If I kept my mouth shut, I wouldn't have had to realize, again, that the guy I love doesn't return the feeling. But, hey, if I kept my mouth shut, then I wouldn't have been reminded of what I really do need to accept. Right now, I'm very ticked off at the woman who cut off my exit back when I hadn't already invested ten years in this.
Believe it or not, pressuring someone to give up a crush for reasons that are obviously only your own doesn't work. It also doesn't work when others chime in with the exact same story. Can't anyone see how wrong and creepy it is that everyone's got the same assessment of everything? Why is it all so uniform and standardized? Living history is never so neat and orderly! Obviously, there's something big that's being left out of the telling.
And, then, I come to find out that the one guy most loud about things is emotionally abusive across the board. So there's that.
And I also discovered that the woman who was obsessed with fixing me had significantly edited her memories so as to pretty much leave out everything that founded our relationship. In 2014, it was "you're the one who keeps bringing him up," as if we'd suddenly become friends within the last few months! And in 2015, it was "yeah, I didn't always like the Hitman crowd, but I decided it wasn't worth fighting about, and I want you to let me have my own opinions about our friends." Acting, for all the world, as if A. I wasn't heavily involved in trying to convince her that she was fighting a losing battle in the first place and B. those weren't her own opinions that I was repeating back to her! You can tell the story any damn way you please if you can delete entire years of life at leisure.
You know, she really could have said "thank you." Any acknowledgement that she'd remembered how I struggled to convince her of what she's so proud of herself for believing now or that I'd fought to keep the distance I needed to preserve our friendship... any awareness that, once upon a time, she had needed me, or that her need had cost me...
But why should I have expected that from her? Did my parents ever thank me for anything? Yeah, sure... when I went well above and beyond my chores to clean the house. And even then, that only happened if I hadn't done it in a while. Too often, and they'd take it for granted. But the biggest sacrifice I'd made, coming home? Yeah, the moment they didn't need that anymore, all of a sudden they're asking if I'm stirring up rebellion against them.
Clearly, they hadn't remembered the psychological situation of the family when I'd moved into the house three years previous.
At least my little siblings were grateful. At least my little siblings valued my life.
Why is it so damn hard for people to acknowledge that I've made any contributions to their lives? Why do they have to pretend that I'm a mess, that I'm incompetent, or that I only ever break the things and people around me? Why is it the people I love most who are always the least grateful?
I hear praise and gratitude all the time, from people who pass in and out of my life. Battle buddies on the New Republic project. Coworkers. Fellow alumni. But from close friends and parents? Forget that!
Roommate Pianist is the one and only exception to that rule, at least from college - she said I was one of the first to support her relationship with her then-fiancee and therefore she wanted me to be one of her bridesmaids. And the SONIC couple were so excited that I stayed in Colorado Springs to visit them that first time, that you'd have thought I was doing them a favor instead of the other way around.
I try to focus on those things, try to stay upbeat and remember that I am valued by some. Some days, that works. Some days, the job goes great and I have good conversations with people.
Other days, I feel like I'm under constant attack. Then, the moment I buckle, I'm done. There's no way to recover, at least not that same day. And... maybe not the next day either.
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