my boring life story

Sorry about the long silence. There hasn’t been a whole lot of interesting stuff going on that I could actually go into great detail about here — for instance, there was a funny moment with Neighbor three Mondays ago having to do with chicken and a deep freezer, but I can’t tell the story because Reasons (nothing prurient, just Reasons) — and for the most part it’s been basically the same stuff day by day.

One sort of difference is that Neighbor’s wrapping up one book — it’s finished but needs editing and L’s helping him with it — and working towards finishing the writing on the next one, so I didn’t think it was possible for them to be even more insular than they’ve been up ’til now but lo, here we are. Actually he reminds me a lot of Matt in his absent-mindedness except for willingness to laser-focus when the object of his affections is around (L), so that’s been a nice self-esteem booster. A couple Mondays back he asked me how things were going with me and I said, “Why?” and he was surprised, but I never did answer the question either because I felt disinclined to share much of myself because although he does strike me as kind, so did Matt in the beginning and a lot of times Neighbor’s “manners” seem kind of rote, like someone taught him social skills late in life and he’s remembering all the rules he’s supposed to follow for good social interactions. Also like Matt. Which kind of tells me that even if there were mutual interest, it likely wouldn’t end very well because I don’t have a lot of patience for that shit — the absent-mindedness, the not understanding that social skills are about more than rules, and me therefore not being able to tell if it’s real empathy or just him greasing the skids.

Doesn’t stop me being wistful, but definitely stops me saying or doing anything excessively stupid where he’s concerned. Because at least right now I’m pretty sure I love him, and I would rather have him in my life in some capacity and not have him be my life partner than try to make him my life partner only for us to end up enemies. God, that would suck. Let’s never do that.

I still have this nagging WTF feeling about certain of his behaviors, because he’s acting towards me a bit like I do around a person I really like but don’t want to admit it. But that could just be his general social awkwardness. But I wish I knew for sure. It would make everything easier. At least after the initial ouch, because no way in hell am I reading that correctly because no way in hell could he actually be interested in me. That shit doesn’t happen. Never mind that a lot of stuff I am living through right now also “doesn’t happen” — that’s been a fluke, is all. I cannot possibly continue having the same sort of luck. I cannot see how that could be.

Okay, I’m lying. If I really did want to know, I’d have asked him already. Shut up, Dana. God. You’re pathetic. I don’t know what it is, then. Just wanting him to tell me of his own accord, maybe? Meh, fuck it. It doesn’t matter. No matter how this turns out I’ll probably be unhappy about it on some level.

It’s just not fucking fair, y’all.

And not for the first time — I just haven’t been willing to write about it — I’ve been questioning my part in relationships anyway. I have this tendency now to be low and mean and jealous and possessive. I know this about me. I feel like it was caused, like I wasn’t always like this, and I don’t know how to stop doing it because I know it’s bad and I know it makes ME feel bad, never mind what it does to the guy in question, but… I can’t trust. I used to. I used to be so open and accepting. I tried so fucking hard. But it’s gotten to this point. And I absolutely despise this about myself. But if I work on it, I leave myself open to getting hurt again. And you have yahoos all over social media saying you’re supposed to be willing to get hurt in order to really love — what the fuck is wrong with these people? If it really is true then I don’t want to love anyone anymore. Unintentional emotional injury is one thing. I mean we all have accidents and get sick and suffer misfortune and we’re all gonna die eventually. Two life/love partners hurting one another in avoidable ways? No. I cannot take another fucking fuckboy thinking loyalty to me is optional. I just can’t.

But even before I got surly about this shit, I wasn’t the greatest partner. There were times I cheated, but in some ways that wasn’t even the worst thing. That was me wanting to get out and being too chickenshit to say so, so that was the end of the relationship in question. I’m talking about while still in it. I wasn’t as mentally present as I should have been. Whether that’s ADHD (minus the hyper?) or what, I don’t know. I think I would make a more conscientious partner now, but that may just be my wishful thinking. I certainly can’t go by on how things were with Matt. First I was poor, and then I was pissed off at him and we weren’t in a relationship by then, strictly speaking, anyway. So I don’t know. I don’t really have a good metric.

I wonder if this is a big reason why I’ve started being a bit obsessive about finding someone. I mean obviously I miss the physical contact but is this about learning more about who I am as a person? Kind of a stupid reason to want a relationship. Or, I dunno, just a really weird reason? Because of course I would have weird reasons for everything.

Meanwhile, I’m in this secret Facebook group where people share memes and stuff about stuff we like in the interests of positive emotional reinforcement (not how the description puts it but that’s what it is) and finally, the guy who started that friended me. I’ll call him J. At first I thought, Hm, this is interesting, and he knows Neighbor and a lot of Neighbor’s people and he lives up in Washington state so it was not inconceivable we could meet in person at some point. But the longer this goes on the more I realize he’s just another drama whore. I’m not sure what he’s after in general with social media but he’s certainly not any more interested in me than he is in other people generally. And anyway, he speaks of becoming a hermit. Well, you go and do that then, dude. Have fun. Let me find some guy who hasn’t given the fuck up on absolutely everyfuckingthing.

I mean what is it with middle-aged men anyway, the fucking old miseries? The kids are grown, were there any, and either the marriage went well or it didn’t, and they’re either close to retirement or already there — in fact, J retired early. They’ve mostly figured themselves out and have gotten to a fairly good place in life AND THEY WILL NOT SHUT THE EVERLOVING FUCK UP ABOUT HOW MISERABLE THEY ARE. In some way. Even Neighbor gets like this. God. If this is what I have to look forward to, no wonder so many middle-aged women give up on men. I don’t fucking need this. I try to empathize with them, I really do, but they don’t actually want that! Had that problem with Stuart. Like (not a quote, I’m mocking), “NO. I won’t let you cheer me up! Fuck off!” WELL OKAY THEN. You can fuck off too.

I actually seem to bemuse Neighbor when I laugh at things. It’s so weird. I miss when people were fun.

Ha, I just posted on Facebook about this. Speaking in general terms. He took the bait. “Well, you cheer ME up.” Sure, honey. So why were you talking about going hermit AFTER you friended me. Whatever.

Honestly.

I’ve taken up knitting (as of late August) and crochet (as of more recently) again. Had bought some yarn off Facebook Marketplace the week L was gone. Am up to various and sundry with that, probably will make myself at least one sweater. I’m tired of frumpy. Or if it’s gonna be frumpy it’ll at least be nice colors. Fuck this noise.

I’m gonna make myself get into portraiture too. I realized not long ago that I’ve mostly used Making Art as an escape from extreme misery. I never wanted it to be like that. What a fucking rip. So we’re gonna redirect this ship before it sinks me.

Enough wallowing. Stuff to do. ‘Laters. Not so long this time.

Well, L’s back. Neighbor came by this morning and picked Mist up because apparently L asked for her, then went and picked L up at the airport. They got back right after I returned from errands, and then I went to get the mail, and then I came back here and his car was here but they were nowhere to be seen on the first floor. I thought, hm, maybe they went to the cabin for some reason, and then I went upstairs, and her door was closed.

So that’s that, then. No fucking reason they’d have been behind a closed door if they weren’t in fact together and having a reunion fuck. So now I know.

I have to act like I’m not angry about it and like I don’t hate anyone, and I’m still not sure I hate-hate her, but this is the first time she’s done this since I moved in here, and it’s really fucking weird. Like… what’s up? Claiming territory? Asserting dominance? Nyah nyah nyah, he’s mine, fuck you? What the fuck was that? Because I could see her doing something like that. She has been acting like I am little more than furniture since I fucking moved in here. Maybe I’ve been too friendly to him and she’s noticed.

And honestly, I’m doing the same shit I always do with men and making excuses for him in my own mind but y’all, he’s been treating me like little more than furniture too. I’m an extra pair of hands and a relatively able body to do shit for him that he’s got less ability to do than he used to, and someone to intellectually entertain him when he wants to have conversations, but I’m not ME to him. I do not fucking matter. I lost sight of that, and it was a mistake. Never again.

It just makes me angry at Stuart again, because he could have been an emotional way out — it is so childish of me, but there it is — but he was too chickenshit, I guess. I dunno. I’m done trying to explain him. It probably can’t be done.

So at this point it’ll be responding in kind. I’m fucking furniture? YOU’RE fucking furniture. Thanks for the free housing and sucker pay. I’m going to focus on getting myself back together and then I’m getting the fuck out of here. I’m not in a hurry. It doesn’t have to be right now. But it’s going to happen.

And you never know. I could get the fuck over myself before then. That’d be nice, because I like Neighbor a lot and I wouldn’t mind having him as a friend. If I could get the fuck over him, never mind myself, that would really make things easier.

Okay. I need to make food or I’ll be an ogre, and then I need to plan out my week. Enough of this random mental-wandering shit. It’s just making me sad. WHAT. DO I WANT. TO DO. Let’s do that.

I don’t feel like filling in individual days, so I will just recap.

The first and only shift I did at Employer went okay, except I was really tired at the end of the shift and still had to drive home, and then things got Interesting. If all I’d had to do was feed the dogs and then occasionally let someone in or out, it might have been all right, but they also barked at random times and when they’re in the house, it amplifies the noise, AND, even when things were quiet, my brain wouldn’t shut the fuck up. Neighbor came over at 4:30 to “set eyes on the dogs,” as he put it, and remarked that I looked exhausted and was not sparkly like usual. I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly. He repeated himself. I had heard him correctly. I laughed. “Sparkly? Okay…” I had half a moment where I wondered if there was something more to him picking that descriptor, because no one ever fucking calls me sparkly. I hope I didn’t put him off laughing.

By evening I was done. I knew I had to prioritize the dogs and there was just no fucking question. And that’s fine. I’m really sad about the money I have to miss out on, but practically speaking I could not have continued on there anyway even if doing the four weeks with the tag changes did lead to a permanent job. It would have been either a day shift which would have gotten in the way of feeding the dogs, or it would have been an evening shift which would have cut into my sleep. So it was stupid of me to take the job to start with; as it was, when I took it and then went through orientation, I didn’t know L was going to go out of town. I would have kept going had she not done that. But this is where we are. The dogs are how I’m housed, and I’m not a heartless monster, so the dogs come first. The end.

I didn’t need any meat so it was okay that I missed meat-sorting night. I got ten items to do this week for the scutwork which meant $100, or less if I had asked for food, but I didn’t need to. So between being able to get half my pay in advance for that one night of work, getting the rest of my paycheck from orientation, and the $100, I was able to catch up a few things. I still have the other half of that paycheck coming next pay period, too, so that’s nice. I got to see Neighbor walking his dogs the last day I was there finishing the scutwork. The dogs were more outgoing than he was.

Legend had it he was supposed to come by every afternoon to check on L’s dogs. He only came over twice, the time he said the thing about “sparkly” and another time to give Mist a shot. I haven’t seen him otherwise except when at his place, and I haven’t heard from him. I only know he’s supposed to go pick L up from the airport tomorrow because I asked him. He was not forthcoming with the information.

It’s weird because we had a couple moments over Facebook where it was like we connected. I live for those little moments and it is really pathetic. He’s GOT to be with L. Hell, I probably won’t see L until like 6pm or later tomorrow even though she gets to the airport at 3-something in the afternoon because like as not she’ll go back to Neighbor’s place and boink him. I wasn’t born yesterday. But there’s still this nagging feeling that I am missing something and, if he likes me, him avoiding me would be textbook introvert, and he is a BIG one. God, I wish someone would just fucking ask him. Someone not at risk of homelessness for accidentally spooking his girlfriend. I just want to know. Get me the fuck out of this fix already. If he’s single, I don’t want to pass him up; he is one beautiful, compassionate man. Polar opposite of most guys I’ve been with AND polar opposite of my dad. Please fucking God. For fucking once.

But… I’ll have to pass him up. Even if he’s single and interested, if he’s just going to be a coward about it then there’s nothing I can do. He’s the one with nothing to lose if he speaks up. He knows by now whether L has a thing for him or not. I’m the one flying blind.

“What about Stuart?”

Stuart is a self-centered piece of shit who can’t stand to be called out on his bad behavior. I have given him at least three fucking opportunities to talk himself back down from the ledge and meet me halfway and he won’t fucking do it. Message fucking received. I’m done. And what makes me really angry is that he’d have been an escape. Even if I stayed here, I could set my brain at “I am with this guy” and whatever went on with Neighbor wouldn’t matter. It’s not even using, because I really did like Stuart. I was perfectly willing to pick him over Neighbor with not knowing what was going on with the latter.

But of course, as ever, I overestimate my appeal to men.

It just really hurts. I know there are lots of ways to be happy, but I’d like to find a particular type of happiness in this particular sphere of life, and I’m tired of constantly being rejected or even just having the threat of it hanging over my head. It’s like… Am I even here? Will I ever matter? To anyone?

What a joke: Carrie messaged me this morning saying my dad wanted my number again. I don’t want some piece of shit who has put me at risk of homelessness fucking twice now trying to play like I matter to him; we both know I don’t. If he doesn’t know how to treat the people who matter to him then he should just shut the fuck up and leave me alone forever. Forever would be fine with me. It’s always the men who are bad for me who want the time of day from me whether that’s family or a romantic relationship. I’m not fucking sending him my number. I don’t fucking care anymore.

Doug also called… day before yesterday? Not sure. Some shit about a promotion. He might be an out from here if it gets unbearable. I am not going to count on it though. He’s also still having drama with my niece’s mother. I can’t be arsed to summarize. I will later if this comes up again and I feel like talking about it.

Today I did some extra cleaning (L’s gonna shit when she sees the inside of the fridge) and will TRY to mop tomorrow but, at minimum, will get the bathroom clean. I have to be up early anyway because of Neighbor picking up Mist at 10:30, something else no one told me was going to happen.

I’m looking forward to being off the hook about the dogs for a while so I can maybe start getting myself sorted. I think my best chance is honestly going to be getting the transcript proofreading course finished. If I can do that and then pick up work, I might have a chance.

Will I? Let’s find out!

Yesterday I took L to the airport near Arcata, so it was an hour’s drive in each direction. I understand why it made sense for me to drive her and it will actually be easier for me to get sleep and feed the dogs timely, but having to be up at 5am and be able to drive safely meant fucking up my efforts to go later before sleeping. I’m not that thrilled, to be honest, but I will figure things out. The only thing about this is L surely knew this was coming before the DGR conference and could have warned me and maybe I could have backed out of the temp job or refused it depending on when she knew and notified me. But it’s too late to care, really. Unless I absolutely cannot adapt to the situation, I’m in it to win it. It’s only four weeks and I desperately need that money.

Anyway it was a nice little road trip. Times like this I wish I still had my car. There are so many places along 101 where you can just pull over and gawk at the coastline. It is definitely gawk-worthy. If I don’t get around and see things while I am here, I’m a sucker, full stop.

Interestingly, I think bicycles are allowed on 101; definitely for parts of it. I’d be terrified, especially going around those curves (the speed limit is 55mph in some places and 65 in others!!! And then goes down to 30 on some of the curves), but it’s always a possibility, I suppose. We’ll see?

Right. No. Like as not I’ll sit in the house a lot. There is something wrong with me. Always has been.

The dogs are beside themselves. Obviously they miss their mom, but the salt in the wound for them seems to be that when someone gets out of the car, it’s not L. That really blew their minds yesterday, and then they had to see it happen again today. They’re more or less behaving, but they know the bedtime routine is not fucking happening and the girls in particular want to stay outside well past sunset. I liken this to kids with a sitter staying up late because it’s the sitter. I just hope L doesn’t have to do much adjusting when she gets back.

I was wrong about the mint cutting. I had a look at the raised beds today and I don’t know what the Green Being I Had Not Previously Noticed is, but it makes me think of nightshade and is definitely not a mint. L still could have cut it, or maybe Neighbor did or, as was my first thought, maybe M fucking did it when she was here (I noticed it was gone very soon after the conference) after hearing me say I wanted a cutting of it… I have my suspicions about her. But we’ll see. It doesn’t matter. I got my own, and anyway, joke’s on whoever took the one I’d had my eye on, because Neighbor’s big dog Duke pissed on it once. Ha ha ha. FUCKERS. Meanwhile, my cutting’s doing really well. It should root just fine. When I first moved here I noticed a jar with paintbrushes in it on the shelf and L says I can have the whole thing. Glass jar, good size, so that’s what the cutting is in, standing in water. Works great because I can just leave it in the south window (my room’s windows face east and south) and not worry about the curtain knocking it over. Now I just need to remember to get the fixings for planting it when it’s time. I may just get a window box instead of a normal pot and then let it go crazy, except I have reservations about that because plastic. We’ll see. If I could find a metal one, that would work, except I just looked on Amazon and the search is a mess. How do you give me back plastic pots in your search results when I asked for metal? Clowns. But we’ll see. Like as not I’ll just get something at fucking Walmart. The usual.

Yesterday, because I was bored, I got onto Facebook’s little dating feature that apparently you can only get to through the app. Same thing happened that always happens with the stupid dating apps: I came to my senses and realized I have nothing to offer and even if I did, there’s no way I can be myself with a guy. I’m too weird to, like, 95% of the male population. Even if I didn’t look like a fucking troll, that would still be a problem. But I also look like a fucking troll. So there you go.

Part of me wishes things had worked out with Stuart. He was poised to push me away anyhow, though, so I really don’t know what else I could have done. OBVIOUSLY not jumped the gun and unfriended him. I mean aside from that, because it wouldn’t have been enough.

Well, if he ever makes an overture, I’ll take him up on it. He won’t, but if he did.

(see previous post)

Mission accomplished

Am all done with just letting shit run over me. I’m taking back the fucking reins. Fuck you.

She’s gonna be gorgeous. I can’t wait. And one day, when I’m not here anymore, I’ll tell you who Neighbor is, too. I’ll always have this little bit of him now.

Nine items for the scutwork this week. Got three done today; may as well pace myself.

Pushing myself later on wakeups because I’ve got the overnight shifts starting this next Sunday. It’s going to get to the point, probably by Friday, where I’m doing the scutwork in the morning instead of at 4pm, which is going to be better, actually.

L’s going to be out of town for about nine days. Neighbor is apparently going to come over daily to make sure everything’s okay. I may enlist him on the dogs’ second feeding (they are fed twice a day) just so I can buy myself some more sleep time; I can get the bowls ready and have them in the fridge for when he gets here. That will depend on his willingness and how familiar he is with the routine. It might not be possible. We’ll see. But the idea of seeing him daily is kind of nice. It’s weird that she goes out of town without him. I’m still afraid to ask him what’s going on between them. He might not answer anyway, and what if he tells her I asked? Bad scene. Best not.

(Though at some point, if I’m feeling a little bolder — maybe after I have at least $1000 put away in case I’m kicked out — I may make some flippant joke in passing and see what he says.)

I’ve thought about the shit with Stuart (I was right; he’s blocked my sockpuppet now) and on the one hand I know I was a bit itchy trigger finger with the unfriending him. On the other hand, he was asking too much just expecting me to relocate to BC when he would barely talk to me, and then on top of that not tell me what I was getting into or why he wanted me to get into it. AND, I thought I was all big and bad being over the thing with Matt? Yeah… he reminded me too much of Matt with that mess. So we’re triggering my fear of winding up homeless again AND reminding me of the man who wasted twenty years of my life and who then sat on his hands as I ended up homeless and then helped mess up my daughter… THANKS, STUART. No, really. Don’t let the door hit ya.

Incredibly, I still feel bad about it. I also wonder whether he might have been sweet on me after all and whether that would explain the extreme response. I don’t understand the mixed signals — “done with relationships” versus calling everyone he knew to get me housed in BC on seemingly a whim — and maybe I’m just wrong anyway and it’s just Stuart doing his usual Not Making Any Fucking Sense. But I’ll probably always wonder. At least a little.

You know what, though? Apparently I still want a man who’ll fight for me a little. Like, act like he’s actually happy I’m around and make the effort to not scare me off and, if he accidentally fucks up and I take it the wrong way, take the initiative to try to correct the problem. Not this cowardly fucking mess I just got dumped on me. Again. By a whole new guy.

And to think I started down this path because I was tired of being hung up on Neighbor. Joke’s the fuck on me, innit.

Oh. Interesting thing happened. So. On Neighbor’s garage, to the left of the garage door as you face the garage door, there’s a spigot. Sometimes I wash my hands there. Well, there happens to be an escaped mint growing there at the junction of garage-wall and ground. The faucet running happens to water it nicely. It’s gorgeous, nice big long broad leaves. Probably a mutant spearmint, but who knows. I’ve had my eye on the tallest growth for a while and meant to ask Neighbor if I could have a cutting of it once I had the money to get a plant pot and some soil. Well. Last week when I went to do the scutwork and then wash my hands, I noticed that exact growth had been clipped off. What the fuck?

Yesterday I happened to look out the window where L has her raised-bed garden boxes and… there’s this green branch stuck in the sand in one of them. I haven’t been out to look more closely at it but goddamn if it doesn’t look like the mint. And it’s limp, because if she’s trying to root it, she’s not doing it right. GRRR.

Fucking hell. Not bad enough she’s got the man, she has to take my fucking mint too. Well, I’m not going to ask anymore. I get some supplies together, I’m just clipping some fucking mint and they can fucking cope. And it’ll be mine. In a pot. Not in her fucking garden.

It’s weird. I kind of like her. I’m definitely grateful she gave me a place to stay. But I still feel weird about her. The jealousy is part of it. But also, she goes around with her face constantly stuck in her laptop (you laugh… no, I promise you, she is worse than I ever was), and she always has this air like she’s just tolerating me. Except when she really wants me to do something, and then she’s all friendly and shit. I don’t know what’s going on there. I’d like us to be friendlier but I don’t know how to get there. I am not going to put my energy into something, though, that’s likely to backfire. So I lay low, strive not to piss her off, bond (such as it is) over the dogs, and… just get on with things. I don’t know what else to do.

What I need to put my energy into:

1. Getting healthy. -Er.
2. Sorting out my employment situation. Whatever that looks like.
3. Getting back to Ohio.

I don’t really think I have a future here.

Hell, I haven’t heard from my brother Doug since that one time he called after I got here. Not even that. I’d call him, but I don’t know what his work schedule’s like and, well, Stuart just demonstrated it again: if I make the first move, I’ll be seen as the pest and put off til later. I don’t like going where I’m unwanted, where I was not invited, and where I don’t belong, and that includes phone calls. I dunno. It’s a whole thing with me.

I am just so goddamn tired of being lonely though. There is no end to it in sight. God.

I cannot promise when I am going to stop talking about that man, but I imagine it shouldn’t be that far off, at least in terms of what you’d call a regular feature. So I’m going to talk about him again here. Sorry.

Timeline was: Sunday night, unfriended Stuart. Monday, reached out and assured him that I had not canceled him but that I did wish him well. He responded rather quickly for someone “too busy,” going “huh?” because allegedly he’d just been calling around trying to find me a place to crash so I could work on his party’s election campaign in British Columbia — a thing he had SAID we were going to discuss, and he SAID he’d get back in touch with me last Thursday or Friday and then never did. So he didn’t know what the fuck was going on, because I didn’t know what the fuck was going on and had already written it off as Probably A Bad Idea, chiefly because Not Enough Info, because Stuart had decided he was “busy.” Right. But about two seconds later he realized what I’d done and said that he guessed he’d have to call back around and let them know the housing was no longer necessary. I mulled things over and went to write him back and found he’d blocked me. So you saw all that. I gabbed on exhaustively about it yesterday.

Right. Caught up. So today I go over to my political sockpuppet Facebook account and peek over. Don’t ask me why. Masochistic streak, I guess. Sure enough, his one recent public post was talking about him being “canceled” again. Now he didn’t come out and say publicly that I had canceled him. But it would be passing odd if, like, five other people decided to unfriend him the same day I did, and I had already noticed him playing fast and loose with the concept of “cancellation.” It wasn’t hard to do the math. So… being that he’d never friended me on that account or, if he had, he figured out pretty quickly it was me (maybe because I told him?) and dropped it and THEN forgot about it… either way, I commented with a few home truths about the situation. I also informed him that the door was still open a crack, so to speak, but that it would be up to him to walk through it and if he didn’t… well. I doubt he was poised on his account waiting for me to comment. I’m kind of hoping that if he’s decided he’s going to keep being a dick, that enough people saw me speak up before he shut me down. Just because I would feel a little better if they had. Though I don’t know what’s the point, because this is going to end the same way it always does. Man acts like abusive prick, woman bites back, man’s friends side with man even though they just saw him being a prick. The older I get, the better I understand why radfems give up on men. Dramamongering fucking walking sperm banks. And we’re at eight billion now. What’s the fucking point.

I wouldn’t be on this angerfest about him if not for another thing I noticed about him while we were still on good terms: he is one self-centered sonofabitch. He honestly is. What scares the everloving shit out of me is, I was willing to give him a pass for it. I was willing to say, “Oh… nerdboy. No social skills.” Exactly why OTHER PEOPLE allow men like this to get away with shitting on ME. Thank god he slipped and was a dick to me early. Shut that shit RIGHT down. But you should have heard him. I will tell you what: I will be STUNNED if he remembers one goddamned important detail about me whatsoever. He might remember I have a kid who IDs as trans, but that’s one of his current obsessions, and it isn’t really about me. Give it a week and he’ll be pretending he never heard of me. If not sooner. This man wants to be in politics and lead people. Why. Just fucking why.

Okay. Enough of that. Also I both went digging and also got on the scale and I found out two things: (1) my weight in the second week of March was something like 259 pounds and 15 ounces; and (2) my weight this morning was 226.5 pounds. 33-pound loss since March. Curious to know whether I could get to Onederland by the end of the year. Doubt it, but it’d be interesting to find out. Oh, and my fasting sugar was 96 mg/dl. I hadn’t walked the day prior, is probably why. I’d rather see it high eighties. BUT! Doing pretty well.

Meat-sorting was a night late; some weeks it just is. Scutwork will be plentiful this week. Should put me in good stead for when my temp job begins. As it is I’m doing better than I’d had any right to expect since Employer allows up to 50% of your net pay to be advanced to you each pay period. So if this coming Friday is a payday, I’ve fucking got it made.

L will be out of town for a period of time this month and it’ll be a little weird feeding the dogs, but hopefully that will go okay. They’ll just have to be a little later with breakfast than they are used to being. They’ll live.

My brain is just about derailed. I’ll add more later if I remember something.

I had had a theory for a while that the hit I keep getting here from Denver, Colorado was from my kid. But I noticed tonight that this person’s hitting the big man’s fan site as well, so unless my daughter knows the website address for my Rory McCann fan site, it’s someone else in Denver visiting. I suppose it could be her father. He could have had all manner of bullshit tracking my online activities when I lived with him and I would never know. It sounds paranoid, but with him being a programmer and a software developer and basically in control of the internet connection in his house, it’s not off the table.

[edit: I just remembered I link to the big man’s fan site from my real-name homepage. So that could be it. I had just been thinking that if he tracked me online at all while I lived there, he could have gotten the URL that way, but that’s the more paranoid and complicated explanation when really all he had to do was follow links. Same for the kiddo, actually. And that’s what I get for forgetting my own content. D’oh!]

Orrrrr it’s someone else in Denver entirely. Who fucking knows.

I still need to fill in from this past week. Will I? I don’t know.

I do know I posted this to my Facebook and that when I get done pasting it here, I’ll unpin it from there:

—

Okay, I’ll stop vaguebooking about it. You can think I am drama-mongering if you want, and you’re entitled to your own opinion. He’s blocked me anyway. I’ll be surprised if that changes.

For starters: Stuart Parker may be complaining that someone has canceled him again. He may be referring to me. I will not ask anyone to say anything to him once they’ve read this, but if you want to point out that I’m nobody with no power and can’t actually cancel anyone and that unfriending is not canceling, I’d appreciate it. You don’t have to, but if he’s complaining and you decide you want to, go ahead.

Now the back story. Let me try to be brief with it, anyway. (I’ll fail.)

I don’t know when he and I became Facebook friends. I don’t even know who friended whom. I just know it’s been a while. Over a year, for sure. Over that amount of time, whatever it was, he’s been friendly but mostly impersonal. “Mostly” because once in a while he’d do a “care” react on my nicer photos and once, he liked someone else’s comment saying I looked lovely. And I thought he seemed like an interesting guy, so I wasn’t against the idea. Still am not. That sort of behavior isn’t what you’d call creepy anyway, but I wouldn’t have labeled it such from him.

I knew about Corey — I remember him being in the midst of the breakup — but I also know it’s been a while.

So when I heard he was coming here for the DGR conference, I was mad excited. I thought, wow, we were already sort of hitting it off — let’s see what we think of one another in person. And when he first got here, it looked like that might be promising. We hit it off pretty much immediately and he talked my ears off. I went into the weekend fairly hopeful.

And then when we were there, yes he was busy with food prep and cooking — sure. But when I was doing one of my *three* volunteer time slots, he wasn’t half as chatty with me as he was with some other people. Later, when he suggested I go to BC for the campaign I was dead shocked — not only because of what a big change it would be for me (and a big risk) but because up to that point, not counting our first meeting, he hadn’t been behaving like a guy who’d ask me to go to BC. I didn’t know what to think. It was why I talked about it a lot here. Like, “Does this sound in any way reasonable to anyone else?”

I thought when we parted ways on Sunday [25 August] that was it, but then he and Brandi and Melissa showed up on Monday because Brandi’s car was broken down and they had to sort out a tow truck, which took hours. And he and I had time to chat and the upshot of that was his declaration that he’s done with dating and relationships. We didn’t even get hugely personal, it just sort of went in that direction. So okay… all the care reacts, the invite to BC, and now this? I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on.

I had so much more to say in that conversation but didn’t because I didn’t know how to get it out properly and didn’t want to cross a line, but it kept nagging at me so I wrote a thing online for further elaboration that I knew he would be able to read, not naming any names, knowing he’d get a notification and probably go see what it was. I know for a fact he opened it at least once (my stats said he read it twice, but that could have been a glitch — they were pretty close together). Thought that maybe it’d spark another conversation. Nope. Silence.

Messaged him directly soon after that to ask him about the BC thing, what it would involve and why me, and he said he was settling in and he’d get back with me Thursday or Friday. Not this coming Thursday or Friday. This *past* Thursday or Friday. That have gone by now.

By today, I still hadn’t heard from him. But he was on Facebook complaining that no one “on the left” had given him a nasty nickname. Not so much as a “sorry this has run so late, here’s what I’m doing.”

That’s when I gave up. I’d already decided against BC, as you all saw, but the idea of seeing him continue to post around and clown around and never actually answer my questions rankled. I thought I must have really fucked up somehow, or repelled him, or something, and I didn’t want to engage with that anymore. So I unfriended him. I did, however, DM him to tell him I wasn’t doing it to cancel him.

He replied back with a “huh?” and said he’d been calling around to find me housing for the election work he had in mind — we still had not discussed this in any way, which was what he was supposed to get back with me about — but he guessed he’d have to let them all know it wasn’t an issue anymore.

I mulled over things a bit and then meant to respond to him, and now I can’t. Because he’s blocked me.

I tried one last-ditch effort to start an actual conversation with him through Substack but though he’s probably online, I asked him to DM here, and he hasn’t done that. He’s not likely to, either.

I’m at an impasse. I don’t know what I did wrong in the first place, well before the online misunderstanding (or whatever it was), and I don’t know why it’s gone this direction. I am considering this a dead end because I can’t see what other way it’s going to go.

So it’s not like anyone would have noticed I don’t comment on his stuff anymore, but that’s gonna be a thing. But I don’t hate him — I’m kind of pissed off at him, but I don’t hate him. If I see people accusing him of crazy shit, I will still speak up for him. Whatever his ish happens to be, though, he’ll have to deal with it on his own. His choice. Clearly I am now completely out of favor.

And for future reference, not that I have a line of men beating down my door: You will get a lot farther with me if you fucking communicate with me TIMELY. Either as a friend or as anything more than that. I cannot do inconsistency, expectations of mindreading, or outright fucking games. I just can’t. I went through twenty years of that shit with Matt (and also Craig, the brief period he came back into my life to fuck with my head 14 years ago), and I have done plumb run out of bullshit spoons. And I’m not shopping for more.

That is all. Sorry for the dramafest but I needed to give my side. I know I “shared” Stuart with a LOT of you.

—

Along with the unfriending yesterday, I took him off my Substack today. I had comped him in case he wanted to have conversations in the comments, but nothing ever came of that. I was interested to learn he’d read the “thing I wrote online” — apparently twice, but the “read” statuses happened so close together timewise that it might have just been a glitch and he only read it once. But there’s no reason he should have to keep getting emails from me. So I sorted that out.

Anyway, at the Facebook post there was some followup discussion in the comments and I realized that I had not adequately conveyed just what had gotten me wondering if Stuart liked me; it wasn’t just “care” reacts or a like on a “you’re lovely” comment. I’d posted something a while back about how I am weird in ways that wouldn’t let me do well in relationships and he came back with something like “be careful, Dana, this sounds like an old-fashioned and very appealing personal ad,” to which I replied, “You are too fond of peppers. It will never work.” He laughed, I laughed, and I didn’t think anything more of it, though now I wonder if he thought I was entirely serious. Because I wasn’t.

There are lots of reasons it would never work, but having different opinions about food probably wasn’t one of them.

Him flirting when he didn’t mean it OR, meaning it and then chickening way the fuck out when he was faced with actual me in person would be reasons it would never work.

I have a strong feeling it was the latter in play. I realize how full of myself that makes me sound. It’s possible my radar in this area of life is completely and irretrievably broken. But… somehow… I don’t think so. He struck me as a very nervous person when he was here. I had already gotten that sense from him on Facebook before that. I’m just having trouble believing that I would have that sort of effect on a man — or, as in his case, that I would have a magnifying effect on already-existing nerves — given that I’ve become such a troll. Sooooo… but he’s not speaking to me anymore anyway, so I’ll just have to wonder.

I wouldn’t admit this on Facebook, but if he ever gets the fuck over himself and reaches out, I might actually want to talk. Oh, FINE. I do want to talk. I just don’t think it’s ever going to happen. I feel a good bit sad about that. I think… well, I think we kind of need each other. I don’t know why I think that, but I do.

But not “need” in the sense that I’d die without him. So it’s move the fuck on, I guess.

Oh, and yeah. He’s the previously-mentioned-in-previous-posts “S”. If you hadn’t guessed. I’m not bothering to go back and replace the letter with the first name. I only spelled out his name here because I linked to his homepage on the extremely remote chance that he’d notice the trackback. It won’t lead anywhere, probably. But what the hell. I literally have nothing to lose.

—

In other news, I’ve been pretty seriously logjammed about writing and it’s pissing me off. I’m seeing signs that’s shaking loose, though. Let’s hope.

I’m actually writing this like three days later but wanted to put days on their days. So I’m going to be vague in places, but this is the best I can do.

So. (Going back into Sunday Voice.) People played silly fucking buggers today and so I was very late getting to the conference site, and so I missed all of S’s presentation. I am not sure how much I would have gotten out of it, but it would have been more time around him, so I was a bit grumbly about missing it.

Anyway. At this lake house where we held the conference, there are two bathrooms. One’s in the master bedroom, one’s just off the kitchen between it and the mud/laundry room, and both were open to attendees (the bedroom one before 9pm and after 9am, due to that being the women’s room — and yes, we would have enforced that shit, had we needed to). I ran into a lot of situations where I needed to go but they were both occupied so I’d have to flit back and forth ’til one was clear. Yesterday, while I was passing through the kitchen in the midst of this, I noticed the volunteer sign-up roster on the side of the fridge and that meal prep and cleanup for lunch for today were blank. Two slots each, no one had taken any of the four. Ah ha, I thought. Here’s how I get to talk more with S. So I signed up for both before and after for lunch for today.

This was where I did the Facebook flirt I mentioned yesterday. “Not me signing up for kitchen duty again. Probably helps the chef’s cute.” Something like that. And by the way, he never noticed it. Or he did, but ignored it. Or avoided it. I really don’t know.

ANYWAY. So today that was a thing. There was some talking. Not as much as I’d heard him doing with M. I wasn’t too surprised. There wasn’t as much prep to do, either, which didn’t help. I wound up washing a fuckton of dishes afterwards because the dishwasher was already full and running. Other than that it was kind of a dud. I suppose at least I helped people out, so it wasn’t all for nothing. The conference is not for me to be chasing men, DANA.

But at some point I asked him where he was going to end up because I knew he couldn’t go back to Tanzania on account of his visa troubles (they changed the rules while he was there, which fucked his ability to stay). He said he’s in Canada for now, in British Columbia, until the election. Then, depending on how it goes, he might have a job and he might not. He didn’t spell this out, but presumably that amount of time gives him space to sort out his visa situation, so he could very well go back to Africa if the election goes wrong. He asked me where I thought I was going to end up, and I said I had no idea. I mean, I don’t. This can’t be permanent, and I have no followup plan for when I leave. I think that I might like to go back to Ohio, but I don’t know if I can actually accomplish it and not end up homeless again. I didn’t say all that to him, of course. He didn’t seem like he wanted to get excessively chatty.

Later we were talking in the living room, and I said he looked like he could use a hug, so I finally got one from him. (Hugs are great. You get to give and get at the same time.) He seemed quite pleased about that. We chatted a bit about this and that (he has a tendency to pontificate about political stuff, and he talks about himself a lot too), and then he said the most amazing thing. Suggested that I might like to move to British Columbia myself to help with the campaign. I was flabbergasted. Where was I supposed to live? He apparently knows someone I could crash with. I pointed out that I have no passport and no Real ID driver’s license either, just the plain ordinary one. But could I take a rain check on discussing it further? Because maybe I could sort that out. So we kind of left it open-ended, but he seemed pretty sincere about it. I have NO idea where that came from.

It being a conference for Deep Green Resistance, there was much talk about DGR’s mission and about its future direction. I’ve known about them pretty much since they started, but this is the first I’ve actually come close to joining. Figures that right now they don’t have a good process for that because they don’t want to do what they had been doing to bring in new members anymore. But there’s new leadership (well… some of it), and they’re trying to revamp a lot of stuff. Why do I want in? It’s not just the trans thing. It’s not even mostly. I’ve been closer to nature since I got here, and for years I’ve been trying to ignore the worst of what’s going on, and I can’t ignore it anymore. And all I see is a small ragtag group of rebels against the system trying to bring it down by speaking a language almost no one understands. Bloody academics. I have this knack for translating Academic into Plain English, and I wonder if I might not be able to put that to good use. They need a proper propaganda arm, in the old sense of the word. Lacking the arm, I’ll be one fingernail, at least. Whether I actually join DGR or not. I can read the book it’s based on at their website. I can get the general idea.

But! At least for now, it looks like I will be helping them with fundraising. No one else was raising their hand when that call went out and it mostly involves tech stuff. Neighbor is not fond of tech, L pretty much despises it, and I’m comfortable with it. It is a no-brainer. So B, who basically heads DGR now, and I will be discussing this in upcoming weeks and we’ll see what we can cobble together. And then, if we get that going smoothly and someone still hasn’t jumped on the merch, I’m gonna dig into that too. Long past time.

Some of it’s to do with Neighbor. I’m 99% sure he’s L’s, but I’m gonna feel what I feel there for a while yet. I don’t know what it’s going to turn into, but he matters to me in some way, and he’s getting discouraged that nothing he set in motion is really getting anywhere. I probably can’t fix it, but if I can kick things up the arse and get them moving in some small important way, and if that makes him happy, I’ll be happy. Sounds shallow, but if love doesn’t get us through this, nothing will.

“So why are you so ate up about S?” Because I’m 99% sure Neighbor is L’s. Because there’s no hope there. If he had a shred of interest in me beyond just being interested in human beings as he is, he’d have said so by now. And because S seemed like he might be interested in me, and that’d be a fucking first in years, and I already thought he was an interesting person. He ain’t pretty but, as a friend of mine pointed out, he has kind eyes. He’s another nerdboy, and you know I like nerdboys. He’s smart, he’s tall (omg), he’s funny (he’s one of the chief reasons I laughed so much this weekend — only Neighbor made me laugh more), and he’s a nervous wreck from everything he’s been through — and may have been a nervous person anyway — and God, that’s bringing out the caretaker in me. His big flaw other than the talking about himself all the time is that he drinks. That may yet be a dealbreaker. I haven’t decided yet and it’s not like he’s trying to climb down my pants, so I figure I have time to figure that out. Probably the rest of forever, actually, the way my luck’s been going.

Left him a Facebook message telling him goodbye and sending a virtual hug in case I couldn’t do any of that in person — he has tended to duck into his quarters early in the evening through this whole thing without saying goodnight to anyone. But I lucked out and saw him again before we left so I got to hug him again in person. HA.

Neighbor’s house for bears and dog walks again. This time M and I got a ride back to L’s, so no more having to play woods guide. Yay.

Pardon my rantfest earlier. I addressed my frustration by simultaneously passive-aggressively, indirectly flirting with S on my own Facebook feed and also therefore throwing down the gauntlet in case M thinks she’s the only person who could possibly ever be interested in him. Also I have put my name down for two kitchen shifts tomorrow because there was just no one on those shifts. Joke will be on me if they decide not to have lunch tomorrow on account of it being Sunday, but I doubt that’s going to happen. Which means he’s mine for lunch. Muahahahaha.

But I don’t like my chances overall. He’s still being really distant, but he’ll talk with M in greater detail. That’s a really bad sign. I’m tempted to beat myself up because every time I even think a guy’s interested who I also find interesting, I have to go after that — but I’m trying to go easy on myself anyway because who the fuck else should I go after, guys who show no interest in me at all? But then I run into this hot-and-cold shit. And he didn’t explicitly say he’s interested in me. There have just been little events that could be interpreted that way. But if that’s not what it is then I don’t know what he’s doing. I am so tired of that happening. If you’re gonna ignore me, ignore me all the fucking time. Quit with this on-and-off shit.

I can’t say things are better, but after being disappointed over S like that, I got to sit through a Q&A with Neighbor, and that was fun. He has this dry, sudden sense of humor where he will just say something mildly silly out of nowhere, and then several minutes later he will refer back to the earlier joke, and then a few hours later for a completely different thing he will call back to that original joke and it’s always good for a laugh. I still can’t quite get over that I liked this guy’s writing back in 2010 or earlier and here the fuck I am, sitting in on his Q&As and getting to see him every week and talk about whatever. And yet, my fondness for him is not all fangirling. I have too much of a thing for nerdboys and he is a big ol’ one. Except most nerdboys are sellouts to industrial civilization and he… went completely the other way. I wish I’d met him before I met all the CAW idiots. I’d have likely been a lot happier. Well… maybe. He has said he’s done a lot of work on himself in therapy. Maybe he was more of an asshole years ago. Well, he’s therefore less of one now. And we’re here now. And he’s one of the highlights of my week.

This time a bunch of people went to his house to see the bears, and I got to go along. He wanted me to walk his dogs. [smack] (not really) I am not going to pretend it wasn’t a bit of salve to the ego to be able to think, “Yeah, I get to see this all the time,” meaning hanging out with him, being at his house, seeing the bears, and all of it. Then there was this little moment where I remarked to him that he looked exhausted and he said no, he was only a little tired, and then something I didn’t catch in all the people noise but he looked a bit rueful, and I said in haste, “I know that sounded bad,” and he said “no,” and I said, “what did you say?” and he said, “Thank you for noticing.” It’s like we have hit this milestone where there’s actually been a little bit of energy exchange now, not just us off by our isolated little selves throwing words at one another from across a gulf.

Or this is just him thinking he’s supposed to respond that way and it’ll go back to the mutual isolation. Guess we’ll have to see.

And there’s still the huge Damocles question hanging over everything: are he and L a thing?

I ended up seeing the inside of his little cabin tonight. So, when his mother bought the land he now lives on, there was this little cabin which he lived in back then, and then there was her house which is the house he now lives in. When I first got here the cabin was being leased to some friends of his. Acquaintances? Something? I’d never seen the inside of it. It gets used to house guests now, either for L or for Neighbor, and — of all people — I walked M back from Neighbor’s meet-the-bears thing because she was staying in the cabin. Should have gotten her ass lost in the woods, but I’m being nice. More asshole me. Anyway, so I get in there and I look around and I see Neighbor’s work area from when he wrote most of his books, and… I saw three framed photos on the wall and realized they were from his high-jump days. Wow. All along that wall in his office nook are manuscripts and reference books and all sorts of stuff — it’s amazing. And, of course, L’s book that she got famous for. On his desk. Because of course.

M and another conference person walked me back to L’s land from the cabin. Now I fall down go boom. Zzzzz.