The bomb drop
That chapter is now closed. I want to say that I got closure, but I didn't really, mostly because F had a really good point on how they might have just been trying to find an excuse to get away. I don't think this was something conscious, but I think the conflict and discomfort having to things while already struggling in real life became too much, and I find it reasonable to think that she defense mechanism'ed me and went nuclear. It would explain why this happened without an explicit event but was rather delayed, and also why she didn't try to communicate it or resolve it. She told me her reasons, and they were all things that to me were misunderstandings. But because I did not have a way to know or clear things up before this breaking point, what happens happened.
In the entire time I knew her, she never once mentioned knowing about my blog. But it turns out she knew and also kept up with it. The day we got into a conflict voice-to-texted a lot of stuff, to try to process and vent. If I knew that she might potentially see it I would have edited it instead of just letting it be a continuous stream of emotion. It sucks because whenever people I know mention that they know about this website, I kind of talk with them and let them know that I don't want them to keep up with it and also that anything I write is not what I believe or what I think, it's just meant to be somewhere where I can fully vent and try on different thoughts. It's like a kid getting mad at their parent and saying “I hate you I hope you die”, even though they wouldn't want that at all. I guess this was meant to be my place for that, because I don't want to tell people things that I don't mean. But she read those posts, and she misinterpreted several big things and she stated those as the reasons why she ghosted me. The biggest one that hurt to hear was that she thought I wanted to hurt her. That broke my heart to hear, because I hate the idea of making anyone uncomfortable let alone hurting someone. Especially someone that I care about like a friend. Like even in sparring with L or N, I would constantly be holding back even when they would be rougher, because I just could not handle the thought of hurting someone. But at the same time I see how that’s at odds with the things that I wrote that day.
I wrote about how I sometimes get dreams about getting in fights or being in situations where someone attacks me first and it is morally justified to defend myself and in the dreams I'm overly aggressive and I struggle to sleep because my heart keeps racing but my brain keeps going back there. And I like those dreams, it's not like it's a nightmare. It's not something where I want to dream it or I try to, but whenever I do it feels good for a lack of a better word. And so I sat there thinking about where is the dissonance between me being a non-violent person and having these violent fantasies. And I think I kind of figured it out.
I only have these dreams whenever I start to feel triggered or a lack of control over my own well-being. Plenty of people have had it worse than me, but at the same time I know that you can't compare struggles but I at least wanted to say that first. But I grew up in a house where I was emotionally neglected, sometimes physically abused, and also sexually. It's not something I really like to talk about for very obvious reason, but also mostly because I don't want people to feel uncomfortable or to look at me any differently or with pity. I'm pretty well adjusted, and I'm really thankful to therapy and introspection for that. But there absolutely are plenty of scars, including ones that I keep finding. And one of those is I think my issue with emasculation. I remember when things happened to me as a kid, especially the SA, I always blamed myself because I could have stopped it and I just wasn't strong enough to. It wasn't a question of physically, but I just kind of mentally shut down I wouldn't think about it and I would just go along and do it. I also didn't have any trusted adults or people I could talk to and so I just kind of dissociated and as a result I don't really remember my childhood at all. That was all I could do because I was hurting so badly and it's not like I could have done much else. I was a kid. But I always blamed myself for it, and so a consistent narrative in my head has been that I will never be that weak again. I will be strong enough to be able to protect myself. And it's irrational because it was never question about my physical strength, or my masculinity. But if I'm what I always see of men, of being emotionally strong, independent, resilient, and not victims, if I'm that, then I am safe. It's really hard to write this out. Whenever I would feel emasculated, I would feel weak, and I would feel vulnerable. Like if something was to happen to me again I would need someone else to come and save me or help me, and the only thing I learned growing up is that no one will come. The only thing they would do is make it worse, and so I need to be strong enough to deal with it by myself.
I remember with T, it wasn't the homophobic comment that she made towards her ex. That of course sucked, but I would have been fine. It was me taking a risk and telling her that what she said kind of hurt me, and her responding saying I don't care, and that she will keep doing it. And when I told her I don't think she understood what I was saying, she said she did understand and doubled down. This is one of those things where what she did really isn't the worst thing in the world, but I just have my scars in exactly the spots she hit. That immediately made me feel like I did all the time growing up, where if I ever said that I was hurting or that I was struggling, it was met with aggression and indifference. There was never any empathy from my household, because my mom and my sister were always struggling with their own mental illnesses. But that's just been burned into me, that if I beg someone to help me, the response I've been trying to unlearn was aggression. And thankfully the people I've surrounded myself with have been great for that, I have plenty of friends that I'm so incredibly thankful for that have been there for me. And so trusting T in this situation and having it go right back to what I was trying to unlearn was too much. And so it hurt me so much deeper than it should have.
I'm thankful for the silver lining of this scar being pushed on hard enough for me to know it's there and to give it a name. I can talk with my therapist and more about this so that hopefully I can start to let it heal properly. But it really does hurt have someone who was a really close friend block me on every single platform, remove me from our mutual server, and even have other friends block me and take sides without me getting any say. I'm happy that they have people that will be on their side no matter what, because I know how important that is. It just really sucks that I don't think it's a good idea to just do that, to fully block someone and exonerate them without any communication. And I also always try to make sure no one has to choose sides, which is why I didn't mention any kind of conflict or the things that she was doing what was our mutual friends. But because of that I'm left defenseless and out in the cold. This is such an ugly pity party of a last few sentences, I'm sorry for rambling with voice to text again. It just hurts that her friend that I became friends with didn't even give me a chance as a person. I'm glad because that means she has people on her side to support her, and I have other people and I'm strong enough regardless now. I'm still sad because it hurts me way more than it needed to. But maybe it's a good thing, the whole thing about comfortable discomfort.
I can't believe I wrote all of this shit when I really only meant to write this last paragraph. I think this blog has been a really cringy stupid idea that I somehow have not gotten backlash over, or enough to motivate me to stop. But at the same time this is now the third time someone close to me has utilized this as a resource during conflict against me. And that makes me feel really unsafe writing, because it no longer feels like a journal but rather like I'm going on the record and that it's going to be scrutinized and leveraged against me later. I don't really know why I want to have something that's public in the first place. I think a big part is because I truly do believe that I am not perceived enough for this to matter, and that no one is going to notice this in a way that actively affects me. But I absolutely hate lying and so people close to me usually find out about this in some way or another, and then in the conflicts with some people they then have access to this one way glass into my mind. And I think that's something I'm not really comfortable with anymore.
I like the idea of somewhat documenting my emotional progress throughout my life, and it's pretty nice to be able to look back and see how far I've came. And I've had a couple people reach out to me and say how been helpful or nice to see what I'd like to think is just a very intimately humanizing view into someone else. But I find myself more and more becoming worried about censoring things from a stream of consciousness which defeats the purpose of journaling. My current idea has been to rewrite my own blogging platform so that I can change it from a traditional feed into instead a random post. I think this way people can see small little windows, but I don't have to be afraid of someone peering into my mind without me knowing, especially when I'm struggling. I'm not sure though, I feel like an overall net negative to have this be something publicly on mine, but I still want to do it which I don't get. I'm glad I have this journal though, it really helps beyond belief to be able to have a place to just yell into the void.