#seemed to just want to be put down and left alone wasnt malicious or anything just rightfully bothered

[thueenz]

i get so sad seeing occupied objects with people that are just blatantly upsetting them

[everyman0]

WALLS TO BREAK US

so i know i dropped all communication for the past several months...and evans fucking journal might have you believe i sat on my ass the entire time but that isnt the case. I didnt intend on sharing this information, frankly. but my time is running out now, evans already gone. this account of events will be all i have left.

i cant leave this place. i dont even know where the fuck i am supposed to be to begin with.

there is a house. a neighborhood. stores. a town. but nothing has a name.

there are people, but despite the gift of sight i was given, i see nothing of them. like empty thoughts given a shell to walk around in.

i thought at first, a couple months ago when i was first allowed to walk outside again, that they were real and that i was simply too overwhelmed with shock to really notice what was wrong here. but now i see it. i see it because there is nothing to see. these people aren't people at all, more like ghosts. 

at least im not entirely alone. there's still the house and asterion.

ive walked to the store many times, even got assaulted in the parking lot. Was that guy a ghost too? I dont know. but i havent only gone to the store - ive walked around the entire town. know what i finally realized, several days after i had made that exploratory journey?

there are no cars here. none being sold, none being driven, absolutely fucking nothing. no bikes either. no skates, no skateboards, no heelies wheelies or fucking feelies. not a single mode of transportation of any kind.

theres a bus stop though! thank fuck for that! oh wait, it's fucking useless. i have not once seen a bus in this god forsaken place.

imagine the anguish i felt upon realizing that despite being able to steal groceries just fine, i cant even hope to steal a car to drive as far away as i can from this hellhole. but it doesnt stop there.

of course it doesnt.

so alright, no cars. but i still had my legs, right? (and still do, somehow.)

so i figured if i cant drive away, i could at least saunter the fuck out of this place and maybe determine some sense of location on planet fucking earth. i set out. i walked in one direction from the house to the town and onward. and onward. and onward. for five fucking hours.

i found nothing.

but it wasnt your average nothingness like that of a long rural road, as it had originally appeared to me. no...instead, i eventually encountered what i call the Edge. here, the road stutters into an impossible blackness. here, if you turn your head, you can see how the blackness runs parallel to the world around you, bordering everything for miles. real truman show type shit.

the real kicker is when i discovered that only i can see it.

like any good scientist, i did some experimenting. kicked some cans, threw some rocks, all hurtling in the direction of the black wall. to my surprise, the items phased through it. swallowed might be a better word. i couldnt see or hear if the objects landed on the other side, if there was even a side to land on beyond the boundaries of ink. so then i decided i needed an extra set of eyes, and brought evan along a few days later.

this is the first and last time i let him outside in my care, and for good reason.

we arrived at the Edge, and evan was immediately annoyed at me as i had stopped walking just a few feet before the black wall. i asked him to explain what the problem was. he was like, "dude, you told me there was some shit i had to see and we have been walking forever. where the fuck is it? is this it? because it looks like a whole lot of fucking nothing."

i then asked, "what does this nothing look like to you?"

evan was growing more confused and angry, but i didnt want him to know what i did until i knew what he did first. i didnt want to contaminate his perception by revealing my own. i needed to be thorough and absolutely sure of our experience.

he threw his arms in the air in frustration, "a road, vin. it looks like a road, the same fuckin' cracked asphalt we've been following for miles. forwards and backwards, road."

evan took a step forward, into the blackness. i saw the tip of his foot disappear, sliced by the unfathomable wall. evan didnt seem to notice anything different, standing there with his arms crossed. so then i knew at least one thing for certain: only i could see the wall.

however, until seeing evan's foot just barely phasing through the wall, it hadnt occurred to me if i could pass through it too...or at least touch it. before, when i had been throwing cans and such, i didnt dare get too close to the black edge. i had no idea what would happen, and wasnt particularly interested in finding out at the time. all i could gather was that, just like the rest of the town and even the house herself, it was designed to keep things inside.

as it turns out, evan was not one of those things intended to stay. i stood there pondering silently, and watched as evan began an impatient pacing along the length of the wall. an imperfect, wobbly hobble across the street and back; i saw arms and legs flash in and out of the blackness as evan walked, still taking no notice. evan couldnt see the difference like i could, and he wasnt the prisoner these walls were meant to encase. so who was?

well obviously it's me. at least, i'm somehow a part of the equation i think. and then i figured now was no better a time as any for me to make my approach and reach out - touch the wall, see what happens, inwardly hope it just kills me on the spot, and so on.

but right as i had decided this, i hear evan angrily spitting an expletive and turn, marching off beyond the pitch black walls. guess he was tired of waiting on me, and you know ev - always runs in head first. i word this story now as if this is something i remember fondly about evan, but let me be clear: in that moment of time, standing in the middle of some fucking road behind a maliciously black prison wall, a wall of which evan was now beyond and impossible for me to see any longer? leaving me, alone?

i fucking hate how much of a hardheaded ass evan is sometimes.

i was so caught off guard by evan's sudden disappearance beyond the veil of the Edge that what that meant didn't register until several seconds later when i found myself clamoring towards the wall. i yelled for evan, then screamed for him. my hands meet the black surface with a loud plang as if the wall was made of glass, but the way the wall felt against my skin is indescribable. i wailed my fists against the presumed surface, the noise of the impacts reverberating loudly. this lasted a few minutes.

evan eventually came back...and he seemed just as he were before, except maybe even more annoyed as he began to once again pester me on why i was just standing there wasting time. he got his first round of bitching out before he noticed that i had tears running down my face, looking disheveled.

he changed his tune and asked me what was wrong, what the fuck happened. his confusion was telling - he hadnt heard me screaming for him to come back. i wiped my eyes, faked a chuckle, and told him it was nothing to worry about and that maybe it was best to go home for now and try some other time when im more 'in the present.'

i decided that i wasnt going to tell evan about the Edge, at least not right then. i needed time to gather myself back together, since the resulting panic attack had taken a lot out of me for one day. But even after i had taken that time...

i didnt want evan to know about the wall. fuck, i know its selfish, but i didnt want evan to know that he had the ability to leave this wretched fuckhole but i didnt, that i was trapped and he wasnt. its not because i wanted to spare evan the heartbreak of knowing his friend was doomed...but because i didnt want evan to get the idea that he could abandon me without consequence.

i didnt want evan to use this knowledge as an escape plan to get away from me.

not wanting evan to leave me wasnt the only reason i didnt tell him though. there was still so much i was uncertain about; hell, i still wasnt sure if just being outside the house put evan at risk. i took a chance in taking him to the wall and he lasted well enough during that time...but given what was discovered, even if evan could sit out on the lawn every day and not a thing touch him...the very existence of the wall was a dangerous game of chance.

this is why i did not want evan to go back outside again after this incident. i couldnt trust that he would truly be safe...and i couldnt trust that he wouldn't just run away on me. i completely fucked myself in both ways, though. he's out there getting hurt or dying or already dead because i pushed him far enough to truly fucking hate me.

even now, ive no idea what happened to evan after he ran out of the house. Maybe he never made it past the wall again.

maybe this post is the first time he’s hearing about it.*

*IT IS, YOU SMART BOY. I COULDN’T JUST KILL HIM BEFORE YOU EXPOSED YOURSELF AS A HIDEOUS EXCUSE OF A FRIEND. THE PAIN WILL ADD FLAVOR! MAYBE I’LL GIVE YOU A TASTE.

>>

[anathemanonymous]

Spilling it in the first person: truths I need to accept

Well, it's not going well. I feel like I am not moving forward,but backward. I held myself back by trying to do the right thing.

I gave you the whole house in trade for my freedom. There was no end date on the agreement. It simply stated you would get the property and all the responsibility of the associated bills. It also stated you would agree to hold me harmless.

Well, that didnt happen.

I'm still stuck 4 years after leaving. The attorney told me not to pay off the foreclosure but I did. Twice. I stopped the process of filing contempt in August. She was livid. She offered me the option to have you removed from the house and I could keep it. Well, I had just signed the apt lease. A one year contract. How was I supposed to afford two house payments? I didn't want that responsibility. I left the house to prove I wasnt married to this man for the money. He refused to leave. So I did.

Both our names remain on the title. Bank cant take me off. You refuse to sell. You cannot afford to refinance.

What are you trying to do here?

As I am being held in place by obligation you insist upon complaining about how it is my fault that you are suffering. How you are refusing to cooperate. Refuse to work or pay bills. Refuse to accept that I left. Refuse to reach out or grow in healthy ways. Refuse to stop drinking or doing drugs. Refuse to try to improve our shitty relationship. Refuse to reach out to your own child. Refuse to sell the house. Refuse to clean it. Trick me into calling off the attorney at the last foreclosure: you say you will pay me back the $5500 and we can fix up the house. I tell you how uneasy I feel about this deal. You tell me to trust you.

I clean and clean on my days off work and you sit and ridicule and drink. You tell me it's no rush. You literally have no money to fix it up. I have gone round and around with Fred at the agency to get him to agree to put the house on the market and how we need to sell to a qualified buyer. How to ensure no consequences from this home being doomed. How to do the right thing. How to honor the promises to the agency and to the bank. Its ridiculous how often I've triaged with your mother. How many phone calls and notes kept on the research of creating a plan to salvage the property and you.

And you. I have given you money. I have paid your debts. I have taken you to the doctor. I set you up for evaluation of ADHD. You cry about your health. You cant get off the couch. You cry about being broke, depressed with no reason to live. When I speak to you, you continue to put me down, to accuse me of never caring. You accuse me of malicious crimes against you for the past 16 years. You claim I just used you. My entire life was built around supporting you. You accuse me of going against you deliberately. You blame for your behaviors of rude comments and refusals to cooperate or participate in anything related to parenting or household chores or budgeting or my feelings. I was threatened by your recklessness. I was doomed to being overly responsible but got nothing but contempt in return.

There wasn't peace. There wasnt love. No support. Constant arguments and blow ups. Constant strife. Constant pain. Carrying your weight twice my size. Trying to rape me. Trying to negate me. Trying to minimize me. Criticizing every fucking thing I did or said or believed. Faking it in front of your friends and parents. Giving nothing but expecting me to provide for your every need on a whim. Needing help with your business books, spending hours only to be discredited and rejected. You put your shit first. You blocked my path with your messiness. You left it all up to me but gave me no credit, no control and no power. Then accuse me of doing the same to you. You ridiculed my hobbies, my goals, my dreams. You chose your friends over me. You drank to the point of black out every day. You stopped working. Your buisness partner abandoned you even after he stole from the business account, you kept him around. You kept giving him your share of our household bills instead of pay our bills. So I paid. You stole my tax returns for years. You were rude and inconsiderate toward how any of your shitty choices affected me and our family. You have withheld love and given only pain. You ignored my feelings and needs. And now you complain and claim to suffer worse than me?

What about me??

To top it off: after moving out and returning on a regular basis to check in with you even as you deliberately were harming me financially and emotionally...I get hate when I remove the loaded guns in the house bc you're suicidal from all the drugs and no sleep and not eating and not working and I worry and I feel sorry and I want to keep things normal so I see the mess and try not to do the cleaning, the yardwork.

I play with the dogs and feed them and you always leave when I arrive ...or start an argument until you chase me away.

After 4 years of being ridiculed and blamed....instead of being heard and validated.

I have to actually accept that you are openly and intentionally holding me hostage financially and emotionally. You admit it on text. Your mother claims you were just drinking and you didnt mean it. What will it take to justify my actions?

Its been 4 years of waiting on pins and needles. Of not breathing. Or being stuck. Not to mention the 7 years before I left the house. Trying to fix things.

Looking back, I've never received emotional support from you. Other than to stay away from my family.

I have a hard time accepting the fact that you didn't improve yourself when I left. You got worse. You stopped trying long before I left. And I hoped you would recognize how awful you'd become. I was risking a chance that you would change into a responsible adult. Learn to care for me in real ways. Appreciate me, quite frankly. I was looking for appreciation. Recognition. Acceptance. Acknowledgement. The elements of love.

I left because there was no love.

It was the right thing to do.

Unhealthy relationships are meant to fall apart.

Blame me or blame you. It doesn't matter. It takes two to have a relationship. It becomes one sided.

Wait. It was always one sided. I wanted to believe it was a mutual relationship. I dreamed it. I created the illusion of it. But it could not be felt. Bc it was a mirage. It only looked like something real. It felt empty. Like a shell. Like a home without a foundation. Ready to fall apart like a Hollywood studio prop.

I was lying to myself the whole time.

The only way out now is to tell the truth. To let shit fall apart by not adding to it. To stop putting in.

But it feels wrong to let my house go into foreclosure. It feels wrong to file with a lawyer. It feels so wrong to do nothing to help, on purpose. Yet it is the right way. Right? This world is absolutely ridiculous. Just fucking back breaking and disheartening. People are so viscous. Banks and lawyers. Without hearts. Empty motherfucking shells of humans.

I knew the truth but didn't want to face it. Denial is so powerful. It can change the way you see things. Or exclude what you do not want to see. Or feel.

I wanted to believe love could make my dream come true, become real. Make me real.

All the proof was in your actions. Fighting me every step of the way. Calling me crazy. You're right. It is crazy to live that way. I agree.

So if it's TRUE : then I have to accept the reality that you don't care about me. Either you cant, or you are just unwilling. You say you love me. But what does love mean? It seems you only care that I care for you. How much I can give and prove that I care. Prove by sacrificing my needs, time, money, energy.

Every fiber of my being is going against the fact that the only way out of this situation is divorce and foreclosure of my home. Abandoning you. Why does it feel unethical and immoral? Huge conflict within.

I tried to help you and to salvage my credit, I have spent over $15,000 to bail it out . ..because I'd already put so much into it that I want to keep on the same path. I dont want a different anonymous path. I want to stay where its familiar. But then again, why? I've never been happy on this path. From experience, moving on does not guarantee happiness either.

I'm standing my ground. I'm honoring my values of integrity and refusing to tolerate abuse and nonsense.

But yes it's hard to move on bc I am ever-wanting to keep convincing myself and the world ...proof of how mature and dedicated I am, of my own goodness, my own kindness, my own value.

If my value rests on a successful career in marriage then I have discredited myself. I have failed to be a quality product. Yikes.

..because I hid behind it, and I'd do anything to keep up the facade. I am afraid to be seen as alone, maybe. I am afraid to stand up against the abuse bc it means I have failed. That I am faulty. Not worthy. Maybe I asked for it. Or deserve it.

Shame is a terrible feeling.

By the virtue of which I choose to honor, I thereby become less valuable. I protected your reputation. I kept silent. I protected my own reputation as well. Now I am throwing it out the window. Breaking a promise to myself to never do that again. Yes, I have experienced this all before. Many times. Throughout my lifetime. I had to destroy my own identity.

Because I could pretend I belonged. I could pretend I had a healthy relationship and family. But the sacrifice was too much. And I was so off-balance. I was shut off. Closed down. Depressed. Sick.

You refused to lie for me. So I left. We dont have to keep pretending to play house. Maybe that disappointed me. You want to play cops and robbers. I refused. Lol. Whatever.

And maybe the ultimate cage I try to break free from is being forced to stay small, a repeating pattern from throughout my entire childhood. It is the shame I carry. The unworthy nature of my wounded inner child.

When confronted with opening up I remain skeptical and scared. I beat myself up. I feel rejected, disillusioned, hurt, betrayed, and I am ashamed of showing that I am being harmed. I am am afraid to speak up. When I do, I get shut down by you, your family, my attorney, the court, society.

This triple whammy has knocked me off my feet every time I try to stand up. I feel insulted by the slights of neighbors, the sounds of the outside world. I speak up against emotional manipulation and I feel the feather of rejection like a sledgehammer.

... I am accused of being crazy. I post on social media. I get very little support. The message I'm receiving is: your perception is inaccurate, we all have a human right to happiness and respect but you should be ashamed of exposing yourself like that. It makes you look vulnerable, it tarnishes our code of taboo subjects, think about your reputation, bc we as a society are not comfortable with displays of vulnerability. Call a hotline or something.

You know what? I dont need a fucking hotline. My counselor didnt even recognize me during our last phone session. Fuck this system. I'm on my own. And if I have to become more viscous and bitter to fit in, I prefer to stand alone.