Whispering Frustrations Into The Ground: Dove's Vent Thread

Discussion in 'General Advice' started by turtleDove, Apr 15, 2016.

  1. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    So, uh, I don't actually know for sure if this belongs here? But I don't know where else it should go. (If I put it in the wrong place, can it please get moved to where it should go?)

    This is mostly intended to be one part recording what's going on in my life, so that I have a way of self-checking to see if I am currently that pic of "dog, sitting in cafe on fire, going 'this is fine'", and one part checking with other people to go "is this normal? What should I do?"
     
  2. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    So. Currently, things are...okay, I think? I'm getting over a cold, it seems like, which is probably why I've spent the last few days sleeping so much. (Although checking my fitbit, it only seemed like I slept for a long time today; I only got about seven hours.)

    I currently live in a tiny apartment with my matesprit and our cat. Cat is old and is an indoor kitty in equal parts due to "old" and "we're a stone's throw away from the road and it's pretty routine for people to race on this stretch of road".
    Matesprit and I have been together for the past ten years, and we're sort of poly. In the sense of "we tried to do a triad several times, but the majority of these attempts were during college and didn't really work out for various reasons, mostly relating to everyone involved being a teenage idiot". Currently, we're trying again. Enter, Anxious Seattle Hummingbird.

    Matesprit and Anxious Seattle Hummingbird have been friends for a long while, I think. I really only got introduced to her a few months ago, and Matesprit raised the question of her coming to visit us "some day". I assumed that "some day" would be, y'know, after she and I had actually gotten to know each other and figured out if we liked each other enough to try a visit - and I assumed that the visit would occur after we actually had a guest room. Both of which would be some distance in the future, and definitely well after the vacation we were getting ready for at that point. So I went "sure, why not".
    And then I get told "oh hey, she'll be arriving three days after we get back from vacation". Because of course that's the best time to have someone staying over.

    The visit went relatively well, and they're a pair but she and I aren't. Which I'm okay with, and I reassured Matesprit on that count and gave my blessing to their relationship. Or as much as it counts as a blessing when I'm pretty sure my exact words were "hey, if you want to get in a relationship with her, I'm okay with that" and my feelings on the matter are "you're a grown-ass adult, you get to make Choices regarding whether to stick it in the crazy". Because Anxious Seattle Hummingbird is cute; and fun to have in the kitchen; and good at Mario Kart; and she's as big a politics nerd as matesprit is. But: she is badly broken, in ways that make her - well, she's very anxious, to start with; she has Vriska's confidence and doesn't seem to be coping well with the fact that a) Matesprit is smarter than her and b) I'm genuinely pretty happy with my life as it is. She and I are both unemployed; I'm okay with this, and have various hobbies and any dissatisfaction with my life is pretty much situational. (I don't like the apartment we live in, for example, but we're not going to be here forever. We'll be somewhere less crap, at the very least, by this time next year.) She's...not okay with it, and apparently believes that being unemployed (or, in fact, employed in anything but the very specific and niche career she's idealized for herself) makes her a worthless person. So there's that.
    There's also multiple google-chats every day, but that part can be chalked up to new relationship energy. (Although matesprit's been having to call her in order to help her get to sleep at night, which feels weirdly co-dependent and...honestly, they and I are co-dependent enough as it is, and we're trying to fix that, they don't need to be adding more co-dependency into the mix.)

    The thing is, Matesprit has a "saving people" thing. The kind of "saving people" thing that has resulted in them co-ordinating rescues for people in shitty situations, including a couple of refugees. Which is a good thing to do, definitely, but has also resulted in them shelling out enough money over the years (a lot of which is just never going to get repaid) that they've noted we could have gotten started on investments if they hadn't done that. And Anxious Seattle Hummingbird is very, very broken, in the kinds of ways that require a professional to fix. She's getting a professional (thank fuck), but matesprit followed that up with "and if the therapist doesn't work out, I'll just have to do what I can because she'll probably never try another one" in the same breath; I pointed out that it can take a lot of time to find a therapist who clicks with you, and hopefully that'll help.

    And apparently she's been complaining to them that I haven't been talking to her. That I must hate her, because of this.
    I don't hate her. She's - vaguely annoying, at worst? She's a source of stress to matesprit, who's got enough shit to deal with already. She almost aggressively does not get why matesprit is with me when, paraphrase, "[Dove] is unemployed and was a call center drone before she lost her job" (she puts a lot of importance on Career and how what career you have marks how Good and Important you are); matesprit has explained that I have a job, technically, and that job is "keep the house clean and keep matesprit sane". And she's not helping there. Not that I'm stupid enough to say that to either of them.
    Mostly, I just...genuinely have no idea what the heck to talk to her about. I don't know how to talk to people about my interests if I don't know they're already interested! And the only common point of interest I know we have is matesprit. Which...yeah, that'd be awkward as hell to try. "Hey, so we both like this huge nerd and enjoy makeouts with them." It just feels obvious, and like it'd end badly? And also there's the feel of "who is this person and why am I supposed to be friends with them"; up until I pointed out that they were doing this, Matesprit's been pushing at me to be friends with her. I think one, or both, of them have a bit of Geek Social Fallacies, where everyone they like needs to be able to get along and be besties. And...I barely know her. It took Matesprit and I months to get to the point where I thought of them as a good friend, much less a significant other, and we were talking nearly every day because we RP'd together!
     
  3. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    Frustrated, because Matesprit has promised that we're going to have a seder, since I'm trying to get back into being a bit more observant. And delays keep popping up, followed by "we'll do it tomorrow, okay?" And Passover ends tomorrow.
    Yesterday and the day before, it was that Matesprit's under the weather. (Which they still are, and I don't think them stressing themselves out by piling on more work and helping Anxious Seattle Hummingbird set up some online work is actually helping with getting better, especially when they've got a nasty cough and about half their job is vocal recordings.) Today, it's that Anxious Seattle Hummingbird got her IUD replaced and is in pain. Which is absolutely an unpredictable thing which could not have been expected to happen today of all days; it definitely wouldn't have taken setting up an appointment and there would be no reason for her to mention it being a thing which was going to happen until after it had already happened. And of course the only option is for Matesprit to sit on the phone with Anxious Seattle Hummingbird for the rest of the day, barring breaks to go get the last of what we needed for the seder.

    A large part of why I'm frustrated, I think, is because she keeps treating them as a means of soothing herself (or at least this is how it's looking to me). And - no, fuck you, get a better means of soothing. Matesprit was actually getting less anxious and better about being a workaholic before she showed up. And now she has to talk with them on the phone every day. Multiple times a day. And if she doesn't get a response, she proceeds to freak out and blow up their phone with "are you okay" "are you there" type messages.
    Let's be clear: Matesprit's mom doesn't do that. She used to, and we trained her out of it, because that's not healthy or okay.

    I'm just. I keep feeling like I'm seeing lots of little red flags. But I don't know if I actually am, or if I'm perceiving things to be worse than they actually are, or if I'm being jealous or what.
    But I'm not sure I'm imagining it when she calls while we're getting dinner ready and preparing to sit down to watch Markiplier over dinner together, and she has an anxious-hissie over how (as best I could tell, considering I was only hearing one half of the conversation) Matesprit wasn't listening attentively enough to her going over business ideas with them. When Matesprit had already explained that they were in the middle of cooking dinner. Cue Matesprit pass-agging at her and then deciding that they'd rather watch anime with a friend online, instead of watching Markiplier with me. (I ended up watching Markiplier alone.)

    If they try to put it off again tomorrow, I swear, I might bite them, I'm that frustrated.
     
  4. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    It occurs to me that I can't tell time.

    Well, okay, that's an exaggeration. I am perfectly capable of looking at a digital clock and figuring out, from the read-out, what time it is. I can even read an analog clock!
    What I can't do is actually do that whole thing where you can tell when time is passing. Which is...apparently a thing? That people can do? idk. I've always relied pretty heavily on environmental cues to remind my brain "hey, time is passing!"

    Which...makes going "okay, I will get up in five minutes and do Thing Which Needs Doing" a bit of an issue, if I don't have alarms set to remind me "hey, it's been five minutes". Because yes, I can look at the little clock on my computer screen and tell that it's now 11 pm, but if I didn't remember to check before, when I said "I will do the thing five minutes from now", it's...just a number to me. A number which means it's Really Late At Night, but still just a number.

    This has made things a bit awkward in the past - I missed most of the special ed math classes in elementary school, for example, because I got told "they'll be at this time" and then everyone just sort of assumed that I could tell when it was time to leave the main classroom and go do math. Which, not so much (and this was complicated by the fact that I was socially awkward and my response to being unsure of if I was supposed to do something was to sit there like a deer in headlights until someone resolved the issue for me). I missed most of the music lessons, too, for the same reason.
     
  5. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    Okay, marking this down because it's one of those things that might otherwise might be difficult for me to remember how often it's happening. (I don't think it's often. I sure as heck hope it isn't.)
    Started coming down with matesprit's godawful hellcold just as they claim to be on the mend. Mostly it's just been quiet misery and a lot of kleenex; I did have to toss my pillowcase into the wash because my nose leaked all over it during the night, but the only really awful part up until now was waking up sick. Because I woke up with a throat that felt tight and sore and dry, and this was similar enough to the one time I had a serious allergic reaction that I actually had the thought "oh god, am I dying?" (A cup of water resolved that no, probably not dying.)

    Within the past - hour or so, I think? Maybe two hours? I've had what I thought was just gas, but turns out no, also chest pains. I've taken two antacid tablets and the pain's finally starting to go away (about fifteen minutes after I took them, I think? I wish I could actually tell time). And I didn't throw up shortly after taking the tablets, which suggests to me that it isn't another gallbladder attack (assuming that's why I threw them up last time something like this happened).

    I would very much like for the option to sign up for a robot body to show up any day now, plz. Organic bodies are proving to be very painful and confusing.
     
  6. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    ...and the cat decided that tonight is the night to finally teach Matesprit a lesson about leaving unattended glasses of liquid near their laptop. She tipped a full glass of apple juice onto their laptop, as it was in the middle of uploading a file for their work.

    The laptop may or may not be fried. The file definitely didn't upload. The cat is sitting on an armchair, washing herself smugly.

    (The wedding invitations, at least, didn't get soaked. Neither did Matesprit's work microphone. And if we need to, we can take the laptop to Best Buy and have them pull what they can off of the hard drive and just replace the laptop; it's an old one, so it's more expensive to repair it than it would be to replace it. I'm currently wishing I'd been confident enough to just shut it off when I saw it trying to restart, though.)
     
  7. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    Also writing down what I remember of a dream I had this morning, because it was cool and I'd rather not forget it: I was the Avatar (I think? Someone magical/spiritual, and also politically important) and I was dealing with a pharaoh who was my best friend, and somehow my dad died. But the pharaoh had good news: he could help. He couldn't exactly bring dad back, but he could do Spiritual Stuff I Fuzzily Remember that I think mostly involved embalming the corpse, and then dad would be a mummy in a sarcophagus (which my image of was shaped basically like Bog-Standard Computer Game Crate) and could talk to us from beyond the grave.
    Basically, my dad was now a ghost in a box. And Best Friend Pharaoh walked me through the process as he did it to his own grandma (I...think? Old lady who was good with herbalism), and explained how this was a culturally important thing to him, and how all his ancestors were ghosts-in-boxes for as long as they felt it was necessary to hang around and watch over their descendants.

    Also in this dream, my dad was apparently Good Anime Dad and thus someone I wanted to hang around for at least long enough that my mom and sister could come to terms with everything and say goodbye. And then I got handed the crown jewels (except that Grandma Ghostbox put the real ones inside her box where they'd be safe from being stolen, and I showed the replicas around to my council as a proof that see, the pharaoh really is an ally and really does trust us, and then went to go put them in the vault. I walked there with my mom, and we found my sister napping in the vault room (which looked like a bunkroom in a ship) and then I had to explain that oh, dad's dead but he's sort of not really gone, and mom was a little upset that she hadn't known sooner and I was explaining that it'd been a busy few days and really, we'd only done this yesterday so I was telling her as soon as I actually could, which is about when I woke up.

    ...my dreamspace is weird sometimes.
     
  8. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    In case people don't want to see it, I'mma spoiler cut this bit because it's talking about some things to do with the Fort McMurray fires.

    In reasonably upbeat news, my cousin has successfully gotten out of the Fort McMurray area with her dog and is safely in Nova Scotia with her parents. Matesprit's aunt flies in either late last night or some time today, and his mom is flying out Tuesday.

    There continue, so far (knocking on wood) to be no casualties due to the fire although there was one car crash (which mom-in-law and aunt apparently had a front-view seat to) and a few people who went "hey, a mandatory evacuation means there's nothing really serious to worry about" (no, really: there've been two groups of people who've been discovered by emergency responders to be still in the city and one was a family with small kids, and the parents' response on why they were still there was "we didn't think it was something serious". The other group consists of an elderly man who may well have just gone "fuck it, if the place burns, I go with it".). Unfortunately, the fires are too big to actually put out at this point, short of an act of god (it's at the point of forming its own weather system) and they're having to do damage control instead while they hope that it burns itself out.

    I'm also so tired of being sick already. I'm taking rowleyman cough syrup, which is awful and should not work but apparently does help. That or the sheer awfulness is stunning the worst symptoms into submission for a while.
     
  9. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    ...it is probably a bad sign if I'm wondering if really disliking Anxious Seattle Hummingbird right now makes me a bad person.

    Matesprit found another person they like and want to add to the group, and I'm actually properly meeting this one. Puppycat is nice and apparently a lot like me, and I've enjoyed talking to her so far. Anxious Seattle Hummingbird did not take the news of New Person well.
    Is not taking the news well, rather. She's been throwing an anxious fit at Matesprit over the phone for most of the day now, and (going by Matesprit's half of the dialogue) has thrown down an ultimatum over the idea of adding another person to the group. Apparently (and this had never come up that I'd heard of, and Matesprit's half of the dialogue indicates that this is the first they were hearing of it too), Anxious Seattle Hummingbird is Very Much Not Okay with being in a relationship with someone who has more than two primary partners. "I will leave" levels of not-okay.

    And Matesprit practically bent over backwards trying to soothe her and calm her down, and reassure her that she's not less important, that sure, he'll only have two primaries and she's one. :| (Puppycat is okay with this, but I'm really not happy about the ultimatum and I've stated as much in private Skypechat with Matesprit.)

    What I'm most disliking right now, though, is that she's adding more stress to their life. At a time when they're not only already stressed (between getting ready for us to move out to B.C., because the job market here is abysmal and (more importantly) we'd be closer to most of our friendgroup that's in Canada and also in an environment where we're allowed to be more open about not fitting the gender binary and it'd be easier for me to practice my faith and do things like have seders; getting ready to deal with their mom, who is flying in tomorrow; and wedding stuff; and work), but also really sick with this cold.
    And being stressed actually aggravates the cough they have, and they've noticed this. And they've been coughing much, much worse during this call.

    I don't like her. I was willing to give her a chance, but - I do not like ultimatums. They end any chance of discussion, because you can't go anywhere after "it's either X or Y, choose". And they create the risk of, well - if the ultimatum is "it's either I'm your primary partner, or we're not together" then...what if the choice is "okay, I guess we're breaking up, then"?
    And she seems to have no ability to self-soothe, which I find concerning, especially since it feels like she's using Matesprit to soothe herself with.
     
  10. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    Dropped a bunch of words about this in Matesprit's skype. They're napping right now, but they'll see it when they wake up. We'll see how this goes.
     
  11. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    I'm over the worst of the cold, I think. Still a bit of sinus congestion, and I'm coughing occasionally, but nothing as bad as what I was dealing with a few days ago.

    Matesprit and I have talked about Anxious Hummingbird's behaviour, and they've talked with her about it. Her behaviour deteriorated further, and Matesprit called her on it (allegedly) and she's allegedly improving her behaviour significantly. The most I've seen is that she'll actually talk to me in Skype now. Mostly to the tune of "is Matesprit okay".
    (Yes, Anxious Seattle Hummingbird was refusing to even talk with me before. Apparently she finds me scary. idek.)

    Meanwhile, Matesprit has attempted to delay the wedding, decided to cancel that decision after realizing that my folks have already booked time off for it, and is now going "we shouldn't get it officially filed because that leaves us with an opening to help friends in America if they need to flee to avoid Trump".
    Which is sure a thing they've said there.

    Like. On the one hand, I can see their point? And they've recently admitted that they've got a lot of anxiety in regards to their own self-worth (they don't feel like they have much), and their personal attractiveness and whether their partners actually like and care about them. Which...explains the trend of "I shall rescue people in need, no matter what the cost".
    But I'm just sort of feeling like...a) Trump getting elected is not actually that likely, and b) even if Trump gets elected, I'm pretty sure we can get our friends out of there anyways. And we'd only be able to get two people out, with green card marriages and...honestly, I'm just sort of wondering if now's the point where I need to sit down with them and ask if they actually want to get married.
     
  12. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    And right now, I'm cringing in horror because I just discovered that three different things of fruit (one of which wasn't even identifiable any more) had not been thrown out, like I'd assumed when they'd apparently vanished from the countertop.
    Instead, they'd been subsumed into the drift of junk food that's also on the counter, and just...sat there. For long enough that the three mandarin oranges that were left in one of the bags looked more like large olives, and the unidentifiable one was just sort of...festering.

    All of the fruit's been tossed, I'm seriously considering tossing the bag of onions that was sitting nearby, and I've scrubbed the area with lysol wipes as thoroughly as I can. And then I scrubbed the hell out of my hands and gargled with mouthwash.
    I'm most distressed, I think, by the fact that I only discovered this because I was digging through the pile to figure out where the bag of Werthers candies had gotten to. If it hadn't been for that, they could've kept sitting there for longer.
    (I'm at least glad that Saint Mom-in-law didn't find them. Augh.)
     
  13. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    Okay, it's been a while since my last post. Since May, we've: moved cross-country! We now live in Victoria, B.C. with a friend and...well, what we thought was going to be another friend or another member of our polycule. We've also gotten married; the wedding went off fantastically, and my sister (who was my maid of honor) was amazing and helped wrangle a lot of little details (like making sure that neither of my uncles gave speeches, and doing my nails, hair, and makeup).
    And we're hopefully done with the Saga of Gay Dog.

    So. Venting time. Gay Dog is one of Matesprit's rescues, basically. (Scrolling back up, I originally referred to her as Puppycat.) She was (from what she told them) in dire straits; not enough money to continue staying where she was, not enough money to buy essential medications, bad bad situation all around. So Matesprit, of course, goes "hey, if you want, you can move in with us when we move to Victoria, and Pony Grocer and I will help you get back on your feet so that you're financially independent and you don't have to worry about ending up in this situation again." (Pony Grocer is the friend we moved in with.) Gay Dog goes "sure, that would be great" and when the time comes, she flies out to Cape Breton so that Matesprit isn't driving the car and all our belongings that we can fit into it across Canada on their own. I fly out after they get in, having shoved the rest of what I can into suitcases, and bringing the cat with me as a carry-on.

    Folks who've been reading will recall that Gay Dog / Puppycat and Hummingbird didn't get along. Turns out, Hummingbird's "I think this is a bad idea, maybe you shouldn't" was her trying to politely warn us "hey, I think this person is seriously unstable based on cues that are pretty damn subtle, you should really avoid moving in with them or being in a relationship with them" but she was willing to accept us disbelieving her, since - well. There wasn't much she could point to that didn't make her look biased against Gay Dog, really.
    Turns out, Gay Dog is probably bipolar or something similar to that. And she was on an upward swing during the six months Matesprit was talking to her, and she built them up in her head and put them on a pedestal and then reacted <i>very</i> badly when Matesprit was, well, human. (They refer to themself as a pug. It's self-deprecating, but - it also does describe them.)

    Like, accusing them of having lured her here under false pretenses; trying to rewrite history and insist that no, she never said she needed to move out immediately the day we got back from our wedding (requiring me to practically sit on Matesprit so that they didn't go charging off to help; they went the next day, on a full night's sleep, instead); attempting to guilt-trip at every opportunity over the fact that she didn't get to sort through her stuff and figure out what of her clothes she wanted to bring and what she wanted to get rid of (despite having had weeks to do that anyways); being aggressively hostile to Hummingbird for having the temerity to exist in the same house and be visibly Relationship with Matesprit; trying to guilt-trip anyone she could into reassuring her that she was loved and desired and that she hadn't fucked up. That sort of "very badly".
    And then escalating to vaguetweeting about how she felt tricked, how she didn't feel safe, how she felt like she was Being Badly Treated (including instances of "I don't have a bed" - we were giving her space in our bed so that she didn't have to sleep on an air mattress in her own home, up until we realized that this was setting a bad precedent). Basically, accusing Matesprit on Twitter of abusing her.

    This resulted in an emergency trip from one of Gay Dog's six girlfriends, and a talk about how Gay Dog had placed Matesprit on a pedestal in her head, and how her behaviour over the past few days had been exceptionally not-okay. (Not mentioned, but included in my personal tally of not-okay behaviour was how she sulked and acted extremely put-out by the fact that Hummingbird was present on Matesprit's birthday, when we did a household outing to Boston Pizza. Like, how dare Matesprit choose to have both of their partners present for an occasion like that. I also really didn't like the fact that she'd tried to pull me into the guilt-tripping, and the three of us (Hummingbird, Matesprit, and I) knew she'd been eavesdropping on us as we discussed, late at night in bed, how to deal with this sudden shitstorm. (We knew because she was not as careful as she thought she was being, when she closed the door afterwards.))
    There were some issues with Gay Dog had invited the girlfriend over - primarily, that Gay Dog didn't actually give anyone except Matesprit a heads-up about it, Matesprit had to pass that information on to the rest of the household. The rest of us were "okay, if having her girlfriend over helps her freak out less, cool, but it'd be nice if she gives us some more warning next time".

    So. Things generally settle for - I want to say "a month", but honestly more like a couple weeks? We go from near the end of July to mid-to-late August; Gay Dog and Pony Grocer both attend PonyCAN, with Gay Dog making the trip via internet charity (her work at the place in prior years + internet friends got her a ticket in and a place to crash). And when they get back, Matesprit hands her a piece of recording work to do, because one of their promises for bringing her here was "hey, we'll help you get on your feet and financially independent" and they genuinely meant it, they really did want to help her get to a point where she isn't relying on the charity and generosity of others in order to not be literally living on the streets.
    Gay Dog does nothing with the file for a few days, and then gets pretty terrible Con Crud (and, I'm pretty sure, passes it to the rest of the household, but that was basically inevitable) and cannot actually record after that point; she has still not really properly recovered (she claims; she is still coughing, so who knows). Matesprit acknowledges that hey, being sick happens. But the recording is a time-sensitive thing (they wanted to be able to have it posted for the full moon), so after a couple weeks, they take it back and record it themself.

    Matesprit ponders, while Gay Dog is gone, why she can't rely on her twitter followers to get rent via donations; I have to explain that she's using the "oh no, I can't go do / do X...I'm short on cash" method of garnering pity donations, and that this makes it a good means for short-term issues (or issues that are moderately frivolous; she didn't need to go to that con, for example) but a very bad one for any sort of long-term survival.

    A bit after Pony Friend and Gay Dog get back from the con, Gay Dog invites her girlfriend over again. (The same one from the first visit.) She gives us plenty of warning this time, but makes sudden changes to when her girlfriend is arriving - which wouldn't be a problem, except that Matesprit is supposed to pick her up. And the changes are made with very little warning, and the new arrival time is right in the middle of when we'd told Gay Dog we were going to be going out on a date. So the date gets a raincheck, because we're not doing the thing where we have to cut it off mid-way to go pick someone up. And Gay Dog keeps trying to go "if it's too much trouble for Matesprit to go pick up GD Girlfriend, I can take the car and pick her up myself, I don't want to be a burden."
    Which. No. Fuck you, Gay Dog, no. Borrowing the car is a much bigger ask than "hey, can you pick up my girlfriend". We did not, at that point, have the insurance switched over so that we were insured as residents of B.C. (B.C. government runs its own insurance provider, and it's mandatory for residents to be signed up with it); we hadn't gotten the plates changed; Gay Dog's driver's license (as far as I'm aware) is technically a form of learner's permit, which means that the owner of the car needs to be right there with her if she's driving anywhere; and the car also hadn't yet been switched over from Matesprit's mom's name (because she basically just gave Matesprit her old car, our old car went to a different family member, and she got a new one with oil field money). Basically: if Gay Dog had gotten into an accident or even just been pulled over for speeding, it could've fucked Matesprit over badly.
    Plus, there's a significant element of trust in giving the keys to the only vehicle of the house to someone. And Gay Dog hadn't really been doing much to indicate that that much trust was due to her, with how she'd been treating Matesprit openly at that point.

    Matesprit is slightly late getting out the door to go pick up Gay Dog's Girlfriend. I assume because they got caught up with work (like the workaholic they are) and say as much when Gay Dog comes to ask me about it; I don't think it's significant at all (beyond that Gay Dog seems to be trying to find a reason to be upset at Matesprit), because Matesprit isn't always great at keeping track of time and the timing for when they needed to head out had been shifted on them a couple times by that point. GD Girlfriend ends up not waiting too long and walks in the door a full hour earlier than initially planned.
    I find out later that Gay Dog had gone outside, ostensibly to meet her girlfriend, but it seemed like actually to try and interrogate Matesprit about why they weren't promptly out the door to go pick up GD Girlfriend. I don't notice because I have headphones on to watch Pony Grocer's livestream; I end up going to bed part-way through it, because I find myself literally falling asleep at the keyboard. (Not that the livestream isn't interesting; I'm just tired, and still pretty sick at the time.)

    I wake up to Matesprit distressed and upset; Gay Dog had cornered them as they were leaving the bathroom and blocked the exit from it, and demanded an apology for...something. I wasn't especially clear on it at the time, and I was busy being - is there a word that combines the emotions of 'livid' and 'amused'? - that she was demanding apologies from them at all, considering her behaviour towards them. She refused to move until after being asked twice to do so. Pony Grocer cannot mediate until a couple hours later, because he's still in the middle of his livestream (and he isn't about to stop that just because Gay Dog doesn't know how to behave appropriately); he has to explain to her, once he's free, that it is extremely inappropriate to corner people like that. She attempts to play misery poker, and fails due to Pony Grocer having none of it.

    The visit, in as far as we can tell, goes mostly uneventfully from there; we discover, after Gay Dog's girlfriend has left again, that there was another tweet from Gay Dog. A tweet that manages to combine misgendering Matesprit (after she had already been caught and called out on it before, and told not to do that) and accusing them of having lured her here for sex purposes, and for the hat trick, stating that Matesprit had turned abusive after she had refused their advances. (There was, at most, heavy flirtation and makeouts. This occurred before Matesprit became aware that Gay Dog was not in a state where she was emotionally ready for that, and they stopped all such behaviour once they realized.)
    This occurs after Gay Dog has already nearly interrupted Matesprit's work; they do recordings and, periodically, do live sessions where they will chat with a client. They notified the whole household, in the Telegram chatroom set up for the house, that they were going to be doing a series of live sessions that day and when they would start and stop, and when they'd be on break; they do their recording work in our bedroom, because it's a reasonably private space with a door that closes and it doesn't require blocking off access to anywhere that should be public use. Gay Dog knocks on the door and asks if they're in the middle of a live session, claiming that she hadn't wanted to interrupt and they weren't sure when the live sessions were happening. Despite...having just as much access to the household chatroom as the rest of us.
    Pony Grocer is, by this point, pretty pissed off; his requirement, if he's going to help someone, is that they be able to follow simple instructions. Gay Dog was directly told not to misgender Matesprit where we could see it (under the decision of "we can't police what we can't see; if she's doing it in her private chats, we can't do anything about that"), and to not make any tweets implying or stating libel about Matesprit being abusive, and that Pony Grocer had one rule when she moved in: do not disrupt the money-pug. Matesprit is the money-pug, because their work brings in the most income of the household and is the reason why I can afford not to try and get back out into the workforce, and is why we could afford to house and feed Gay Dog when she has no income.
    She disrupted the money-pug and managed to get lucky enough that she hadn't actually interrupted a live session.

    Plans begin to be made to get Gay Dog moved somewhere else, as quickly as is feasible. Pony Grocer takes lead on managing these plans, because Matesprit is already stressed and should also have as little to do with Gay Dog at this point as is possible.
    Matesprit has, by this point, become uncomfortable with even coming out of our room; they feel like they cannot enjoy the living room, like they need to be extremely careful with their baths. (Both Gay Dog and Matesprit use baths as a form of de-stressing. Gay Dog routinely takes up the bathroom for hours at a time, taking a cold bath and then a shower afterwards, so that she can dissociate in the bath; I should have, but did not, point out that she might want to look into alternate forms of stress relief, since the apartment has only the one bathroom and it isn't reasonable for one person to be taking up the only bathroom for actual hours. Gay Dog taking up the bathroom for so long would be less of a problem if it weren't for the fact that - as mentioned - only one bathroom, and she keeps 'encouraging' people to just walk in if they need the bathroom while she's using it. Despite various soft 'no's indicating that no one else in the house is comfortable with that.)

    Gay Dog continues tweeting. We find out, through this, that she and Gay Dog Girlfriend plan to try for a green card marriage. There are several quite important flaws in this plan, among which: Gay Dog is openly poly on her social media, and Gay Dog openly admits on her twitter feed that the marriage would be a sham for the purposes of getting her a green card. (Other flaws include the fact that Gay Dog is attempting to get disability in Canada, is homeless and unemployed, and would require significant medical stuff; any of these would be sufficient to get her application given a very close look, if not outright denied.) None of us are, at this point, in any mood to point the flaws out to Gay Dog; we just want her out of the house and no longer within the ambit of our responsibility.
    She implies, repeatedly, that she is being forced to stay in her room and that she is being denied food; neither of these is true. None of us are saying or even implying that she can't come out, and Pony Grocer does routinely invite her out of her room to join in social things. Likewise, there is plenty of food in the house - quite a lot of it minimal-spoons, due to that being an issue everyone in the house has - and she's been told at several points that the food is for everyone, we're not doing anything to keep her from eating or even making something of her own to eat from the available supplies. We just...don't always do communal meal-times (which she is apparently big on?) and we're not always super-enthused to make a thing with her.

    Gay Dog's new passport arrives. This is the final thing we needed, before the plans to get her out and anywhere else could go into motion. Pony Grocer informs Gay Dog Girlfriend that Gay Dog needs to be out of here sooner rather than later, when's the earliest eta for that being doable, and is told that the end of next week is the soonest it'd be possible. It is Monday. We do not expect her gone until next Friday. We are willing to wait.
    Tuesday, we go out for dinner - just Matesprit, Pony Grocer, Hummingbird and I. Matesprit wants to do a do-over of their birthday dinner. We have a pleasant meal; note is taken of the fact that Gay Dog is still making abuse allegations on Twitter and is now accusing the whole house of being horrible to her. When we go home, Pony Grocer mentions to Gay Dog Girlfriend that it would be nice if, sometime after she leaves, Gay Dog retracted those allegations; he explains how it looks to someone from outside - it looks like Gay Dog means literally everyone in the whole house is abusive to her. Gay Dog Girlfriend attempts to defend Gay Dog, but agrees that it's unfair to paint Pony Grocer as abusive when he's been so helpful to Gay Dog.
     
  14. Void

    Void on discord. Void#4020

    jesus christ

    witnessed dove that's some major bullshit

    (i can delete this if you want :V)
     
  15. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    Okay this got...really long, due to the fact that I kept writing a bit, tabbing away (so that Gay Dog didn't see me writing, because it's rude to vent-post about someone who's in the same dang room as you and my computer's set up in the kitchen area), forgetting that I hadn't finished writing, and then coming back to it. And by then, more stuff had happened and I went "well, I should cover that too" and that dragged things out further, and...well. I'll finish it here and then sum up a bit.


    Wednesday, I wake up to "get dressed and keep the cat locked in the room, there's strangers walking in and out taking Gay Dog's stuff out". Gay Dog, it seems, found out about Pony Grocer's request and flipped her shit about it. She contacted two of her friends to come over at 9 AM and start moving her stuff out of here; she did not, however, tell us or even Pony Grocer that they were going to be coming over. Pony Grocer reasons that it's because she is deeply paranoid and assumes that if we know her plans, we will try to stop them.
    We do not want to stop her from moving out, trust me.
    Pony Grocer goes with Gay Dog on the bus to get a U-Haul so that she can get her stuff off the island and back to where she came from; Pony Grocer pays for the U-Haul and ensures that he will be covered no matter what happens to it. He helps Gay Dog and her friends pack up her room and move all of her stuff out of the house; he ensures that she doesn't "accidentally" take anything that isn't hers, and that nothing of hers is left behind - the only things we need to deal with are ensuring that two pieces of mail she expects are forwarded to her when they arrive. Hummingbird and I sit and watch, and do not touch anything of Gay Dog's; however much I might want to help - some of the stuff is heavy and one of the friends seems to be struggling with it - it would just give Gay Dog an opening to accuse me (or anyone else except Pony Grocer) of having done terrible, nefarious things to her possessions.
    Gay Dog yells, as she is packing, that she knows Hummingbird made a joke about trying to poison her and that it isn't funny, and that she has screenshots. Matesprit and Hummingbird are both confused. I suddenly realize why, for the past few days, I have been getting up to find my computer fully active, despite being quite sure it was in sleep mode when I packed up for the night; Gay Dog has been snooping on my computer. And in order to take screenshots of the conversation that joke happened in (it was a bad joke about how Hummingbird wasn't sure what the base metal of the silver-plate teapot we found in a thriftshop was, and we weren't sure if it would be safe to drink tea made in it, and it was pretty immediately shot down as being in poor taste), Gay Dog would have had to pull up the Telegram chat (because I always tab out of my messenger clients when I'm not actively talking or reading something someone else has said, so that I don't miss things and need to scroll back) and access a private conversation.

    I am furious, and I feel violated - I had assumed that Gay Dog would understand enough to know that you do not snoop on other people's computers. But I had forgotten that Gay Dog insists that if a conversation is about her, it must involve her - even if it really, really shouldn't, even if it means that people cannot vent and decompress. I had forgotten that Gay Dog is deeply paranoid. And I had not realized that Gay Dog assumes boundaries only apply if she's the one who set them down.
    I am very, very glad that she will be gone. I am extremely glad that she will have no reasonable excuse to ever come back here, and that we are never letting her back in.

    Gay Dog attempts, at the last minute, to throw even Pony Grocer under the bus as one of her abusers and has to bite her tongue when he pays the $230 ticket for the U-Haul to get on the ferry.
    She leaves us a box of Teavana teas, which she had brought originally as a housewarming gift (and then never given anyone), and a note inside it. The note calls out everyone except for Pony Grocer as being terrible and abusive; Pony Grocer and Matesprit are amused that the only things she can find to slander me with are things she explicitly had to go digging for - things she overheard while eavesdropping on private conversations, or while snooping on my computer.

    Matesprit and Hummingbird keep an eye on her Twitter feed, just as a precaution; it's the sensible thing to do, when someone has accused you - repeatedly - of being an abusive monster. Within eight hours, she's complaining about the new place she's staying at; she's staying with the friends who helped her move out of here, and they're vegan. She complains that there is nothing she can eat in the house and requires them to buy her chicken nuggets. She takes up vaping in their non-smoking apartment. She stays up late and then complains that she hasn't slept properly / at all in days, and is loud at all times, and that her hosts' sleep schedules don't sync with hers. She complains that she's broke, and then states that she's going out to a bar to get a beer and onion rings. One of her other girlfriends is visiting her on exactly no notice to the kind vegans who're putting her up.

    In retrospect, are there things any of us could've done to keep this whole thing from happening? No, not really. Gay Dog flipped out that first night because she wasn't getting cuddles right when she wanted them; Matesprit didn't cuddle her because they were exhausted, and wanted some space to rest, because they'd just spent 22 hours packing her stuff and driving her from the mainland town she'd been living in, to the ferry, to the house here. If she hadn't blown up then, it would've happened sometime further down the road and it would've been worse.

    And I really do think it would've been worse, because stuff's turned up on the social media of hers that we're keeping an eye on for precautionary reasons along the lines of "oh hey, she was libeling Matesprit way earlier than we thought she was", "oh hey, she was flipping between 'I will need to cal 911 if Matesprit does anything' and 'I will do a murder if Matesprit touches me' mid-sentence to people she was talking to".

    We were civil, even after she flipped out that first night. We decided "hey, moving's stressful, let's take a few months and see if things work out" and after about a month and a half Pony Grocer had enough of a read on her to realize that no, this wasn't workable. (This is being stressed to Matesprit, to keep them from blaming themself for having been the one to bring Gay Dog into the house.) We were civil and we were decent roommates - we didn't give her hugs on demand, no, but that wasn't something we were required to do; we didn't bow to her every whim - but also not something we needed to do; we set reasonable boundaries and expected her to respect them. We didn't invite her to everything, but we didn't deliberately exclude her from everything either. There was food available, no one breached the privacy of her room (which is how she got away with hoarding a bunch of the dishes in there, which I'd suspected was happening due to the count for the mid-sized plates being off; I did not give enough fucks to start anything over it when we were already trying to keep the peace until she was out) and no one forced her to do anything. She didn't like Homestuck...or MLP...or Undertale, so we shrugged and refrained from displaying anything that'd make her uncomfortable in the common areas.
    She flipped her shit over the fact that we weren't bowing to her every whim and giving her physical affection and verbal reassurance whenever she demanded it - like she'd been getting in her last place (where her roommate had lived in hopes of being in a relationship with her) and every place she'd lived at prior to us (where she'd been in a relationship, or had some kind of understanding with people there). And she proceeded to claim, to anyone in her social network who would listen, that she was being abused.

    The thing is, she's going to claim that every single time she's in a situation where things aren't going exactly how she wants them. And eventually, her social network's going to twig to that. I figure it's a matter of time before she pushes the nice vegan couple to the point where they're uncomfortable with her doing something and they set a boundary, and she flips out about it - and then moves somewhere else. (Somewhere inside Canada, of necessity. She stated on social media that she tried to cross the border a few days ago and got temporarily banned from the States.) She is, really, her own worst enemy at this point - and I've lost any sympathy I might've had, beyond "I hope she eventually gets to a point where she can get well and get better and be happy".
     
  16. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    Nah. I was finishing typing up the remainder and got distracted. (Got hit with a nasty cold that's lingering in the form of a cough that's not going away for love or cough medicine.) This bullshit's what's been sapping my spoons to do anything much lately, though, besides "knit and watch Markiplier, and do some housework".

    It is so, so good to have her gone, though. I did a cleansing on her room, a few days after, with advice from Zuki, because I wanted to make sure that she left nothing behind. (Matesprit insisted on calling it an exorcism, I kept correcting them; exorcisms are for if the person's dead. She ain't dead, she just gone.)

    I stg, though, I think have witnessed Heries fucking Croton in human form. Because jegus fuck, she just keeps doing shit that won't help her situation, and flipping between "I am a poor victim, save me" and "I am big and tough and can handle anything".
     
    • Like x 1
  17. Void

    Void on discord. Void#4020

    Jesus Christ the only positive I can say there is "at least she literally wasn't Heries, because then someone would be dead"

    That's terrible dude, at least she's gone now. Hopefully you all get some rest
     
  18. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    Yeah. She's gone and honestly, the worst she can do at this point is continue saying shit that's 1) provably false, or (if true) doesn't help her claims at all (like, yes, she's got screencaps of that joke, but - good job, you have screencaps of an explicitly private conversation that you weren't part of), and 2) is going to eventually burn her social credibility.

    Matesprit's de-stressing and doing much better now that she's gone (this is the first time they've actually been significantly stress-free since starting law school, I think). And I've been working on de-stressing, too, and (up till I got hit by this cold) doing a bit more housework than I had been. We're mostly getting amusement out of keeping an eye on the social media at this point; "she had the vegans do what?" and "how the heck does she plan to go visit anyone in the States any time soon when she's banned from crossing the border for at least two and a half months". (Yeah, she's...openly stating that she plans on going to visit one of her girlfriends down there. We know she's going to do something stupid, the betting's just on what exactly. Matesprit's got money on her hiding in a car trunk. Whatever it is, if she gets caught? It's at least a ten-year ban, all for the fact that she couldn't follow simple instructions.)
     
  19. Void

    Void on discord. Void#4020

    that's. welp. wow. fucking incredible. glad you guys are getting the chance to de-stress though
     
  20. Chiomi

    Chiomi Master of Disaster

    Wow, I am so glad for you that that's over.

    (also, hey! Victoria! I loved the city when I lived there. If you are ever in the mood for an accessible and queer-friendly piece of art nonsense, the Serious Coffee in Cook St Village is once a month, kind of cool, not too loud, and aggressively fragrance-free.)
     
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