recently: busy at work, Topaz moving, ex-friend attack, back pain, car broke, close friend suffering
icon: "pain (a digital painting of a thin naked person crouching with arms tight to their chest and hands over their face, and long hair spilling over their face and down their body, balancing on the balls of their feet on top of a precariously thin column of rock)"
Sorry I have been absent lately. It has been busy season at work, plus Topaz is moving so every weekend has been spent on that. And last week I hurt my back to the point that I took pain meds for five days in a row and after 8 days, it still aches at any strain and I feel so worried it won't completely heal. And my car conked out last week which reduced my energy to zero and pretty much wiped out my paycheck as well, but at least it is fixed now. And a close friend is going through agony about a personal betrayal they experienced and I'm attempting to offer support -- I'm glad to be able to offer what I can but I wish I was more capable.
Oh, and two weeks ago, someone who I was friends with at the time asked to send me an email and being the literal person I am, I said yes, not thinking that they had any expectation of response. When I read it, they started out with four paragraphs of praise of an ex-friend who they know hurt me, explaining why they trust this person because they met them through me, despite the fact that I don't trust them.
They then sent over a dozen more emails, together in length more than 12,000 words. I used google docs to get the word count. For context, that's a fourth of a short novel. It was more than 20 pages, single spaced. I share these details to explain why I was overwhelmed at the idea of trying to reply. Most people would not be willing to read that due to the length alone, honestly, and the content was super intense and involved a lot of talking rapturously about an ex-lover of mine who also hurt me deeply. It was heavy, but I read it all.
I replied a short message to only that part about the ex-friend because it felt urgent to me to explain, and said that I would try to respond to the rest but that I probably wouldn't get to it. I said this because they have known me for years and there have been many emails or messages that I have failed to respond to. I just have a very hard time with it and I feel bad about that but I don't seem able to fix it, and they are aware of this.
I thought they would be like "haha yeah that executive function fail, I know it well." I thought they would be like "yeah I know it's a lot, I just wanted to share it with you so thanks for reading." That was not at all what happened.
They got very upset that I didn't respond positively, and said that I disrespected them by doing this. Then when I replied explaining further they went to my facebook and said that they didn't read my further replies and they were confronting me in public because they didn't trust me in private, and said a lot of arrogant things implying that they knew me better than I did, etc etc.
Then they blocked me and then started posting negative shit about me on their wall (with notes saying that it was encouraged for mutuals to share with me) and messaging all of our mutual friends complaining about me -- along with uncomfortably over-the-top praise. Trying to talk to me without me having a chance to talk back, basically.
This activated a lot of previous trauma from being attacked by people I trusted. but I was relieved and felt very loved when our mutual friends kindly but firmly said "no" to the negative shit and pointed out that their behavior towards me wasn't okay. I was relieved also because I was worried that the stress they put on my friends would cause them to be upset with me for bringing this source of stress into their lives. I felt really cared about and understood and trusted by several close friends so that helped me cope much more quickly than I otherwise would have been able to. In particular Topaz, Nik, Allison, Rachel, and Serenity were kind to me about it and it meant the world to me.
This week there is road work making it difficult to get to my office, so my boss let us have three days of teleworking. I am so grateful because I needed it so badly. My house had turned into a giant horrible mess because it is a direct reflection of my mental state. So today is my third day of working from home and I have tidied my room and the hallway (neither fully but both much better) and did some dishes (which I hadn't managed to do for weeks) and managed to write this. Which I am going to post immediately rather than letting it languish at 95% complete for weeks.