A bit of a quandary.
Jul. 26th, 2010 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarasvatiHere's the thing. The original reason I got this DW account was to get back into fandom. I planned to use this journal specifically for fannish stuff and nothing else. I didn't tell anybody about it, didn't add anyone I knew, because I actually wanted to do something before I told anybody that I was doing something, so that for once I'd have something to show when I said, "So I've been thinking about..."
Then things in my life got complicated, and this unknown little journal turned from fannish to personal. I used it as an escape, a way of talking about my life without worrying that those from my past would see it. It was freedom, both from the preconceived notions about me and from the troubles that seemed inescapable at the time.
I escaped. And now I wonder if I did it the right way.
No, that's not right. I know I didn't do it the right way. I hurt people, and I regret having to hurt them, but sometimes I think that it was an either-or situation. Either I hurt someone else, or I spent my time being hurt.
What happened is that someone I knew on LJ and on various message boards started getting far too infatuated with me. First we were friends, then close friends, always sending emails back and forth, talking about everything and nothing. Then I started to wonder if I had a crush on him. Then he confessed a crush on me.
Then it got complicated. He'd start saying that he loved me in every email, and following it up by saying that he didn't expect me to say anything in response. (Guilt trip, guilt trip...) He'd say random things, like mentioning how a certain video game series reminded him of me, then if I didn't respond to that message within an hour or so, he'd send another message apologizing in case that comment insulted me somehow. He asked for my phone number so that he could call if he needed to talk to me, and I gave it to him but said that it wouldn't do much good because at the time I worked nights, and during the day the ringer on the phone was off so that I could sleep undisturbed. At best he could leave a message. Which he did. Sometimes three times a day. Telling my answering service how much he missed me.
He followed me from website to website, getting accounts for no other reason than that I had one.
Last February, I decided that I was going to take an Internet hiatus. I wanted to get away from that distraction in order to focus more on writing and drawing and getting myself mentally rearranged and in a better place. He tried to convince me not to do it, because he'd miss me too much. I said he could still email me but that I wouldn't reply unless it was an emergency.
Cue 3-5 looooong emails in my inbox each day, most of them rambling about how much he missed talking to me. Checking to make sure that none of those emails were emergencies or important took longer during my brief online forays than everything else combined. Eventually, it got so daunting that I gave up on my hiatus just to shut him up.
One night, I had a terrible gut attack and went to the hospital. I made an LJ post in the morning, saying that I'd gone to the hospital that night but was too tired and didn't want to talk about it right then. You know, a basic update to let people know what was going on in my life. He responded by assuming that I had tried to commit suicide, and begged me to talk to him and to not try it again.
That, I think, was the last straw. I'd seen him project on me in the past, but that was too much to take. I felt like I was having to live his life as well as mine, taking care of his problems before even thinking of taking care of my own, having to censor everything I said online just so that I could say something without having to deal with him replying 5 times while I'm at work and then apologizing for talking so much.
I stopped talking to him entirely. I didn't tell him why. I'd tried in the past to tell him to back off, and it hadn't worked. I just gave up on him, retreated here to a journal he didn't know I had, and gave myself the chance to breathe once more.
I've been wondering lately if I should send him an email to explain myself and my actions. On one hand, I think he deserves an explanation for me disappearing without a word. On the other hand, what I have to say will hurt him and alert him to the fact that I'm still around, which might mean that I'm just opening up the same can of worms as he tries to return us to a time and relationship that was needy at best and toxic at worst.
But for all I know, he's found a place in his life where he's accepted that he did things wrong too, and can deal with hearing them.
I don't know what to do. I don't even know what I should do, from an ethical standpoint or a personal one. They seem to conflict, those two things. Ethically, I should probably tell him. Personally, I just want nothing more to do with him, and I want to just keep going in my life without having to worry that I'll say something random that will provoke a 5-page email containing apologies for things that he believes he's said wrong to me.
I can barely live my own life some days. There isn't room in me to live for him when I'm having trouble figuring out ways to best live for myself. I don't know if I want to open myself up again to the possibility that he hasn't sorted anything out and will just lean and leech again.
I'm not going to reach a decision tonight. Tonight, I'll try to put it out of my mind and just go make ramen so that Rei has something to eat when he comes home. At least I can do that much right.
Then things in my life got complicated, and this unknown little journal turned from fannish to personal. I used it as an escape, a way of talking about my life without worrying that those from my past would see it. It was freedom, both from the preconceived notions about me and from the troubles that seemed inescapable at the time.
I escaped. And now I wonder if I did it the right way.
No, that's not right. I know I didn't do it the right way. I hurt people, and I regret having to hurt them, but sometimes I think that it was an either-or situation. Either I hurt someone else, or I spent my time being hurt.
What happened is that someone I knew on LJ and on various message boards started getting far too infatuated with me. First we were friends, then close friends, always sending emails back and forth, talking about everything and nothing. Then I started to wonder if I had a crush on him. Then he confessed a crush on me.
Then it got complicated. He'd start saying that he loved me in every email, and following it up by saying that he didn't expect me to say anything in response. (Guilt trip, guilt trip...) He'd say random things, like mentioning how a certain video game series reminded him of me, then if I didn't respond to that message within an hour or so, he'd send another message apologizing in case that comment insulted me somehow. He asked for my phone number so that he could call if he needed to talk to me, and I gave it to him but said that it wouldn't do much good because at the time I worked nights, and during the day the ringer on the phone was off so that I could sleep undisturbed. At best he could leave a message. Which he did. Sometimes three times a day. Telling my answering service how much he missed me.
He followed me from website to website, getting accounts for no other reason than that I had one.
Last February, I decided that I was going to take an Internet hiatus. I wanted to get away from that distraction in order to focus more on writing and drawing and getting myself mentally rearranged and in a better place. He tried to convince me not to do it, because he'd miss me too much. I said he could still email me but that I wouldn't reply unless it was an emergency.
Cue 3-5 looooong emails in my inbox each day, most of them rambling about how much he missed talking to me. Checking to make sure that none of those emails were emergencies or important took longer during my brief online forays than everything else combined. Eventually, it got so daunting that I gave up on my hiatus just to shut him up.
One night, I had a terrible gut attack and went to the hospital. I made an LJ post in the morning, saying that I'd gone to the hospital that night but was too tired and didn't want to talk about it right then. You know, a basic update to let people know what was going on in my life. He responded by assuming that I had tried to commit suicide, and begged me to talk to him and to not try it again.
That, I think, was the last straw. I'd seen him project on me in the past, but that was too much to take. I felt like I was having to live his life as well as mine, taking care of his problems before even thinking of taking care of my own, having to censor everything I said online just so that I could say something without having to deal with him replying 5 times while I'm at work and then apologizing for talking so much.
I stopped talking to him entirely. I didn't tell him why. I'd tried in the past to tell him to back off, and it hadn't worked. I just gave up on him, retreated here to a journal he didn't know I had, and gave myself the chance to breathe once more.
I've been wondering lately if I should send him an email to explain myself and my actions. On one hand, I think he deserves an explanation for me disappearing without a word. On the other hand, what I have to say will hurt him and alert him to the fact that I'm still around, which might mean that I'm just opening up the same can of worms as he tries to return us to a time and relationship that was needy at best and toxic at worst.
But for all I know, he's found a place in his life where he's accepted that he did things wrong too, and can deal with hearing them.
I don't know what to do. I don't even know what I should do, from an ethical standpoint or a personal one. They seem to conflict, those two things. Ethically, I should probably tell him. Personally, I just want nothing more to do with him, and I want to just keep going in my life without having to worry that I'll say something random that will provoke a 5-page email containing apologies for things that he believes he's said wrong to me.
I can barely live my own life some days. There isn't room in me to live for him when I'm having trouble figuring out ways to best live for myself. I don't know if I want to open myself up again to the possibility that he hasn't sorted anything out and will just lean and leech again.
I'm not going to reach a decision tonight. Tonight, I'll try to put it out of my mind and just go make ramen so that Rei has something to eat when he comes home. At least I can do that much right.
