Bloody Roses

An extremely toxic friendship I had with two other people ended four years ago in circumstances best described as volcanic. None of us were innocent, we did wrong by one another in various ways, so the results were inevitable in that regard.

However, while my behaviour was certainly not good, one of them intionally targeted me at an extremely vulnerable time in my life. I was publicly struggling with suicidal ideation. We were pulling apart for various reasons, and I know we would’ve gone our seperate ways regardless. But they still deliberately struck at my most vulnerable.

One wrote a screed about what a terrible person I was, accusing me of something I never even did (I won’t bog this down with details, but essentially I wondered if a woman was pregnant. Not because I thought she looked fat, just thinking that something seemed different. It was crass speculation, and I deserved a kick up the arse for it, but I didn’t deserve to be called a fat shaming misogynist either. Especially given I was anorexic from my teens till my late twenties and very conscious of not making anyone feel bad about their weight).

It wasn’t so much a slap in the face so much as being run down by a freight train. Perhaps the strangest part, the one I only realised in hindsight, was that although she wrote that terrible post, the one that made me want to run out into city traffic and get pancaked by a Park & Ride, she wasn’t the villain really. What she said was cruel (and at some point she deleted it, so I think she accepted she went way too far) but I don’t believe everything she said were own true thoughts.

She was acting on the behalf of someone else. She was playing the flying monkey.

Backing up a bit: I mentioned earlier that our friendship was already fraying, but up until a month before the implosion I was getting along swimmingly with Post Friend. We chatted, swapped jokes and memes and pics of the object of our affection – an actor we all liked. No hostility at all.

Our other Friend, the Woman Behind the Curtain, was a different story entirely. We weren’t gettinh along at all. She subscribed to radfem crap, and I’m very much a Liberal feminist. WBTC had been making increasingly obviously potshots at me in her Tumblr posts, which I mostly ignored, except once when I politely but firmly disagreed. She didn’t reply – like all bullying cowards, she can’t stand being challenged directly. Thus, my terrible sin was stating that branding the entire male population evil was really bloody stupid (that’s not even getting into the absurdity of saying such things when you belong to the fandom of a male actor, but anyway)

So what does this have to do with the Krakatoa style friendship explosion? WBTC destroyed my friendship with Post Writer on purpose. It’s that simple. Looking back, it was obvious something was going on. A few weeks before The End, Post Writer’s chats with me abruptly tailed off. Then she sent me an intentionally hostile chat message. I was stressed from work (I got up at quarter to six in the morning and only got home at half seven in the evening. Those were long, tiring days) and becoming increasingly furious with WBTC. I didn’t lead this shit, so I told Post Writer that I wanted the subject dropped.

I played right in to WBTC’s hands.

Of course, like all manipulating, toxic shit-stirrers, WBTC let Post Writer do all the work (essentially setting the scenario that it was Post Writer who hated me most, which even then I knew was bullshit), while adding a few squeaks of her own but otherwise laying low.

I wanted to die. I felt the world had ended. I didn’t have many friends anyway (still don’t, the life of an introvert), work was horrifically stressful, my mental health wasn’t just in the toilet, but down inside the scum of the sewer pipe before this.

I’d reached the end of my rope.

Obviously I didn’t. At the time, my mum was scheduled for serious hernia operations and I had time off scheduled to help her around the house while she recovered. My sister lived 200 miles away and had two toddlers to care for. My brother is estranged from us all. So that left me, the flightly disappointment. I’m not saying my motives for not commitong suicide were entirely noble though – there was the fear of failure (I’ve attempted before, thankfully without permanent damage, but I wasn’t keen on a third time luck scenario) and also just plain apathy. So what if I died? They wouldn’t give a shit. My family didn’t need the added expense of a cremation.

The story doesn’t end here. Post Writer has left me in peace, amd I credit her for that, even if I still find her playing Flying Monkey for a despicable sociopath inexcusable.

TWBTC is another matter. I deleted my Tumblr and kept my Twitter locked for months. Eventually I unlocked Twitter for something fandom related I wanted to do.

TWBTC knew about this venture within a week of me making my Twitter public again. In other words, she watched my account – a locked account – for months. Months.

There’s a lot more. A hell of a lot more. But I’m tired, and today over on Tumblr I said my final piece to TWBTC: I told her I believe she will hurt someone, and if that happens, I hope she gets the book thrown at her. After four years of her shit, and speaking to her many other victims (at least one a minor), I truly believe she is a danger. I wrote this post in the hopes that anybody who finds themselves in the clutches of a manipulative sociopath sees the signs and runs/blocks/severs ties in all ways. Believe me, these people are destructive in ways you can’t imagine.

As for me, I’m doing what I should’ve done years: going grey rock. No further responses. She could claim I’m the Zodiac Killer for all I care. I am done.

Goodbye to her, her machinations and her cruelty. Goodbye to all that.

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