Me.

Narrowing down my effective social circle for a while. The number of instances of people treating me like I am invulnerable because I won't collapse if they treat me like a mere human? It has reached a certain threshold. Beyond this threshold, I start removing these well-meaning fumbling moral infants so that their mistakes don't continue coming out of my hide.

Don't break commitments to me without doing me the basic courtesy of letting me know when those commitments are becoming burdensome to you BEFOREHAND. Don't use the fact that I keep my commitments against me. Don't use the fact that I have standards for my behavior to sacrifice me for the personal growth of your pieces of shit for friends and family. I am not your meatshield and I am not their scratching post.

I'm hesitant to assert my humanity because I don't identify particularly well with it, but please at least try to recall that I am a fellow sapient organism and have enough respect for yourself to apply the same standards of care and consideration to me that you apply to the delicate flailing baby glass flowers you call friends and family. It's been years since I treated myself as obligated to endure shitty treatment just because I can, so you can catch up to that or you can get the fuck out forever and lock yourself in a tiny box until you have learned how to be a member of a socially-oriented species.

Follow-up to the entry about my alleged feelings:

I Skyped with him and reminded him of, like, my basic humanity, and he is sorry that he spoke about me in a way that made it seem like he had forgotten about or didn't appreciate our friendship and my, like, emotional presence in it or his life or whatever.

I think he did need a reminder to jolt him out of the Suffering Solipsism and I have given it to him. I'm still a little wary, because not everybody would even behave this way at their worst, but I managed to eliminate the 3-4% probability that he'd just say, "Um well yeah of course I think that. If you had real feelings you wouldn't be able to control yourself so well."

Probability eliminated.

He said that he was coming to some wrong conclusions about things, a lot of things. He also acknowledged that it put our friend in a weird position to phrase all these things like they're stuff she's obviously going to agree with and be on board with.

I reiterated to him that I'm not yelling, I'm not deliberately hurting him just because I'm hurting, I'm not doing any of that stuff. I reminded him that this is normal, that he can have this all the time, with everybody. Basically it was just my obligatory reminder to him that I am not a magical being who is uniquely capable of discussing hurt feelings in a non-abusive way.

We did laughing and joking and stuff, too, when possible. I always try to do that when I am talking to someone about (relatively) heavy shit. Nothing gets done if I just batter the other person with everything that is terrible about them; exchanging smiles and jokes throughout the process are my way of making it clear that they have reason to not just... give up and flop down in defeated despair.

He asked if we were cool and I told him that I'll probably be a little wary for however long he's up in the canopy of the crazy jungle (which is like being in the crazy tree except moreso) just in case there is further fuckery, and he said, "No. No, I will try to limit it to listening to good advice, acknowledging it is good advice, and then not doing it. That is as crazy as I will get."

I laughed. "So, business as usual?"

"...Yeah."

"Okay. Take care dude. Talk to you later."

So despite strong physical symptoms of anxiety before having this conversation, it has been had and it went more or less the way I thought it would, which happened to be the best case scenario in which only a vanishingly small portion of his distress was automatic guilt to be thrown onto the self-pity pyre, with the bulk of it being a recognition of what was actually not cool here. That's important to me. Apologies aren't all that useful to me if they're reflexive, given automatically as a pacifying measure. Comprehension is important; it's helpful to double-check that what I'm saying is actually being recognized.

Thanks, all, for being with me as I process.

TW: abusers, enabling, codependency, etcetera
TW: non-flashy animated gifs

Some people would really have an easier time moving past their childhoods if they chose not to live there any more.

This is not directed at any one of my friends, because I know so many of them that it would be difficult to even say which of them makes me feel this way the most. It's possible that this comes my way so often because I know a lot of people who need to hear a particular kind of "why do you do things you know are bad for you because you complain a lot and then keep doing it" sort of bewildered frustration to reality check their own repetitive thoughts and counter-act some gaslighting coming from other corners. I am open to this possibility.

I just find it really frustrating, and the contempt can be hard to swallow. I don't have contempt for people who stay with an abuser, because often that happens because of financial, social, or safety consequences they are not prepared to endure. Furthermore, a lot of people who're being abused have to convince themselves it's not abuse so that they can adapt to the new normal and stay above water. Additionally, codependency is a helluva drug just in general. All that stuff I know. I also know that it is hella disempowering to offer people advice, feedback, or anything beyond active listening unless they explicitly say that that is what will support them most effectively at that moment.

What I get sick of is friends repeatedly coming to me specifically to commiserate about relatives on whom they are not financially dependent, do not rely upon for access to health care, and therefore contribute literally nothing but toxicity to their lives. Actually, let me refine that. The ones who piss me off the most are the ones who expect me to be somehow onboard with this approach of building abuser-resistant structures to hide in until the worst of the latest tantrum subsides rather than ceasing to go out of their way to include the tantrum-throwing little shit. Because that's the thing. If you do not rely on someone for any of your actual practical needs, and if they do not provide you any emotional or social support, you do not need them; you are going out of your way to include them in a life that doesn't actually use them for anything otherwise.

Don't say, "You know how you have to X," or, "All you can do is Y," because I think you had better adjust that pronoun. I don't have that attitude. Maybe this is different for people who didn't grow up with at least a couple of contingency plans in case someday they had to kill their parent. Maybe for people whose abusers aren't that bad they can afford to create a fantasy world in which if they just stand still and let themselves be stabbed in the eye enough times, their abuser will learn to regret what they've done enough to... I don't know, stab them someplace less vital in the future. Maybe some people can afford to grow up without ever having seriously considered that what they need is a life without the abuser.

I just don't fucking get that attitude, though. You know why? I couldn't afford it. I couldn't afford to just accept the standards of my abusers and hope that doing so would ensure my survival, because yeah sure that works all the time. "GTFO" was on my to-do list from a very young age because I knew that a space I controlled was the only place where I would ever have a breath of a chance.

And y'know what? I was right.



Of course I was! This shit is obvious!

So! Don't act like what you're doing is all anyone can do. It is what you are doing. Do not presume to know what options I saw and what actions I took just because you clearly never had to look as hard as I did. Do not presume that repeatedly going out of your way to subject yourself to your abuser is just what's done. I don't know whether to feel envy or disgust when it comes to people who never had to learn the hard way that you need to not fucking do that.

There comes a time when I just want to tell them that I'm tired of hearing about problems they must not care about enough to solve. That's a shitty thing to say, but as someone who deserves to be proud of making the correct decisions, I sure as hell think it. If they just came to get my heart bleeding for them whenever they need to feed on my sympathy to refuel for their next deliberate pursuit of being hurt.

This is what finally got me off the codependency schtick.

There is no amount of therapizing or personal work or other emotional heavy lifting that I can do on my end to compensate for the shitty decisions of people like this. They cannot be saved, because you can do every imaginable thing to create a world in which they can live free of their abuser, and I guarantee you they'll have them over for dinner, list them as an emergency contact, or invite them to the wedding. They will undermine you every step of the way because they like where they are and they're gonna stay addicted to the abuser cycle until they decide to get clean.

I can't do it for them, so unless they're gonna come to me for real fucking talk about how incomprehensible it is to me that they are obviously going out of their way to seek out abuse, they can keep their... fuckin'... emotional self-harm nonsense to their damn selves. You cut yourself in the feelings if you wanna; I clearly can't stop you.

What you cannot do is sit down with me and solicit my feedback like there's anything I'm gonna say besides, "Actually no I don't do that thing you are doing. Because it is obviously not working and I stop doing things that are demonstrably bullshit once it is demonstrated that they are bullshit." It doesn't take knowing me that long to expect that I will respond to bullshit like you are feeding me bullshit.

I don't care if you ate it first; I don't want your bullshit.



Now, I have on at least one occasion had someone discuss an abusive situation they're in because they needed someone to not just disagree with the brain weasels, but outright dismiss the brain weasels as inhabiting such an alternate universe of bullshit that their brain weasels are not even saying things that are comprehensible. Some people do eventually appear to benefit from a reality check that rough; some of that set even know this about themselves well enough to solicit it. This is great. I can do that and will happily do it because if support to you looks like "hey tell me this bullshit is bullshit because it is bullshit right?" I am pleased as punch to say, "Yes. It is bullshit for a myriad of reasons that I will happily detail as exhaustively as you like."

What I am not pleased to do is pretend that we all have the luxury to live in fantasy enabler land where if you stick around they'll learn to stop hurting you. What I am not pleased to do is pretend that we all have the luxury to keep hope alive. What I am not pleased to do is hide the sensible, pragmatic, and often merciless decisions I have had to make for my own good which I am proud of because I took care of myself and that makes me fucking awesome because someone I know is cruising for some enabling of their enabling.

No.

Nope.

Get out.

I'm not going to go approach all the people in these situations and tell them my very important opinions on the subject, but I am allowed to post in my very own journal that I am proud not to be them. I couldn't afford to be them, so I wasn't, and I damn well will be proud of that. If anybody has a problem with the fact that I actually chose survival strategies that work and that makes them feel bad, they absolutely can take that messiness elsewhere because I am not here for it.

Support me or learn from me or ignore me, but get the hell out of my way and don't hate me for doing shit right. I had to. So I did. Try it sometime.

Stolen from popfiend

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Other people do a funny thing that doesn't make much sense to me. See, there are people who want me to fall apart, because apparently me falling apart is part of being friends with them. I can see the reasoning, but it makes me angry.

I know why it happens in at least some cases.

There are people who measure intimacy by how often they see me in moments as weak as theirs. There are people who measure intimacy by how frequently they are permitted to be present during a total breakdown. The only language of love that they understand is being caught in someone else's wreckage; is it any surprise that the best way they know to be a friend to me is to drag me into theirs?

So they wish I'd cry, to assure themselves that if I cried they'd be allowed to see it. They wish I would bleed, to assure themselves that they're the kind of person I'd turn to for help. They want me to need their advice about a situation they can't help me with, because me being let down by their lack of wisdom and perspective is a fair price to pay if it means that they get to congratulate themselves for being someone I'd ask.

When they don't get what they want, when they go for too long without seeing any histrionics, they feel isolated and unwanted and unloved, and so they try to carve out of me what they need to feel included. I'm not saying that it's a constructive response to loneliness to hurt the people who aren't hurting enough where you can see it happening, but I am saying it's a thing people do.

There's a certain intimacy in a good fight. Everything is laid right out and everybody is getting a lot of emotional stimulation and everything in the world besides you, us, this... it all fades. Drama is the only way some people know how to feel connected to other people, to feel engaged, to feel like they are effectual and like the world they're in can touch them with anything meaningful.

Fuck those people.

I find them so distasteful that I'm not even going to focus on them here, because I don't keep them around. I'm primarily talking about your garden variety emotional vampire habit of lashing out at all the people around them to prove that there are living breathing bleeding humans close enough to strike. I'm talking about the usual, "I'm hurting! You need to hurt too!" misery loves company sort of act.

I'm talking about the people who see my armor as a barrier between them and me. But you know what? Maybe it is. If you're going to try to sink your fangs into me and drag me down into your misery with you, you're damn right that the armor is there as a barrier between us. If your only way to feel close to me is damaging to me, you're not going to persuade me that you're the victim here because these steel plates keep catching in your teeth.

I know it's rooted in love, but lots of awful things can be rooted in love and still be awful. I'm not confused about where this is coming from; it's a very real desire for closeness and fellowship with me. I'm just not going to adjust my ways to make people feel loved at the cost of my own stability.

I have too much shit to do to pretend to be less strong or less wise than I am for the sake of consoling people whom I could only comfort by staging a catastrophe my life doesn't need and handing out tickets to only the most select of audiences. I have too much shit to do. I've got real shit to do, and if anybody can help me it's not these people. I'm not going to apologize to these lampreys for my refusal to speak to them in their dysfunctional love language that requires others to bleed affirmation.

Considering my two life options: kicking everybody out of my life who betrays my trust, or learning to repair relationships tainted by betrayal. The former option keeps everything temptingly simple, but on the other hand... nobody is perfect, and if I kick everybody to the curb after a single strike, that means I won't get to keep anybody.

I suppose that's an unfair way to portray it, though.

Generally I give people one opportunity to prove that an instance of awfulness is not reflective of their real priorities and values, because there are people who just don't think clearly enough or deeply enough about what they do, and it's possible to just hash things out with them and give them the data they need to be the kind of friend they want to be.

The rule is double-edged. On the one hand, that's basically the "take them or leave them" moment for the relationship, whether I drop them right that moment or not. Generally if I am going to ditch someone, that's when the decision got made, and everything in between that decision and its actualization? Just damage control, no matter how it looks. The other edge, though, is that I don't trust people until we have had this moment. How can I know whether someone really gives a shit about me and whatever relationship we have if they've never needed to demonstrate it? How can I possibly know someone until I know how they handle conflict?

Knowing who a person is when everything's going their way is not knowing them at all, because there is no healthy and reasonable way to keep them happy all the time so that I never need to know what kind of person they are when things get thorny.

I really do think it's when people show their true colors. Not in the "be perfect and never fuck up" period, but in the "well somebody fucked up so now what do we do?" period. Whether I have fucked up or they have, here is what needs to happen. Anything short of this is grounds for immediate friendship termination (with only a couple of exceptions).

Rebuilding trust is something two people do together. You just can't say, "You go off and become trustworthy and then come back and we'll see." It doesn't work that way.

You're needing to talk to each other, to share information about what things mean to you. You've got to talk about things that are difficult to say and difficult to hear and do so without making each other miserable. You've got to share hurt feelings without creating more hurt feelings. You've got to listen when you're itching to make yourself heard and make yourself heard when you're tired of talking. - Mira Kirshenbaum

Remember. Fail here by being a shitshow, and it's done. Succeed here and we're actually bros now. Remember that this is a standard I hold myself to as well, and that my refusal to implode is not a sign that I don't care, but that I care too much about solving whatever problem we have to collapse at this crucial moment.

It's a risky time. No matter which side I am on, it's the moment when I know whether to trust this person and accept them in for real, or whether they should be cut loose before they have the power to do serious damage. So basically, people have one chance with me to demonstrate that they deserve chances at all. If they use that first chance well, they'll get more (up to a point, until I see them squandering those opportunities).

The lovely thing about this approach is that it pretty well protects me from betrayal. I don't take too many emotional risks if I refuse to get invested until I've given someone's risk level a favorable evaluation.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. - Maya Angelou

It has a drawback, though. It means that the better I get at assessing who is likely to betray me and how, the longer I go without practicing dealing with betrayal. I think I deal with it okay, despite not having very many opportunities to hone my skills. Perhaps the definition of dealing well with betrayal is knowing when the cost-benefit analysis tips in favor of just cutting them off, and then acting accordingly.

Every now and again I do wonder if I am missing out, but at the same time... I think I am generous enough. My life has a lot less drama in it than many people I know because "tends to introduce drama" is fully enough reason to show someone the door whether they need my support or have some other reason why I should keep them around out of pity. I'm having a moment of second-guessing that instant willingness to turn and sever, but deep down I'm still satisfied with my results.

Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "Now, it's complete because it's ended here." - Frank Herbert

Back in the long long ago, in the beforetime, kingofdoma asked me meme-questions here. The whole answering and fulfilment bit of this kept not occurring, but now it will!

1. What is your favourite novel?

Right now? I'm going to say Ender's Game, even though its author is a gay-hating fundie prick that you should never ever ever give money to, no matter what.

2. Pick a treasured person in your life, and tell me what you'd say for their eulogy.

Come on. Who'd you think I'd pick? Assuming I'd be there for it, anyway.

archmage_brian. He was everything that matters.

3. If you could go back in time and take a tire iron to any major philosopher, who would you bludgeon senseless, and why?

Kierkegaard. Because FUCK YOU Kierkegaard, that's why. Abraham's God made me do it.

4. What is your biggest problem with me? What about me would you have me change or at least look at more critically?

My biggest problem with you? Oh, dude. We hashed that over and discussed it and settled it years ago. I mean actual, literal, 360-something-day-long years. It will probably take you long thought to even remember wtf I'm talking about, which should be a clue as to how much bad blood there's ever really been between us.

If I wanted you to change who you were now? I wouldn't be friends with you.

5. Let's say you can only drink one brand of beer for all eternity. What brand is that, and what about it earns your eternal devotion?

Oh, hm. Off the top of my head? Kingfisher. It's a very lagery lager, and goes well with food or on a hot day without it.

Back in the long long ago, in the beforetime, kingofdoma asked me meme-questions here. The whole answering and fulfilment bit of this kept not occurring, but now it will!

1. What is your favourite novel?

Right now? I'm going to say Ender's Game, even though its author is a gay-hating fundie prick that you should never ever ever give money to, no matter what.

2. Pick a treasured person in your life, and tell me what you'd say for their eulogy.

Come on. Who'd you think I'd pick? Assuming I'd be there for it, anyway.

archmage_brian. He was everything that matters.

3. If you could go back in time and take a tire iron to any major philosopher, who would you bludgeon senseless, and why?

Kierkegaard. Because FUCK YOU Kierkegaard, that's why. Abraham's God made me do it.

4. What is your biggest problem with me? What about me would you have me change or at least look at more critically?

My biggest problem with you? Oh, dude. We hashed that over and discussed it and settled it years ago. I mean actual, literal, 360-something-day-long years. It will probably take you long thought to even remember wtf I'm talking about, which should be a clue as to how much bad blood there's ever really been between us.

If I wanted you to change who you were now? I wouldn't be friends with you.

5. Let's say you can only drink one brand of beer for all eternity. What brand is that, and what about it earns your eternal devotion?

Oh, hm. Off the top of my head? Kingfisher. It's a very lagery lager, and goes well with food or on a hot day without it.

The Gratitude Project was begun several years ago by a LiveJournal user called estaratshirai . The rules are simple. Every day between Lammas (August 1st) and Mabon (the Autumnal Equinox) one must find something to be grateful for in life. No repeats - one can be grateful to people more than once, but it has to be for different reasons.

Monday:

I am grateful to Pedialyte for making sure I don't get low on electrolytes and have a heart attack. Thanks, Pedialyte, even if you are way too slimy-feeling in my mouth somehow.

Tuesday:

I am grateful to Filament Magazine for... existing. Hooray for a women's magazine produced by feminists with what women actually want in mind (so bite me, Cosmo, and your endlessly-repeated 100-something ways to be worthy of a man).

Dear homophobes who have "lots of gay friends whom they love and respect": Would it be a betrayal of my gay friends if I believed they should have fewer rights than I do as a straight person? I believe it would. Would they be justified in considering me less than a true friend, because I don't respect them enough to value their freedom? I believe they would.

If you don't believe in gay marriage, then all that should mean is you won't be getting one. If you call your gay friends sinners, perverts, deviants, freaks, or an affront to God, then let me tell you. Not only are you not friends, you don't know what the hell a friend is.

I cannot stand when gay-hating zealots suddenly call up the ideal of open-mindedness as a shield. No, you guys, I don't need to be accepting and open-minded when it comes to a view that you are actively attempting to shove onto other people. I can be accepting and open-minded and supportive of your personal choices, but once you start trying to limit the rights of others? Hell no, your view doesn't deserve my tolerance and good will just for being there. Pack up your sense of entitlement and get offa my yard.

All views are not equally worthy of respect, and views which do not allow for tolerance should not be heard later crying for it when they're criticized by the ones who ARE willing to "live and let live."

I am not intolerant for saying there is no supportable rational reason to limit the contractual rights of gay people, and your gay friends are not intolerant for deciding they don't want to be around someone like you who is constantly passing judgement on a life that you openly wish you controlled instead of them. You don't deserve tolerance, you don't deserve acceptance, and you don't deserve empathy.

"Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." -Perosteck Balveda

Sincerely,

Those of us who actually know how to be a friend, those of us who know what "agree to disagree" means, and those of us who don't want to hear about tolerance from people who want their intolerance to have the weight of law.