#why can't she just let me go?

[flywolf33]

When we have a full family game night we usually drink. Most often we drink heavily. Lots of jokes are had, and a few months ago my dad was looking through the rules and said, "I don't understand, but that's okay. I don't have to." And we all started laughing and decided it was our new family motto and we always bring it up with comedic timing.

Today my ex tried to catfish me. SHE is the one who ended the relationship. SHE is the one who originally went no contact. I have simply enforced it, and she keeps trying to reach out and be friends and pull the same old same old. I don't understand. Leaving was the best thing she ever did for me. I didn't realize how much she was killing me until she was gone. I'm dating someone new. I'm loving work, I'm loving my hobbies, I'm loving life again. I don't want her in my life again.

But I keep circling back to why. Why did she do to me what she did? Why me? Why stay so long when being committed to me was making her "miss opportunities"? Why does she keep coming back with these lies to try and reel me in? Why was her response to me ignoring a "hey" text to change her number and try to catfish me? What the actual fuck is she thinking?

I want to understand. I ALWAYS want to understand. Not understanding drives me absolutely fucking crazy and I just want to know why.

I was on the phone with my bestie about it when our family motto came to mind with a whole different meaning.

I don't understand. That's okay. I don't have to.

Our goofy family motto we came up with based off an inane comment while we were all three sheets to the wind.

I don't understand. That's okay. I don't have to.

Anyway if you actually read this whole thing thanks for letting me word vomit my thoughts because I can't afford a therapist.

[whatudottu]

Me and the homies I dragged into playing ISAT with me (voice over style) and thus thoroughly infecting them with the ISAT hyperfixation gathered to play poker and so- drew us VAs as the cast give or take some liberties :P

[navree]

Incorrect, the fact that Biden has dropped out and a candidate with history of supporting medicare for all and being more receptive to a ceasefire in the I/P conflict has made me go from "I cannot morally support the Democratic nominee" to "I am voting for the Democratic nominee despite the fact she isn't perfect in every respect." I'm really happy this played out. The Dems for the most part abandoned the old Obama platform and it feels like its possible an actual progressive agenda could come to pass in my lifetime.

Kamala 2024!

If you weren't going to vote Democratic in this election before Biden dropped out you're a dorkass loser who does not care about any of the issues you're yammering about here and also a fundamentally bad person, and I hope you get run over by a bus.

But you got one thing right in all of this gibberish, Kamala 2024.

[autisticandroids]

FAMINE: That's one deep, dark nothing you've got there, Dean.

[youtube with closed captions]

dean and his father. dean and his family. dean and how bad it is.

(via @closetoyou1970)

[gooperts-gunk]

im so crazy over the tragedy of everything q!bbh does being under a demon pretense even though he's a fallen angel.

do u think he just accepts the demon label because it's easier. do u think he believes it too, and catches himself in his thoughts with "oh, right. im not exactly that". and maybe he believes that he did this to himself? do u think what he did was to protect himself or someone? no matter the fall, he still has so much kindness to give and his brain just isn't wired the way a natural-born demon would be, he can't hold back instincts when time demands it, maybe that's why he fell in the first place.

and when he's finally bad, not good, it's treated like the end of the world, without empathy on why he would act out. do you think this keeps happening? the same scenario, multiple times, every timeline? he has to be used to it. so he has to take it in stride. he's good until he lashes out under extreme pressure, and suddenly he's called demon. and once again he's what heaven made him out to be. what he made himself to be, his brain would ruthlessly provide...

i don't think he wants to be that, though he hides secrets behind secrets of which neither identity is a home... but i don't think he wants to have to change, either. and i don't think that's wrong of him.

...you collapse atlantis ONE TIME and all of a sudden YOU'RE the bad guy and SURE it was FUN but REALLY now,--

[korrasamibottles]

Yeah Venom of the Red Lotus showed us how crazy powerful Korra is but The Last Stand had Korra transform the destructive power of a massive bomb blast into something regenerative in the culmination of one of the best character arcs I've ever seen. In my OPINION!!

[grandwretch]

one of the many reasons I love Rachel's POV is that she just does not get Marco. Not at all. Jake and Tobias know hes putting up a front more often than not, and Cassie especially sees right through him, but Rachel buys the mask. She even thinks, originally, that Marco might be against fighting just to annoy them. I'm not even sure that Rachel ever really understands how deep Marco goes down the rabbit hole.

Like, I don't think she's doing anything that Marco doesn't want her to-- She isn't being mean or anything. I don't think it's because she dislikes him, or because they're constantly fighting. Marco is doing this on purpose. He puts on a mask with everyone, but Rachel, especially, and she buys it hook, line, and sinker.

And it really makes you think, like-- How long did Marco and Rachel know each other before his mom died? Is she basing her assumptions off a boy that doesn't exist anymore? Is that why Marco keeps up the front with her, or is it because she's the most popular, the prettiest, and the strongest? Did Marco have a crush on Rachel before his entire world fell apart? Is that why he's desperate for her to never realize it did?

[pseudophan]

gonna be so sad when tonight is the first preshow space with good audio and i'm asleep because i have a psych appointment tomorrow

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

the x files au where everything is exactly the same except mulder takes home the child neanderthal from the jersey devil episode and raises them as his own

[lala-blahblah]

I will never make this because it would be for an audience of one (me) but ever since reading "If we Were Villains" (story about serious drama kids in college who perform shakespeare and deal with a murder) I have been entertaining the thought of a crack fic crossover with High School Musical The Musical The Series where the staff decides they will no longer put on shakespeare after the tragic accident that happened at Thanksgiving, because Shakespeare plays would only increase the tension and drama. So they hire Ms. Jen who decides their spring play will actually be High School Musical (which exists in the 90s in this universe) and it ruins the vibe so much that everyone gives up on being dark and mysterious because they're universally pissed at Ms Jen for making them learn choreoraphed basketball dancing.

[vaguely-concerned]

returnal did not cure my depression but it did give me a strangely healing new perspective that makes it all a bit easier to bear. that perspective being 'I may be having a rough time right now, but at least I'm not inside the head of returnal protagonist selene vassos'

[coquelicoq]

WHAT IS SO DIFFICULT ABOUT VERSION CONTROL omg i am losing my mindddddd why do editors have so much trouble with this concept??? if you send someone comments on a document and ask them to revise even though you know more comments on that version are coming, they're going to submit a revision and then you're going to give them comments on THE OLD VERSION THAT DOESN'T EXIST ANYMORE WHAT ABOUT THIS MAKES SENSE PEOPLE. i spent half an hour explaining this to someone yesterday and i thought she got it and then today she did something EVEN MORE NONSENSICAL than what she was planning to do originally! o glorb stay my hand i am about to do something unwise!!!

[icy-book]

Consider, if you will, AU (either with canon post-s1 pre-s2 events but D.A.D.D.I.E.S. solves things before season 2 would start, or no Doodler/betrayal but Nicky still has to leave because FBI or other reasons) in which Terry Jr is the full time drama teacher for Teen High. Nicky returns from wherever he's been and is like "Well I want to be an active part of my kid's life and try and make up for lost time. I should go to his parents' evening, find out how he's doing in school, and meet his teachers. Especially this Mr Marlowe guy, Taylor seems to think he's awesome." And walking right into that classroom/hall to find his ex-boyfriend best friend sitting there in a dorky sweater and tie combo

Cue Terry, without missing a beat, greeting them as if nothing is wrong

Internal: when the FUCK did he come back and oh my god this is so awkward fuck I have to be professional how do I tell this guy that his kid is a loveable little shit after everything that's happened oh god oh fuck

Externally: "Hello Taylor and Mr Close-Foster-Freeman. I'm Taylor's drama teacher" *shakes hand* "Would you like to take a seat?"

[maeamian]

Well the shoot themselves in the dick brigade got what they wanted let's just hope they were right.

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

For someone who's autistic and poorly socialized, it's surprisingly not often something happens to me socially that I just do not fucking understand or feel like I would have to make wild assumptions to wrap my head around. Normally when I am confused it has slightly more to do with being on the asexual side of demi and not understanding that people flirt sometimes.

So truly baffling interactions with family are rare. Usually I understand what's going on socially from an objective standpoint, even if I can't groc why they are treating me that way and can't seem to realize the absurdity of it, etc...

But the scenario is as follows:

Background:

I have had more than one stalker by the age of 18. One of which is banned from multiple public places because his MO was to hang out in public placed you would be known to frequent, like a mall, catch someone alone and beat the ever-loving shit out of them, usually for being gay or trans. We are talking multiple 'peace bonds' against this person by the time he was 18-20 himself. He also has a habit of cornering younger women and pressuring them for sex when they are someplace isolated and around a general tendency to make threatening comments. He started dating me when I was 14 and in the years since I broke up with him and left town I have become increasingly openly gay and trans, and he has done a lot of asking about WHERE I went off to.

I am not unaware that him specifically asides, people can use recognizing me in shared public spaces as a way to target me without knowing my exact address, the the rule has been that anyone who knows me isn't allowed to tell anyone else even what city I live in. I take other precautions like not having myself or my home in photos that haven't had the metadata scrubbed, like using a vpn obsessively and not taking photos outside with potentially recognizable landmarks or landscapes, etc... But very generally the main rule everyone else has to follow is just not fucking allude to where I live or where I will be visiting ahead of time because someone who used to know me might figure it out and if he can figure out even what mall to wait at, he might hurt me, or someone else might use the same MO.

That fact that multiple other exs since have taken up some stalkery-ass behaviour is kind of just terrible icing on the issue. The fact that I voice strong opinions online and might become a somewhat noted author at some point if I get my way is kind of a side note, but also relevant.

The problem so far:

My sister has fucking habitually refused to stop mentioning where I live or where she assumes I live or where I will be visiting for the holidays. She makes allusions to it or mentions she will visit my mother and I at the same time when I actually lived close to her and etc...

Neither of them would take this threat seriously. The fact that my sister is a compulsive liar who will just invent information and insist on it to try to get her way should be beside the point, but instead it means my mother believed her account of what this guy is capable of or interested in more than my own, and -for whatever reason- despite trusting my judgement on most things when it's convenient to her, will not trust my judgement that my city of residence being public knowledge is actually dangerous to me.

My sister would not stop mentioning where I live, accurate or not, so the rule became not to tell her where I live. Period. So my mother started playing this game of letting her guess and assume where I had moved to and simply not correcting her when she got it right.

My sister also has a habit of being very verbally abusive to me and just yelling at me the entire time I am trying to have a conversation with her, so at some point I cut her off for a couple years, and then told her the rules were that she could talk to me on the condition she stop calling me names. And that she was not allowed to know where I lived.

During the time we weren't speaking my mother kept saying shit like "So what? I'm not ALLOWED to have both my *daughters* in my life >:(" and generally guilt-tripping me about not speaking to my sister, and still basically ignoring the rule about not telling her where I live.

And my sister may have eventually stopped even vaguely alluding to having contact with me, but mostly after she stopped having any contact with me.

The current problem:

My mother will start to agree with me that I am being reasonable and that she's plenty capable of doing what I am asking if she finds out I am going to move, and still refuse to move in with her, and right after I move until she gets my address again, and then she just cycles back to the same bullshit, including trying to talk me into living with her so I can take care of her all the time and so I have no choice about her or my sister knowing where I live. Always under the guise of saving costs.

So I find out my mother has been -in effect- continuously confirming for my sister where I live, no matter how many times I have reminded her that the general city is as important a secret as my exact address. She was all "Well obviously she knows you live in [redacted]!", when there's no way to know that without her losing a game of 21 questions or telling her, and when I got upset and tried to explain the FUCK AGAIN why it has to be the city too she cycled right back to "Oh get over it! >:(" and "can't you just live in isolation alone for ever and never make an opinion know online so no one has any reason to target you so that I can just keep doing what I want without you bitching!?!"

And I just... After the realization that she was always going to cycle back to this once she personally had gotten my address out of me, and that it was going to make it unsafe for me to live anywhere forever, most of all in the cities I loved the most, my second pick, my third and so on... I just... I finally just hung up on her.

And I got the expected slew of unacceptable texts, suicide threats, guilt tripping, emotional manipulation...

But the thing about your parents trying to use guilt and shame and emotional manipulation to control you since you were a literal toddler, is that the "grey rock" response isn't an act, It's genuine, it isn't just an automatic way to cope, or pretending not to care so they don't feel like their shitty behaviour is being rewarded, you genuinely stop caring, lose interest, and emotionally shut down about the issue. She flicked the switch in my brain where I go from hyper-empathy towards the well meaning, to absolutely no empathy at all for people who are intentionally trying to take advantage or cause harm, and I am not in control of that. So she can throw tantrums all she fucking wants and there is literally no going back. Sorry if you want to know why I am like this look at the people who fucked to make me and then screwed with my head for 16 years and called it parenting!

My sister in the meantime had started tentatively texting and calling me again after years of being allowed to but simply opting not to, probably out of fear she would fuck it up. And we were getting along! She wasn't being mean and we were good!

But the moment I cut off my mother and dropped to 2 texts a year for birthday and xmas, and any necessary legal shit for paperwork, my sister stops talking to me.

No response to happy birthday or merry x-mas [which I don't even celebrate but whatever]. Nothing. Dead air. One text where she tried to defend that mom never technically told her where I lived. And then silence.

And two things stand out to me:

I get the sense that this is about her feelings towards me because I specified multiple times this was nothing to do with her at this point, that the rules for her hadn't changed, and that now mom was just on new boundaries because she couldn't fucking be trusted to respect mine

I get the nagging sense that despite that mom guilt tripped the shit out of me for not talking to my sister, she is not, in fact, bitching at my sister to text me back. I get the sense that instead she is trying to commiserate with her about how unreasonable and cold-hearted I am, and perhaps even trying to convince her to cut me out to teach me some kind of lesson.

But these are wild guesses because my sister has not communicated fuck all to me except to simply stop talking/interacting. I actually have very little idea if any of my suspicions as to why actually hold any water.

This is not an AITA post because victims -or anyone- deserve to set boundaries about their personal information and have them fucking respected regardless of how rational you think they are being. I don't think it's unreasonable that if shutting up about my location is just not physically or mentally realistic for them that they shouldn't get to know where I have moved to. They don't get to demand to have that information and also demand to do whatever they want with it even if it makes me unsafe.

I am just genuinely a little lost as to why cutting my mom off means my sister has decided she doesn't want to speak to me, or if she thinks this somehow means I don't want to speak to her.

That's it though. That's the reason I don't speak to my sister either since my mom "fucked up", I didn't cut them both off as some kind of unit or packaged deal or something [lumping someone in thoughtlessly with my sister by association is their job]. She -again- stopped talking to me the moment there were new boundaries involved. And to be honest, I actually do not know why this time. It's as inscrutable to me as whatever the real reasons are my father never bothers talking to me.

Anyway if my mother actually wanted both her kids in her life she could have stopped perpetuating the reason for contention between us, she could have respected my boundaries herself and she could respect my fucking gender. She could have actually bothered to be on her best behaviour for my sake instead of only pretending to respect my boundaries when other people were watching, or if she figured I wouldn't KNOW [and therefor would have no idea I was in danger].

And if I the fuck find out she's been trying to pit my sister against me now [we did not need help struggling to get along bitch]...

[theinfinitedivides]

me literally every time Ki Cheol and Jun Mo are less than three feet away from each other/interact in any way shape or form: