other?
How many people understand what it is to be damaged, and damaged in different enough ways to complement each other, but similar enough to still understand the pain?
I could go on and on, there’s a million of these.
Now make a Venn diagram of these traits, everything I mentioned, and a million more, because there’s a million of them. What kind of cross-section of the population do you think you’re going to come up with that actually fits all of these traits? How common do you think it is for people like you and I to find someone? I can tell you that Mutual Friend, who’s known me since I was seventeen, he’s never seen me as into someone, never seen me as upset as I was, when I was upset over the loss of you. Anyone who’s ever known me has never known me to be as invested or devoted to anybody.
My mom, terrible person that she is, is very visual, and she’s had a great deal of influence on my visual sense, probably one of the more visual attuned people that I know, especially clearly to me. And when she saw some of the work that we did together, and some of your artwork and what I had done, she actually said to me, “How did you guys find each other?” Because she could see through our art, through our visuals, something that just doesn’t normally exist, something that just isn’t usually shared.
And now I add to that, the fact that we’re both chemically atypical, both born with defects. Imagine what that’s done to our outlooks and our psychiatric selves, and the effect that psychology has on brain chemistry, and the effect that brain chemistry has on psychology. There’s a very, very real possibility that we’re more chemically attuned to one another than anyone. Add to that fact that you’ve been there for me in ways that nobody else has, you’ve extended your generosity beyond, but haven’t demanded tribute in demeaning appreciation the way most people do. You understand the meaning of a quiet thank you, you understand the awkwardness of being given a gift, how hard it is to react right, sometimes.
Given all of this, why is it even slightly hard to believe that I might feel a connection with you that surpasses anything I ever felt possible; that I care for you more deeply and profoundly than I have ever felt; that when I touch you, every single appreciation that I can’t speak, or even write, comes pouring out of me physically; that for the first time, I can actually feel, and experience, the emotion that sex is so often referred to as a metaphor of. Everything else between us is better and worth more than anything with anyone else ever. Why not something as intimate as sex?
You have no idea how much I loathe the term, and have for all my life, but I actually understand why people call sex “making love.” I mean, I still loathe the term, it still grosses me out, but I actually understand why people use it. It never made sense to me before now.
I don’t understand how you couldn’t look at the cold hard facts and not come to the conclusion that you are clearly more significant and important to me, completely surpassing anything anyone has ever meant, in any way, emotionally or physically.
And you say:
“After I just spent time watching your video, reading your writing, sitting and thinking about your words, considering your feelings, I still gave you my time and consideration. I still would break out of chains if you needed help.”
Why? From what you think of me I don’t deserve that. You think that I’m enjoying this? You think that I told you about <Abusive Man> as a lie, or just to make you angry? You think that I’ve been flaunting pictures of my past in your face? Why would you ever come to the aid of someone like me? You think that I think sex is a party favor? I don’t know why you would ever touch me, physically. Why you would enjoy my company ever, if you think such negative things about me?
But you tell me you would break out of chains if I needed your help.
I know you would. I believe you.
I just wish you would believe me.
You say:
“you don’t care, you don’t miss me, and you sure as fuck couldn’t and don’t find me attractive.”
So why are you going to do anything for me?
“You find people attractive on a basis of who will give you attention at the time.”
That’s not fair.
I’ve asked you a number of times if you could just explain to me why. I’ve been feeling rejected and set apart and missing our intimate times together. I had a bag packed perpetually, just in case, because you wouldn’t wait 15 minutes for me to throw stuff in a bag to come over to your house. And during that whole stretch of time, when I was just hoping to share a little bit of closeness with you, you slept with someone else. But that someone else clearly adores you and that someone else was fawning over you for years and gushing and complimenting you on your art and how handsome you are and paying you a lot of attention.
And you’re accusing me of finding people attractive on the basis of who gives me attention? That’s not fair, and it’s not true.
You say:
“How many other private blogs do you have going, I wonder?”
How much baseless accusation can you throw at me? Do you understand? You’re getting more and more paranoid and suspicious and you’re driving people away. I’m sure it’s not just me. How many times in a week did you end up reacting to something or leaping to a conclusion that later ends up being not the negative outlook, not the negative reality that you had assumed? That maybe something wasn’t done just to get you? It happens a lot and it’s actually really worrisome. I’d be a lot more offended and furious if I wasn’t actually concerned.
You say:
“You made it very clear that you think you deserve to suck me into a helpless void of Rachael opinions on that blog, page after page after page, and now a video of things that I just have to take in, helpless to respond to, and me, well, I can’t write one comment when I have every right to be pissed.”
I never said you couldn’t email me and I’ve never said that I wouldn’t read them or even respond. I started this blog so you could not feel put upon because so many times you would say how jarring it was and how stressful it would be to your day if you had to read something that I wrote you. You couldn’t handle that right now. You’re not in the mood for it right now. It’s something you can deal with right now. You don’t want to look at that right now. These are things that you’ve said to me in response to all of my attempts at communication.
You have to log in to read this. I’m not making you do anything. You can choose not to look. It’s the whole point. I’m not making you do anything. I told you it existed if you want to look. And half of the things that I write there say, “Well, maybe I won’t hear from you. Maybe you won’t respond to this. Maybe you’re not reading this at all.” You don’t have to. I’m not standing in your face screaming things at you.
Why do you feel so angry? Why are you so defensive with “every right to be pissed off”? There haven’t been any accusations here. It’s me talking about things that actually happened. The way I feel about things. Trying to figure out what happened between us. What are you pissed about?
I haven’t once accused you of doing anything purposely to hurt me. You can’t say the same.
“You’re right. You must really think you’re superior. And clearly, your tone changes when there’s an audience. Very noble.”
Of course my tone changes. When I’m recording something for comedic value. When I’m telling a story as a means of performance. Of course I’m going to have a different demeanor than when I’m picturing myself talking right to you.
I must think I’m superior? Do you think you’re superior? I think I’m superior than most people. I still don’t have a very high opinion of myself, but I do think of myself as superior to most, honestly. I don’t think of myself as superior to you, though. That’s part of why I like you so much.
You go on to say:
“Your attitude and insults have been worn out with me. Your words only highlight my point. There’s nothing you could say that would insult me anymore. You’ve spit on everything about me. You hate all of me. That has been obvious for a long time. You obviously have attention from other people, so they can break out of chains when you need something. You’ve spent more time insulting me than everyone I’ve ever known combined. How could I ever think you mean the compliments? I mean, honestly. So go ahead and post a long-winded bashing session on that blog, and tell me how crazy and fatuous everything I’m saying is. Go ahead.”
I mean, are you listening to this? If you really believe that 100%, then stop hurting yourself by speaking to me. Do you want my attention, even if it’s negative, that desperately? You can have that low an opinion of me and still want to engage with me?
That is insane. That is crazy. It hurts me because I know that you actually think this. I hope not 100%, but you clearly believe this, and it makes me really concerned for you.
You say:
“I have a terrible past I relive over and over”
Because I don’t know what that’s like, right? I’m not going to compare and contrast about who has the worst life. I don’t know what it’s like to be you, you don’t know what it’s like to be me, but I kind of thought that that’s a big part of why we could take refuge in each other. I thought that we alone understood the fact that we’re both caught in our own private hells all the time, and I thought that we were each like Pigpen with the swirling hell of our own existence constantly around us, but somehow I thought each of us reached out a hand, and I thought that we were holding hands through the clouds of torment. You are the one good thing that I had in the midst of the hellish everything of my life. You’re what I thought of.
And that’s the thing.
I thought you were the person, I thought you were the human who stood by and didn’t run away from me and my sickly hurting self, who didn’t look away from the uncomfortable truth that is me, who accepted all my damage and limitations unlike everyone else who ran away, or who turns away and doesn’t look when I start getting the stabby pains, or my arm doesn’t work, who understands that I can’t always make plans because I don’t know how I’m going to feel. And in that respect you have, more so than anyone.
But you know what else is part of my pain?
My fucked up childhood, the sexual abuse from numerous sources, the way that it shaped me, the way that it separated me from normal, natural, psychological pubescence.
After I told you stuff I never told another human being about my mom. I told you how it’s the kind of thing that I don’t like to tell people because it makes me think that no one will ever want to touch me, and we were sitting next to each other on that couch with me just hoping that you would hold my hand or prove that you weren’t afraid to touch me, and you didn’t. In fact you hardly reacted, and then later you told me that when you got home that night you punched something because do I know how hard it was, do I know what it did to you to have to hear me tell those stories?
This isn’t emotional warfare on you. Living with <Abusive Man>, that’s a part of my pain, part of my past. <Abusive Ex-Girlfriend>, that’s another part of it. I’m damaged. I have been damaged from the very beginning of my life.
I’ve never been innocent.
I was jerking a man off when I was five. I have to live with that, and being as damaged as I am makes it that much easier for me to fall into even more damaging situations. It doesn’t mean that I like it or that I want it or that I look for it, but I am always going to have associations that are atypical, and I am always going to have reactions that aren’t normal. And it might not be the first conclusion that one comes to when they see my actions, that my emotions might be what they are. Ok.
That’s part of the damaged package of me, and I really thought that we understood each other on a basic level, accepting our damaged selves. But I guess it was too much for me to think that you could actually accept it and understand me, and actually like me for who I really am and not in spite of these negative things in my past that you’re willing to overlook and try to overcome.
You don’t accept me.
You like me in spite of. You’re willing to hang out with me even though.
Pat yourself on the back for it. Congratulations.
And you say to me:
“Not like you have the time to care about that though,”
to which I say: Don’t you fucking say that to me. Don’t you dare.
I don’t have the time to care about you and your terrible past? Don’t you fucking say that to me.
And then you write back again and say:
“See how fucking angry I have to get. I hate myself right now. I have a feeling you’re enjoying this.”
Where do you get that? Your suspicions are out of control.
You say:
“…how fucking angry I have to get.”
You have to? Like there’s no choice? You have no self-control? I’m forcing you to write hateful things to me?
I’m not.
I don’t want you to hate yourself and I’m sorry that you do. Clearly that’s something to do with this.
And then you write:
“You want to draw me something. You want me to feel bad about that now. I continue to draw for you on my blog all the time. I’ve drawn countless pictures with the thought that maybe you will get a second of pleasure out of it, even if I’m exhausted, angry with you, and should be working. Not to mention the whole “being there for you whenever you need me” thing. So don’t.”
How do you even make that leap that I’m trying to make you feel guilty by telling you that in my saddest moment, the thing that gives me the most solace and pleasure is the idea of drawing you a picture, drawing something for you, doing something in my own small way for you is the first thing that makes me think I could feel better from being miserable and sad.
That’s a compliment.
That was something I thought maybe would make you less furiously angry, and you assume that I’m trying to…. I’ve never, ever wanted to make you feel guilty, ever. How often do you accuse me of trying to provoke you and get a rise out of you and make you angry, make you feel guilty, doing this to hurt you, doing something to get a rise out of you?
Nothing good ever comes from you feeling guilty. That’s been pretty well established. When you feel guilty, you accuse me of doing it to you, which isn’t it.
Why would I make you feel guilty? You’re not the kind of guy that buys a girl roses, and I’m not the kind of girl that would want them. You’re already full to the brim with feelings of guilt and worthlessness and hate. Why would I want to add to that?
I like that we’re not part of that machine that grinds both of us down. Why would I contribute even the slightest breeze of guilt? It’s adding to your already full capacity. And when you feel guilty, you react with anger and accusation and retaliation and defensiveness and it ends up being even worse, doesn’t get us anywhere.
So why? Why would I want to make you feel guilty or negative in any way? I want to make you feel good, I want us to be happy, and it’s my favorite thing: to make you happy. That’s what I love to do, it’s my favorite thing to make you happy. I want the opposite of making you feel guilty, I want to find a way that we can be happy together. I only bring things up in the idea of maybe growing closer and more understanding and accepting, getting why we have the reactions that we do.
To be happy, that’s why I wrote all of this, to understand.
But if there’s any chance that you can see something as personally attacking, as threatening, as insulting, as a slight, you will. If there’s a 3% chance that something could be interpreted that way, that’s how you’ll see it. And it’s getting worse, it’s getting worse. And it worries me. You’re too consumed with your own pain to see reality right in front of you. And the reality right in front of you is someone who’s trying to lessen it, who’s really honestly offering to help shoulder the burden. Or at least to distract with something happy, to try to balance out the overwhelming negativity with at least something positive.
All you see is me plotting against you. I’m just contributing to this, I’m just contributing to it because I still have the same questions that I have and you don’t answer them. And then I try to be close with you, but I can’t feel close because I don’t understand things. And then I hurt. And I know that when I hurt, you hurt, but then you get angry, but I don’t understand what’s going on.
This is turning into a meta thing.
It started off with me being upset because I thought that we had something different between us than we had, and I was upset to find out that you were with other women, and you expected me to accept that and be okay with it. And I really tried, but I can’t.
I still don’t understand how you see me. You have to understand when you tell me things like “you’re just friends” well, that’s what you tell people I am. So when you say that so and so is a friend, does that mean that you’re friends the way we’re friends? I can’t live in that void of confusion and vagueness. And I don’t think I can justify this anymore.
I’ve been doing nothing but trying to communicate. And this is the shit that I get in response. More accusations and bitter, angry words, and you accusing me of liking to be hit, of flaunting my past, and telling me that I don’t care about you.
I know that you would do anything for me, I know and accept the fact that you’ve done more for me than you would for yourself, and I accept that you care. That doesn’t negate all the rest of the hurt. You telling me that you would do anything for me, and you listing the many amazing things that you’ve done, that doesn’t negate the things that you wrote. It doesn’t negate the fact that I told you that I love you and I want to be partners with you of some sort, romantically involved of some kind, and that I’ve been rejected for a year.
It doesn’t negate the fact that it seems the more I try to explain to you and show you how much I do care about you, you respond with anger and bile, and it’s just getting worse. It’s like the more I try to explain to you how much you really do mean to me…
what’s it, the Groucho Marx thing? “You’d never join a club that would have you as a member”?
The more I try to tell you that I think you’re awesome, the more that I must obviously be a crazy piece of shit.
And let me tell you, I don’t think that I’m ever going to care about anyone else, anywhere near as much as I care about you. This isn’t just romantic fantasy. I wholeheartedly believe my whole Venn diagram thing. So what’s the likelihood that I’m going to find someone that fits as well as you?
Especially now that it’s going to be that much harder for me to ever trust or be emotionally open to anyone ever. I think that’s what happens when you draw pictures of your chest, pulling a heart out, and tell someone that you love them, and their first reaction is, “Is this an ultimatum?”
…when you tell someone that you want to be with them, and they tell you, “No.”
… when the person that means the most to you, the person that you care the most about, the person that means the world to you, is the same person who will tell you that they think that little of you, will accuse you of wanting to hurt them all the time.
I deserve better than this. I had these great plans for Christmas Eve and Christmas, and I was really hoping that maybe this year we could end up making things okay before Christmas, and not you calling me at 3 o’clock in the morning on Christmas Eve telling me that you planned on visiting me even though I made it clear that I wanted to sort things out between us before we ended up spending my birthday together, and you decided to completely disregard that. I had these really great plans, going to the city, things I thought we could do together, things that there is really no one else that I would enjoy doing these things more with.
I’m going to do them alone.
I hope that you can find someone that you can trust, that you can maybe talk to because your suspicions and your paranoia is getting worse, and I’m concerned about you.
Maybe someday you can look back and realize how much I really have been only trying to communicate and be kind, and give each other a safe place, that I’ve been as honest with you as I possibly know how, that I’ve never done anything to intentionally hurt you, and that I regret every single thing I ever did that hurt you accidentally, and I will always miss what we had, what I thought we had, what I truly believe we have the potential to become. There is not going to be at any point in my life that I won’t miss that, the actuality and the potential.
I care about you
and I miss you
and I even love you
but at this point, I wish I didn’t.