I’m going to talk about some stuff I’ve talked about on here before. Moreover, I’m going to talk about two people, one of whom I’ve mentioned several times, and the other of whom I wrote about so many fucking times oh my god damn. I’m not going to say more than necessary about the one I’ve already said a lot about, and I’ll refer to him as “that dude” and similar. I don’t even want to use initials or old nicknames. And I’ll call my abusive ex “Mike” because that’s his name. He sometimes insisted on being called Michael, but I met him as Mike, and he’s a pretentious, abusive, alcoholic asshole, so I’m gonna go ahead and just call him Mike.
Fuck you, Mike.
As I’ve mentioned many times previously:
- I was in an abusive relationship in my twenties.
- Right after I dumped Mike the abusive asshole, I met and became super fuckin’ obsessed with some dude and I didn’t entirely let up for YEARS
- I have Borderline Personality Disorder and that diagnosis changed my life
These three things, which I’ve ranted about at length, frame this dispatch from Kate’s brain.
I got a direct message on Twitter the other day from Mike. This is what it said:
See how casual that is? Just “hey, sup, let’s talk about how CRAZY the world is, amirite?”
He was a dick. I mean, just an utter bastard. But he wanted to get in touch! Even after I’ve told him over and over that I want nothing to do with him whatsoever! What persistence! What arrogance!
My response to him was as follows:
Other than saying “could ever hope” twice in the same email, I think I did all right! I hope you can understand from this brief message that I was not being vicious without reason. He spent years trying to break me. I owe him nothing.
The last time Mike and I spoke was in 2011. The last time (that I know of) that he tried to contact me was in 2013, when he sent an email to my mother. In fact, I wrote about it at the time. That post is horrifically embarrassing to me now, and I’ll tell you why: I was still being a creepy stalker to the other dude at the time and I kinda just… glossed that over. “We’re both members of a group” I said. I didn’t mention that I’d joined so that he’d have to interact with me. I can’t believe that was only eight years ago. So creepy, Kate. So gross.
But at the time, I blogged
I know what it feels like to be stalked and harassed. I have an ex-boyfriend who continues to try to get in touch with me even after I told him I never, ever, ever want to speak to him again So I know what it feels like to have someone from your past who just won’t go away. And I’ll admit that I’ve been a little, shall we say, obtuse in the past when it comes to other people’s lack of desire for further contact with me. But I’ve learned and I’m trying to do better. I don’t want to be the creepy stalker ex any more than I want to have a creepy stalker ex.
Kate, being a fucking liar.
I like to think that what Mike did is “worse” than what I did to that poor dude I harassed, but what I did to that guy was bad enough. I just went hunting for the time I must have blogged about all the shitty things I did, but they’re kinda scattered all over the place. If you read back, you’ll find them. I find it painful to read them now, but I’ve kept them here as a reminder of what I was like when I was sick and didn’t know it.
What changed, what got me to leave that poor guy alone (other than meeting my husband, which happened after) was my diagnosis of BPD. I found out that all the weird obsessive shit, all the dysfunctional relationships, my weird one-sided friendships… they were all caused by some defect in the way I process emotions. I mean, sure, other people played a part sometimes, and I wasn’t always the best at picking people to get close to. But most of the drama came from me.
The dude is certainly not the only person I fucked over with my mental illness, but he’s the one I can point to and say “ah yes, that sure was messed up…” There’s so much written evidence right here in the archives of this stupid blog.
Here’s a blog post I’m proud of.
I know that the greatest and only thing that I can offer him is silence. Peace. But it took me a long time to realize why.
Regardless of where the blame lays for how things ended and what happened before, I have behaved abominably since. I didn’t mean to. I thought I was right to be outraged that I’d been cut out of his life. I thought [his wife] was to blame for keeping us from being friends. I was venomous. I was pushy, vindictive, and petty. I didn’t do much in the last five years to bother him, but what I did was more than I should have. I wanted to make them uncomfortable. I wanted to be noticed. I was angry, and it showed.
Kate, being honest
I left Mike two months before I turned 27. Afterward, he would show up at my apartment, which used to be our apartment, without warning. I told him one day that if he did it again, I’d call the cops. For months (years!) he would interrogate me about whether I’d cheated on him when we were together, and wouldn’t accept that the truthful answer was “no.” He asked if I’d slept with anyone since we broke up, because if I had, he would never “take me back.” I did not want for a single second to be taken back. I’d broken up with him, and I meant it.
I moved back to California when I was 29, and the last person I said goodbye to before skipping town was Mike. When I was back there in the Golden State, I got on a pretty even keel, and I eventually realized that continuing to try to be a friend to Mike was really bad for me. As I said in my paragraphs of viciousness above, the reason he didn’t have any family or very close friends was that he was an awful person. When I told him that he was a shitty friend, and that he’d abused me terribly when we were a couple, his response was, essentially “Yes, but there were many days when I did NOT try to push you down a flight of stairs, and I prefer to focus on those.”
I have not spoken to him in ten years. I have no interest in ever speaking to him again. Eventually, I moved back to Portland, and I told our one mutual friend to convey to Mike that I still wanted nothing to do with him.
I’m certain that this mutual friend is how Mike found my Twitter. He wouldn’t have had to tell him, it would have been enough for Mike to have seen who Mutual Friend followed. So I blocked Mutual Friend, too.
I wish that Mike would have the same big epiphany that I did. There are things that I can never take back. And I can choose to learn from those things, or I can decide to stamp my feet and refuse to accept that this is my fault. And sometimes we do things, or a combination of things, that make it so that someone decides they never want to talk to us again. Whether we think they’re justified or not, we can choose to give them the greatest gift of all: our absence.
We can own our shit, and we can get better.
Or we can be like Mike. Don’t be like Mike.
Self-Indulgent Drivel 