Fire Help Me to Forget

SO ANYWAY. Jessie sent a LONG email today while I was trying to have a good day. I had already given up on ever texting her again, and if she texted me I wasn’t gonna respond. Like I was just done with it. I still feel stupid for trying to send her that second email that was trying to defuse the situation. Like, ugh.

Anyway Jessie said all these things about her boundaries and how she hadn’t talked with me about feeling like I crossed her boundary by telling her I had feelings last year, and that all she wanted was a friendship, and she didn’t feel like we could communicate or be close because of these things. And she doesn’t want to text anymore. And I had deleted her number five weeks ago anyway, I wasn’t gonna text her. And part of me wanted to tell her that but something else held me back. She did say she hoped I would forgive her for not being clear about her boundaries earlier and avoiding all this. AND she said the fact I called our texty friendship a kind of intimacy made her feel weird. So fine.

It’s so weird, I didn’t even ask to be with her in these last couple of emails I had sent her weeks ago. Like I just wanted to know her boundaries because I was worried about crossing them. And yeah, I mentioned the love feelings to give this context. I don’t know, she said again that I had sent her a heavy email and how terrible it was that I sent it late on a Sunday night. BUT I still don’t think it’s awful to ask someone to clarify their boundaries.

Parts of me feel so left out to dry, like she hadn’t flirted on and off for the last year, especially in the winter. Like she hadn’t gotten closer early on than friends usually are. Like she hadn’t speeded up emotional intimacy. Like I was the only one having an emotional affair and she was virtuous and good and not doing anything her partner would have been sketched out by. Like she didn’t look at me sometimes like she wanted to devour me. I mean I didn’t get those looks often. But I remember them. She had a lot of accountability in this that she managed to dodge completely, and I feel pretty disappointed by the way she made it all my problem.

In hindsight I should be glad we didn’t get any closer than we were. I’m glad we never kissed, for instance, or I would be mired in this a lot longer. I’m glad the mask finally slipped and I could see her for what she was when she sent that angry furious email in the middle of the night. I’m glad she was too anxious to actually have a real physical affair with me and make me feel even more tortured. I am sad that I have to see her around still, and in this org we are a part of at our meetings. I am sad that there is no winning with her, even walking away is a kind of defeat. I am sad that we never got to really process this and that our entire friendship was on her terms anyway. And it’s still on her terms really. She wants to be able to say hello when we see each other in public. I don’t know how I’m gonna do that. I mean it won’t be awful, I’ve talked to lots of people I dislike without throwing drinks on them. It’s just gonna make me feel super shitty.

What maybe makes me the most angry about this is that the incident that upset her so much happened last year and she never dealt with it honestly. Like if she really had such a hard time being my friend because of that she could have told me and we could have just stopped, instead of carrying on this charade like she cared about me as a person. It’s very frustrating. I don’t want to be friends with people who are creeped out being around me. And I feel stupid for all the things I said to her in our text conversations like she was actually close to me and a warm person. She could never look me in the eye anyway. I should have known, she was always so weaselly about that.

I’m getting over a cold. I never emailed her back. I don’t see the point. Like she wanted to lecture me and make me feel bad and she did I guess to some extent. But also really if I wrote back I would feel like a fraud not calling her out for flirting and being close and leading me on and sort of acting like she was fine with things she says now she wasn’t fine with. I’m glad destiny had other plans for me and it didn’t even come close to becoming a real relationship. We have different communication styles.

I spent the rest of the day watching Youtube Videos about narcissists and the discard phase. And feeling annoyed.