#hey pal be a bud and don't reblog this or i'll tear your tongue out kthx

[iamnotawomanimagod]

some of ya’ll might remember a drama I had a few months ago involving an old friend/parental figure and her new, much younger boyfriend.

here’s how that’s going (mostly for my record, you should prolly skip this tbh.)

tw for abuse, super large age gaps in romantic relationships, ableism towards mental illness, making fun of triggers, etc.

it’s also long af lmao, sorry mobile users

basically I burned a bridge previously thought Unburnable. A friend I’d had for 15 years chose the opinions and viewpoint of her months-long relationship over mine, in an issue that I considered a huge red flag. there’s honestly been so many red flags.

first - she’s 46, I’ve known her since I was 12. she helped raise me through my teen years (she’s my mom’s ex-girlfriend, but they broke up in like, 2010, so that’s old news). her new bf is 24. I’m 26. you can see one big red flag right there. I can’t even go into that one. it grosses me out.

the next came when the Boy and I got into an argument on Facebook (ofc lol). I posted something out of context about men not telling other men to smile on the street, how if it was well-intentioned towards women they wouldn’t do it towards men. it was out of context but I figured most people would fucking get it. 

he countered with some MRA “men aren’t allowed to have feelings” bullshit, basically making the conversation about how dudes are actually the victims, immediately. I smelled that from a mile away, gave an evasive questioning response, he sniped back with the same shit. It devolved from there.

it was clearly something he had done a lot of before. so, like, he’s an internet troll. okay, whatever. sometimes young men make dumb choices and the internet is ripe for that kind of embarrassing faux pas. at that moment I still believed it was something he could’ve been educated out of.

it was a dumb internet argument that I even I can admit got super out of hand. after a lot of pointless back-and-forth, I asked him to stop engaging because I realized it was something that I clearly felt more passionately about than him.

I had also had a very reasonable conversation with my friend about him on the phone, which encouraged me to try to just end the debate. she had assured me it was a fluke, that he was just trying to have a debate, told me some of his Tragic Backstory to make up for it, yadadada. whatever. I was ready to move on.

the Boy could not let me have the last word though. and his last words were, in my opinion, a gigantic fucking red flag, and would have been a dealbreaker for me personally, if I was dating him.

his exact words were: “and so the triggered internet warrior loses the plot”

so a triggered joke. y’know, something shitty people do. making fun of and making light of ptsd. something internet trolls are known to do. and the alt-right.

it was a big, giant red flag for me.

I foolishly believed my friend had a similar heart to mine, and that she would (a) take my word that he was being an asshole, even if she didn’t fully understand the context due to the age gap, since I’ve known her for 15 years and he’d known her for about two months at the time, and (b) also see it as a dealbreaker. 

I mentioned her by name on Facebook ( “does your gf know the kind of person you are,” essentially). She’s an old person so she took me mentioning her (not even tagging her! just mentioning her!) as a grave insult, and she and I had several screaming, crying phone conversations that weekend where she basically refused to listen to me, and I got exponentially angrier and angrier about her indifference and how unaffected she was by what the Boy said. it didn’t help that she proceeded to spend the weekend with him while ignoring all of my texts and phone calls. I felt he had undue influence over her and that I was losing the chance to have her understand why this was a red flag.

I got a lil scary. understand this person was like a mother to me, or at the very least like an older sister/auntie. I suppose I felt she owed me something, due to our history. that was a bit crazy-person of me, but also not totally unfounded. I lived in her house for two years after she and my mom broke up. my mom abused her and I was the one to help break that cycle. we had been incredibly close and I often told her things I would tell no one else. she would do the same with me. I expected her to take my side, or to at the very least understand my viewpoint. I was devastated, heartbroken, and pissed off when she took his.

still am, or I wouldn’t be here writing a 1000 word blog entry on a semi-public platform just to explain the backstory of what happened two months ago - not even the most recent, most troubling development in this stupid saga.

regardless, she basically thought I misunderstood him, and I came to the realization that it was probably the first time she had ever even heard the word “triggered” in that context - as someone making fun of someone else for a mental illness. she basically accused me of living in a liberal echo chamber/thought bubble, that she “knew his heart” and he “couldn’t possibly have meant something bad by it” (not verbatim, but the gist). she used the fact that a couple of my like-minded friends jumped in to rag on him after he dropped the triggered joke. not before, during the actual (slightly more reasonable) discourse.

I ended up getting like, obscenely mad at this, and really bratty. I told my friend she was out of touch and it was embarrassing. That I was ashamed of her. That she was a detriment to the nonprofit field (where she works) because she was so behind-the-times. That she was relying on her job to get out of having to do any work towards social issues in her personal life. I got mean.

b/c that’s what I do when I know I’m burning a bridge.

and I knew I was. b/c if she can’t trust me and listen to me about this, one of the most important things to me, a value I thought she shared - then she’s not who I thought she was. and, to be melodramatic as fuck because that’s who I am - she’s literally sleeping with the motherfucking enemy.

so. that’s what happened like...two or three months ago. we haven’t spoken since. I did my salt-the-earth-of-this-relationship-with-insults routine, blocked her on all available methods of contact, and tried to move on.

unfortunately, another drama in my family chose this time to intersect, because that’s how life works for me and mine.

my sister is on house arrest. for lots of complicated and ugly reasons, my friend’s house was the best place for her to serve this sentence. my sister just got out of a very abusive relationship. she’s a recovering alcoholic - but only when she’s being monitored via ankle bracelet by the state. like she recently went on a bender that coincided with my other sister’s wedding, which she was absent for, causing a huge rift there. she’s trying really, really hard to get her life back on track, despite making some mistakes. my friend really made it seem like she was in my sister’s corner, and like she was willing to build a safe and stable place for my sister to get sober and do her time.

I just found out from my mom that the Boy put his hands on my sister. 

There was a bad argument, things got out of hand (serious rage issues in my family - it’s in our blood, regardless of sobriety, tbh. drinking just brings it out faster). My sister was being forced to quit smoking cigarettes because my friend decided to. I can understand how it escalated.

What I can’t understand is how my friend thought it was acceptable, given what she went through. Given she knows exactly what my sister has been going through.

My sister screamed, “don’t put your fucking hands on me”

he replied, “I’ll put my hands on you whenever I want.”

but I’m just a crazy liberal living in an echo chamber, right? I totally didn’t see right through this guy from the moment I met him, or from the first serious conversation I had with him? naaah. crazy liberal in an echo chamber.

I’m smug because if I stay smug I won’t get pissed. I won’t drive over there as soon as my husband is home and read that disgusting, borderline-pedophilic couple the riot act.

and I won’t feel guilty for how I’m in no position to help my sister out. that she’s in another house with another entitled, violent fucking straight man.

I can’t even like, approach my friend for another wakeup call. I’m too good at burning bridges. she won’t listen to me anymore. even if she barely did at the start.

ugh.

where’s my weed.

#rambling about my life #hey pal be a bud and don't reblog this or i'll tear your tongue out kthx #abuse tw #drug abuse tw #alcoholism tw #misogyny tw #straight white men on their bullshit again tw #long post