(no subject)
Okay, look, "Johnny M."
You spent years coaxing me to trust you, and acting so bloody offended that it even took a little time, and I gradually accepted you and came to care about you a great deal; when you were dealt a bad couple of hands, the first thing you did was turn to me and say that for all we'd been through you still wanted to tell me what was going on and be comforted, and the first thing I did was fight back my aversion to accepting that, to taking that role again when you'd already hurt me pretty badly for being a good friend to you before, and comfort you instead. When I stumbled into a bad year and, for the first time really, needed you...you gave it a negligible try (I can remember two times you generously tried to give me comfort without it becoming All About You! One phonecall, when I was namelessly inconsolable in spring, and you really did help me immensely then; one conversation via instant messaging, which I admit wasn't particularly soothing but didn't involve you screaming at me or making it worse) and then you abandoned me, redefining our entire relationship as something less than it had ever been in order to justify it.
You seriously told me, while I was still grieving and mainly holding it together for the sake of not having you scream and yell and hang up on me and walk away, that the reason why we couldn't be friends anymore was because I wasn't doing my job right and being a good audience for you to talk to. That's why I think you were upset more that I had admitted some of the things that had happened in the past than with anything else: because the reasons you offered were uglier than the reasons I think you were hiding. (Really. Really, just think about that without being invested in the people involved, Johnny. "You seem sad a lot, and I need friends that mostly put me first, so I'm going to abandon you now. You're pretty fragile and in need of understanding in a way that isn't immediately rewarding to me, and I don't need a friend like that." I'm obviously paraphrasing...you said you didn't need people you can't talk to, and really I expect that if you ignore the context, if you ignore that in early September we'd been talking and so pleased with each other that we both remarked on it and that the reason why I was not in a very happy, chatty mood was the recent death of a friend, it even sounds reasonable. But there was context, and I was not very impressed with the notion that the entirety of our friendship amounted to whether I met your needs without any consideration for my circumstances or the problems which really I had developed after three years of your various abuses all being justified and excused because bad things had happened to you or the problems I was having that were nothing at all to do with you except insofar as I really just...needed a fucking friend for the first time in all the years you'd known me.)
This entire near-decade of care and companionship and your emphasis on how important and irreplaceable we both were to each other, all of this fucked-up promise and affection that you, yes you, started while I was hesitant (which wasn't necessarily wrong; I found it vaguely cute when you'd sign notes Love to make me freak out slightly and sign them Respectfully)...came to nothing when I bloody needed it to mean something.
You violated my trust in the worst of ways; you used me; you hand-delivered me a whole group of massive problems that I never had before and can't seem to shake now, given their root in the sense that anything I try to trust will hurt me and any attempt to make things better will amount to my being oh-so-gently told that clearly, although it seems to me that I'm grieving and deserve at least the care I gave to you in similar circumstances, actually we've just grown apart, and gosh it is so codependent of me to expect you to keep your word or even just try to be a good friend in turn. You're not the worst thing that's happened to me for lack of competition; you're the worst thing that's happened to me because whenever you fucked up, you'd sulk and act as it were all my fault, and as if I was the one causing you grief because your "apology apparently didn't mean very much" when I was struggling not to cry at your confession and astonished and a bit appalled to find myself in the strange position of trying to comfort you over it, assure you that I wouldn't, for fuck's sake, leave you over it. People have abused me in ways that are prosecutable without doing me as much damage as you've done! You introduced me to the concept of passive-aggression, which of course I was doing, since directly and blatantly telling you I was having problems with you amounted to passive-aggression while your manipulation and grudging remarks and attempts to guilt me into thinking that your way which is right is right were not, even when you were doing things like trying to convince me that it was my fault that you felt guilty and jaded for betraying me and hurting me and treating me like a little scrap of garbage. You've been pretty brilliant at gaslighting me and fucking me up, which is amazing because if you consider the problems I had all on my own and the amount of sheer rationality and reason with which I handled those, it seems to suggest a certain innate capability and optimism that resisted all other considerable incentive to just give up, but I have fucking transcripts of you doing it.
I hope your life is lovely now. You didn't stick around to see it, but it has cost a whole fucking lot.
You spent years coaxing me to trust you, and acting so bloody offended that it even took a little time, and I gradually accepted you and came to care about you a great deal; when you were dealt a bad couple of hands, the first thing you did was turn to me and say that for all we'd been through you still wanted to tell me what was going on and be comforted, and the first thing I did was fight back my aversion to accepting that, to taking that role again when you'd already hurt me pretty badly for being a good friend to you before, and comfort you instead. When I stumbled into a bad year and, for the first time really, needed you...you gave it a negligible try (I can remember two times you generously tried to give me comfort without it becoming All About You! One phonecall, when I was namelessly inconsolable in spring, and you really did help me immensely then; one conversation via instant messaging, which I admit wasn't particularly soothing but didn't involve you screaming at me or making it worse) and then you abandoned me, redefining our entire relationship as something less than it had ever been in order to justify it.
You seriously told me, while I was still grieving and mainly holding it together for the sake of not having you scream and yell and hang up on me and walk away, that the reason why we couldn't be friends anymore was because I wasn't doing my job right and being a good audience for you to talk to. That's why I think you were upset more that I had admitted some of the things that had happened in the past than with anything else: because the reasons you offered were uglier than the reasons I think you were hiding. (Really. Really, just think about that without being invested in the people involved, Johnny. "You seem sad a lot, and I need friends that mostly put me first, so I'm going to abandon you now. You're pretty fragile and in need of understanding in a way that isn't immediately rewarding to me, and I don't need a friend like that." I'm obviously paraphrasing...you said you didn't need people you can't talk to, and really I expect that if you ignore the context, if you ignore that in early September we'd been talking and so pleased with each other that we both remarked on it and that the reason why I was not in a very happy, chatty mood was the recent death of a friend, it even sounds reasonable. But there was context, and I was not very impressed with the notion that the entirety of our friendship amounted to whether I met your needs without any consideration for my circumstances or the problems which really I had developed after three years of your various abuses all being justified and excused because bad things had happened to you or the problems I was having that were nothing at all to do with you except insofar as I really just...needed a fucking friend for the first time in all the years you'd known me.)
This entire near-decade of care and companionship and your emphasis on how important and irreplaceable we both were to each other, all of this fucked-up promise and affection that you, yes you, started while I was hesitant (which wasn't necessarily wrong; I found it vaguely cute when you'd sign notes Love to make me freak out slightly and sign them Respectfully)...came to nothing when I bloody needed it to mean something.
You violated my trust in the worst of ways; you used me; you hand-delivered me a whole group of massive problems that I never had before and can't seem to shake now, given their root in the sense that anything I try to trust will hurt me and any attempt to make things better will amount to my being oh-so-gently told that clearly, although it seems to me that I'm grieving and deserve at least the care I gave to you in similar circumstances, actually we've just grown apart, and gosh it is so codependent of me to expect you to keep your word or even just try to be a good friend in turn. You're not the worst thing that's happened to me for lack of competition; you're the worst thing that's happened to me because whenever you fucked up, you'd sulk and act as it were all my fault, and as if I was the one causing you grief because your "apology apparently didn't mean very much" when I was struggling not to cry at your confession and astonished and a bit appalled to find myself in the strange position of trying to comfort you over it, assure you that I wouldn't, for fuck's sake, leave you over it. People have abused me in ways that are prosecutable without doing me as much damage as you've done! You introduced me to the concept of passive-aggression, which of course I was doing, since directly and blatantly telling you I was having problems with you amounted to passive-aggression while your manipulation and grudging remarks and attempts to guilt me into thinking that your way which is right is right were not, even when you were doing things like trying to convince me that it was my fault that you felt guilty and jaded for betraying me and hurting me and treating me like a little scrap of garbage. You've been pretty brilliant at gaslighting me and fucking me up, which is amazing because if you consider the problems I had all on my own and the amount of sheer rationality and reason with which I handled those, it seems to suggest a certain innate capability and optimism that resisted all other considerable incentive to just give up, but I have fucking transcripts of you doing it.
I hope your life is lovely now. You didn't stick around to see it, but it has cost a whole fucking lot.