The "J" Merry-Go-Round

[JupiterTaco]

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMM 6/2019

Haha, I just thought a thread like this might be interesting, where we share strange interactions with others (LOs or potential LOs or others, etc.) or just interactions that makeworkp you scratch your head, which I have plenty of those when something forces me to think about them. Otherwise as a probable aspie, I just don't get so many of these nuances about people that other people understand.

One of the people I'm going to talk about, I'm going to say real quickly is someone I had started a thread about ages ago, when I first moved into where I lived. I'll try to find the link for clarity but until then, just to quickly recap, he was/is one of the people who sits at the desk and takes peoples' information as they come in. Not security but sort of security. I’ll call him G.

I met him when I first moved in almost three years ago now, and my cat had peed on my bed and I was mad because they don't allow you to do laundry in the middle of the night so I'd gone down and asked him if there was a place I could do it, and he told me where I could go. He was kind of a cross between my last LO and my good workplace (male) friend who hated former LO.
These guys are around the same age, G and former friend, which is about twenty or so years older than me, this guy looks quite a bit younger except for being disabled and cart-ridden. Anyway he's a lot like former LO as well, such as sharing random bordering-on-TMI-type information, which I'll get into; and being really mellow and handling situations well, etc.

But he was really nice when I met him you know, he talked about his love of animals, which led into how he never talks to his sister, and then how he doesn't want a relationship because he doesn't know how long he's going to live. Strange stuff to tell someone you just met for no reason but whatever.

Our brief interactions since then over three years were of him bragging about whatever woman he was dating in the building, and him talking either to me or around me about all the tenants who he thinks are interested in him, flirting with random women and then laughing to me about it (when I have trouble even knowing what flirting is), and other just off-the-wall comments, etc. So despite that he's a good guy, he can start to get on my nerves if I spend too much time around him. I just don't get him I guess.

It's also worth noting that as I stated in my other post, he's a Pisces/Aries cusp just like former LO, so anyway when I met him way back then, it was a glaring red flag that he might be limerence-transference material as I wasn’t really healed so I was happy to avoid him and avoid that. So I mean he's on my radar I guess but I am NOT interested in him.

Recently since someone else in the building has also become a desk-person (more on her in a minute), and I've been spending time with her while she covers the desk, we'll catch up or whatever mostly on my way in, more strange things have happened with G. For example G had mentioned that he sees me relating to this girl, J, and opening up and he said "and I'm loving it!" That kind of made me look sideways like, what are you talking about?

It came across way more friendly than it should've. I mean I do tend to keep to myself, I'm always busy so if he wanted to say "it's great to see you coming out of your shell/opening up, etc." that would've been a less personal way to say it, amirite? Not "I'm loving it!" That comes across way too personally invested in my life. So I don't know. Then he told me other stuff about his military experiences, etc. So he's very interesting but yeah. I know what he's like so I'm staying away you know...

Now onto this other girl J, (a trans just for reference). She reminds me of a gay guy (cross dresser) I used to be friends with ages ago, and I first met her when we had the conversation about music in the elevator two years ago and we bonded quickly over that. By that I mean we had one or two enthusiastic conversations about music, but that was more positive social interaction than I’d had in quite awhile at that point so you know...
She'd moved out for awhile and moved back in some time ago. IDK details about her sex life or trans plans nor do I want to know, but she's been somewhat open with me with her jokes about the different voices she uses with the guys she dates versus the ones she uses as authority at the desk, so you know, and all the dates she goes on (people still date???). She brags about various men and one little boy who apparently have a crush on her.

The three of us, G, J and I, were hanging around one night and they got a huge laugh out of a situation that had happened when I was getting gas one morning and some dolled-up lady had pulled up and asked me if I "fuck around". I had no idea what she was talking about or why she would ask that of a stranger.

J told me she was a lesbian hitting on me. I go, okay. I just didn't get it. "Fuck around" could mean so many things. Are you sleeping with many people? Do you want to sleep with many people? Etc. Even if she'd just said "do you want to fuck around with me?" that would've been a question I could understand and answer. So yeah they got a laugh out of that. (For reference this is a major drug area we live in).

While the three of us were sitting there, whenever G would talk, J would wink at me, really noticeably, over and over. I wanted to ask her why she was doing that, but I just didn't. I mean I really don't have time for this crap, but yeah, things that make you go hmmm....

[JupiterTaco]

7/2019 RED PILL; SHIT’S ABOUT TO GET REAL
So I have an update about my Things That Make You Go Hmm Thread. Things really took a crazy turn, lemme tell ya. I’m about to take a really big red pill (I still have many more, but I just realized I have a big one here to take so bear with me. I’m going to be really real and it might go on awhile, just to warn you.

So the trans girl J was apparently interested in me. She’d asked me out, actually more like she wanted to jump into a relationship, and I said yes, I was excited and flattered you know, but surprised. I was not expecting that whatsoever. But it was nice, and she’s pretty cool, very engaging, interesting, etc. So at first I was really excited at the idea. She’s the kind of person I definitely would date hands down under normal circumstances.

But after I went upstairs and was thinking about it, the whole thing started making me really confused and almost suspicious. The reason being, was that I couldn’t figure out how I missed the signs that she was interested in me, being that I don’t understand flirting and she wasn’t really forthcoming at first about her sexuality, but she’d talk about the various guys she found attractive, including our former apartment manager and our present one. I assumed she liked men for awhile.

She’d ask me, don’t you think? About them being attractive, and I think I said “yeah” out of politeness once or twice, but quite honestly despite the two of them (male managers) certainly being cute to look at, not being my type whatsoever, after my experiences with various apartment managers here, I don’t think very highly of new ones whatsoever so yeah.

So I just saw J as a potential friend for awhile but I did get concerned in my mind when she did date our present manager for a little while. You see I thought she was younger than she is, and IDK I was just a little worried about her safety in my mind, like I would a younger sister or something.
I didn’t say anything but I was uncomfortable aside from the fact that this guy had been an absolute dick to me since he’d been here and I had a general bad feeling about him. He seemed like a hothead to me among other things. That’s what I was worried about but I didn’t think about it much unless I saw them together or something.

He’d snap smart remarks at me when I would be coming in after work or whatnot and they’d be hanging out at the front desk and she’d be friendly with me and keep talking to me when I’d go to leave and he’d go into his office or the storage room, etc. It was the strangest situation but not something that’s never happened in groups of people so I’d mostly try to avoid it but this type of thing would happen anytime the three of us happened across each other living in the same building. This situation has happened over and over with J and various people. The first time I met her, she was with a guy in the building that she was dating I found out later, who was rude to me while J started talking to me. I didn’t think anything of it but moving on, yes it’s a pattern.

A tenant who wants out of her lease eventually complained about the manager drinking in the lobby after hours so that stopped, and J would talk to me and invite me to hang out on my way in after work, so yeah that was how that kind of started. Her and the manager didn’t last long it seems. One week J was devaluing how he’d screwed up after doing a heat treatment in an apartment and leaving it on all night I guess and then leaving to go to the bar when the tenant had no place to go. The week after, after she’d asked me out, they were buddies again but it appeared they were done, IDK. That was one thing that made me scratch my head. It seemed to me that maybe she wasn’t quite done with him. It was just a feeling I got.

Eventually J told me that she’d dated girls before guys and talked about her long-term girlfriend from before, and then when she started taking estrogen she focused on guys for awhile, but she’d mentioned she had trouble finding a relationship in either community and she was relationship-minded, and women didn’t seem interested in trans, etc. and the gay community seemed to be about hooking up. This is something I’ve heard about the gay-male community also but obviously can’t speak from experience or something. Since she’s bisexual she now dates both men and women I guess. But I can’t say a red flag didn’t go up when she mentioned she only dated guys when on estrogen.

When she asked me about my relationships, I thought nothing of it, as I’ve always had friends who were relationship-minded and wanted to talk about it. For many years I was mostly that way. But I was honest and just told her there are other things I’m focusing on and that was that. It’s the truth. If I’d thought about it I’d assumed she might want to play matchmaker with me and that was where she was going. Plenty of people have wanted to do that with me and I’m not interested in that and didn’t want to encourage it.

J would tease me about the way I said certain words, she’d compliment my appearance, etc. She apparently displayed all the signs of flirting, every single one, and I just didn’t know it. I was so caught off-guard. I just thought she was being friendly and I saw her as a friend until she did that. When I mentioned that I didn’t know because it had seemed she was interested in the manager, she’d said something like, she just dated him because women in the building wanted to date him instead and she basically did it to tick off other women I guess, which is another thing that made me think, nope.

I mean if she said that out of nervousness to imply that she wasn’t interested in him, which I doubt, then that’s too bad, but all that did was show me that not only does she have the ability to date someone for a reason like that, but that she also does it, which didn’t make me trust her intentions with me any better. She seems quite manipulative.

I know now that a part of me was more than curious about her, but IDK if I could call it attraction at the time. I was very drawn to her, and she made me feel good. So the same night she asked me out, we were hanging out at the front desk and she made a couple of sexual innuendos/commented on certain parts of my body afterwards at times. She wanted to go to a movie theater that had nice couches for cuddling and stuff.

For example, after the conversation we had about accents, and me showing her the Fargo video of the two women telling the female cop “he wasn’t circumcised!” J leaned toward me and said “I’m not circumcised”. That shocked me and now I know it triggered me because I wasn’t expecting to hear that right then. It put me off honestly. Another time referenced its size.

I know now that trans people get questioned a lot about what they’ve got, often on first dates, so it’s possible that she did that just to get it out in the open and out of the way, but I as a woman who at least purportedly had been treated with at least some modicum of respect in my few dating experiences up front, it triggered me and turned me off in a way.

She commented on another woman’s butt while watching me. I remember that made me uncomfortable but I didn’t say anything or react. Otherwise she was really cool. But that was the first time I had to face the fact that, trans or not, she’s still a (sex)-minded guy, and an anatomical male who could knock me up, and not to mention has poor coping skills and I just can’t deal with that. I actually woke up in the middle of the night thinking about the thought of getting knocked up. (Forgive me that I don’t know much about the transition process, I’d never felt the need to educate myself, never even thought of it until now I guess). I know now that anybody on estrogen can’t get you pregnant, which when I found that out later, did make me do a double-take and start thinking, maybe I should try this?

Back to the subject, I do not want kids. I guess if I ever changed my mind, I could’ve adopted or fostered kids if I had the money and time, but I’m assuming that’s not going to happen being 35 with still no retirement savings, and I can’t figure out my own life let alone someone else’s. The ticking clock thing has never happened for me.

So there are plenty of reasons I just don’t want kids. I’m not for or against abortion, I just don’t want one, the thought makes me sick, but by the same token I don’t want to send a kid out into the world and never know what’s going on with him/her. I also don’t consider myself an authority to tell other people what to do with their bodies and lives. I definitely don’t ever want to experience pregnancy and childbirth.

I know her stance on abortion as well, which in of itself triggered me; and I live in a state that is working hard to keep it from happening, so despite my own stance on abortion and the inner laughable reminder I got that so many people without uteruses want to tell women what they can and can’t do with their own bodies and lives, this would be a train wreck of a relationship waiting to happen, but moving on.

It stings after the things I’ve experienced and witnessed in my life amongst myself and other people who had less than stable upbringings, that I can pass the same people protesting abortion outside the same clinics, but you’d never see them at a shelter for homeless youth volunteering or reading to at-risk kids or something like that.

But at the same time, I try to understand that J feels like she is a woman, and most women want to experience motherhood and all that goes along with it. I don’t feel I can begrudge her possible envy, that other women get abortions when she can’t even get pregnant. However I also know that nobody else is responsible for that.

If I had things my way, I’d happily give her my vagina and effing uterus and let her deal with periods and mood swings (wait she already seems to have those), and I’ll take her “giant” member. (I don’t want to transition to a man or anything, I just sometimes think things would’ve been a bit easier if I had been born one in the first place). All kidding aside, yes, that’s how sick I am of dealing with periods.

In all reality I could probably have dated her and enjoyed it, and that many people date many people without sleeping with them, but the problem is, that I don’t know how to set these boundaries with people. Coming out of a BPD upbringing, I’m having to learn a whole new way of relating to people, and unfortunately I still struggle with standing up for myself. I’ve had to come to terms with the reality that I’ve been sexually abused by every guy I’ve had something with.

Plus I know all too well that a little well-placed positive attention such as this could potentially swing me back into intense dependence on a relationship as happened with my narcissistic ex, and no…She seems to have no problem finding dates if all she talks about is true.
She seems to know all of these things about me which is another thing that makes me uncomfortable. It feels a bit like a power imbalance that she’s much more knowledgeable about these little nuances in society that I don’t understand, and about my inability to understand them and what that means. It brings back the memory of my mother in ways.

Besides, in all honesty, the situation with the apartment manager, who dated her, who doesn’t like me, who has a key to my apartment, and even she having access to my apartment keys (and the mail slots when the post office leaves it open), it all just makes me very uncomfortable so I decided to bail on the situation. I was scared at first, like I had to get out of it, then relieved, then second-guessing myself because she was someone I otherwise found funny and got along with. I couldn’t understand my rapid swings between extremes on how I felt about the situation.
I wish I’d said something. I mean, I could’ve just said that I’m still not over someone (which is partially true), but I wanted to say it in person, and haven’t had the chance and would feel weird saying that by text.

[JupiterTaco]

UPDATE

I decided to do it because it was weighing on my mind (plus it’s the truth which I’ll talk about in a minute). She seemed to take it well, told me I was alright, etc. I was relieved. Since then I’ve only seen her a little bit, and despite still calling me “baby” when she sees me, it’s clear the friendliness is gone. She was always incredibly friendly and I feel so bad when I see her and she’s not terribly friendly anymore. She’s very much a people person.

I feel like it’s my fault in a way, that I couldn’t read the signs. I think part of me was just so afraid that she was a player or narcissist, that she might be using me for narcissistic supply or triangulation, not necessarily on purpose but yeah I was afraid, plus the other things I already talked about.

But I remember the one incident early on when she and the manager were seeing each other and hanging out at the front desk and I’d walked in one night after work, and she had greeted me really friendly and the manager had snapped at me asking me nastily if I’d paid my rent, and I just kind of looked at him and said “yeah”. It didn’t really occur to me what was possibly going on then. But I remember that PTSD feeling I had again, that terror of being harassed by a landlord again, a flashback of sorts, but I knew I couldn’t look scared. I had to show defensiveness.

I had kind of looked at J and asked her why he asked me that, and she was laughing and just said he was just joking or else she’d kick his ass, and like called that loud enough for him to hear in his office where he’d gone and he didn’t respond or reemerge. She seemed thinking about it now to be enjoying it a bit and it just unnerved me and I left.

I later told the guy G about it, and G said this manager had done that with a lot of people already but it still seemed weird that he’d do that not only when there were records of who paid rent since it was all on computer (as were the private communication methods for contacting non-rent-paying tenants), but also that he only asked me that when I was talking to J, when she’d started the conversation with me in the first place and he didn’t know who I was.

Another time I had a really bad night and on my way in, J and the manager were drinking after hours and she’d offered me one of his beers and he didn’t seem keen to give me one, and I hesitated taking it but I really needed one, so I did, and that was that.

It is so strange. On her way out with him, and me on my way out to make some lunch-hour money, she’d want to talk to me, etc. but I thought nothing of it except that maybe I finally have a friend but you know it didn’t seem like she wanted to go with me rather than him or something. I didn’t think about it but no it didn’t seem that way.

The time (before she asked me out) that she’d told me the manager had told her he didn’t want to do “gay shit” or something. So I just thought we were friends. I felt like we talked about what friends talked about. I had no idea she was interested in me in some form so I was suspicious of it. I know now that warning bells should’ve gone off when she told me the manager didn’t want to do “gay” shit. Did he not realize she was trans? If he didn’t like that, fine, but why keep seeing her then?

Then there’s always the possibility that she was really that disappointed that she didn’t get one or both of these two managers that she saw signs with me that weren’t actually there and tried to just use me as a rebound or just to save face since it became public their “thing” and the manager’s soon firing and maybe she was feeling some shame (she was let go from her front desk job too I guess). Also she might’ve possibly thought that we’d surpassed the dating “getting to know you” stage hanging out as friends.

Since then, people have come out of the woodwork seemingly just to ask me if I heard about J and the manager’s relationship and his firing etc. Which just reminds me that no matter who she was hitting on, she was with him first. That is what I need to remember. It’s like a sign that I did the right thing. It doesn’t matter that she’s bisexual, it wouldn’t matter if this were a straight or gay person and the roles were reversed. The situation was just icky, as it would be in any form.

I’ll never know. I just know I felt really uneasy about it. For those who remember, I felt exactly the same way when a guy once hit on me who had an ex in my building and then started showing up at my apartment, etc. Nothing good can come from these types of situations. It’s just too much drama.

I think I kind of said it’s sort of awkward and nothing else, as I was pulling away before her, because I was sure J could sense my withdrawal moment, and I went up to my apartment. J texted me, asking first if I had any coffee, then told me she was going to the store, and when I didn’t respond, she said goodnight. I felt like she was trying to find an excuse to come up to my apartment but I wasn’t in the mood because yeah.

J once lived in the apartment across the hall from me. I hardly saw her. She has always been nice to me, but I thought she was a gay guy I guess. I didn’t sit and try to figure it out or anything. There was nothing there. She was just a neighbor to me whom I saw once in awhile, though I think there was always a certain pull to her. Initially it was because she was into music and I had been thinking about having a concert in Kenny Suttner’s hometown for him and at some point in the future would’ve liked to have access to bands who might be interested. So that was how she kind of stayed in my mind and that was it.

She had moved out for awhile, and I thought she was gone until out of the blue last spring she said she was working the desk now and had organized a party where tenants pay two dollars for a certain number of slices of pizza, and had invited me. I told her I’d go, but that was after the whole fiasco with a former (female) apartment manager that I talk about in my Landlord Harassment post. So I didn’t have the best emotions around these people. But since she’d invited me, I thought I’d go, but I ended up getting food poisoning before the party and wasn’t feeling quite well enough to try eating pizza when it happened.

That was when she “hooked up” with the new manager I guess. They were together almost non-stop after that. So while J was cozying up to the first manager to come here after psycho Menopause Barbie left, who was straight; and then the one guy who replaced the guy after that, and whom started dating J, I obviously wasn’t analyzing J’s potential interest in me.

When J made comments about how fat she felt trying to get in shape I was triggered because I thought of Kenny Suttner, the bullied kid my inner child so relates to. When J mentioned dating a guy who was heavy and expecting him to be nice, etc. because all heavy guys are supposed to be grateful, but the guy she dated wasn’t, I was triggered again, thinking of Kenny.

The first time J asked about my Kenny Bug bracelet and I had started to tell her about this case I’ve been obsessed with for two years, and my mind was drawing a blank and I couldn’t think. I actually mused that I couldn’t believe my mind wasn’t working right then, as I’d been obsessed with this case for two years. That was the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced. Kenny was on my mind almost nonstop the rest of the time.

J asked me things about myself. We had intelligent conversations. Then I started thinking about the rest of the situation. IDK if that’s because J is just a really charming possible PD-type building a harem of both genders, or just an adventurous dater, or a player or someone who gets caught in the moment a bit too easy or all of the above, IDK. There’s nothing wrong with who J is, whoever she is. The truth is, I like her a lot in all of her glory. She just might not be for me.

But nevertheless I was triggered all over again by how things have played out since. The reality that the only reason anybody is ever nice to me is because they want something. J wanted to get in my pants, or wanted me to think she wanted to get in my pants when the time was right, for some reason.

And I’m so turned off by the results. It wasn’t like I expected her to try to be friends with someone she was attracted to, but just wow. She acts like I don’t even exist, and so does everybody else she used to work with. It’s the strangest thing, but very triggering. That so many people just can’t be bothered to show a basic modicum of kindness without having some ulterior motive is so sad and says a lot about society.

If she’d had even the slightest urge to figure out what went wrong in the early stages, she could’ve at least tried to think of things from my point of view. That I don’t want anything to do with anybody who has anything to do with the former apartment manager for one thing; that if we could’ve held off at least until he left and given me more time to gauge the situation, I probably could’ve easily warmed up. If we could’ve taken things slow, (which I never asked because people who want to rush, they won’t listen). That despite them being “done” she was almost constantly still downstairs in his vicinity.

But it’s too late now. I’m not interested anymore. But I can’t stop thinking about it. Such is life.

[JupiterTaco]

UPDATE 8/19

I was doing fine and then I saw J three times yesterday! I was on my way out with a neighbor the first time. The neighbor, S, who reminds me in ways of my mother and whom is struggling with lung cancer right now, is always talking about J and the former manager, and all the rumors she heard about them. She’d mentioned it again yesterday.

So when we saw J outside the elevator, this neighbor slipped past her without saying anything and J had asked if the (new) manager, an older, married dude, was around. She didn’t answer and stalked past her without acknowledging her, and I had just asked, who?

I hadn’t met the new manager officially so I didn’t know who that name was. The neighbor finally told J no, she hadn’t seen him and walked out. I was looking at J, and she looked at me and caught my eye. I broke eye contact and left. What irks me thinking about this is that it’s clear that this older woman has a huge problem with J. You can disapprove of the way somebody lives their life, fine. But why the need to judge people so nastily?

Everybody talks so much crap about J and I’m tired of it. It’s just so rude.

[JupiterTaco]

10/20/19 Exiting The Drama Triangle

I did it. I went one full week without seeing J, the neighbor who shall remain relatively nameless. The last time I saw her, one week ago this afternoon, I was on my way out for a quick walk, and she was down there talking to another girl in the building that she’s “friends” with. I’ll explain the quotations later.

As is often the case, I had no idea that she would be down there, but I realize now that I have to stop using that excuse. An excuse stops being an excuse when you realize it could happen and just keep doing it. You become just as much the problem. That’s the whole message behind the concept of the “drama triangle”.

J’s past behavior, especially in recent months, would indicate that she spends a fair amount of time hanging out in the lobby and talking to everybody. For weeks now, almost every time I go for a walk, go out to leave or coming back, I’ve seen her, either hanging around and talking to the door person, crouching out front barely visible playing on her cell phone, etc.

I’ve even seen her walking around the neighborhood, stopping to stare at me from afar when she sees me. I frequently pass her going somewhere in my car, hoping she won’t see me.

I had a dream not too long ago that I would cross her in my car at a particular intersection, and she was pregnant with my baby. No really! In the dream, I was a little scared off at the thought of us having a baby so that’s why in the dream I was avoiding her and in the dream knew she was irritated at me.

In the dream I was approaching an intersection and she was walking along the sidewalk. I saw her and was leaning down to change my radio station and didn’t know that she had walked in front of my car and I nicked her with my bumper. I was horrified and jumped out of the car and ran to her to see if she was okay and she was fine and I was caressing her leg. I guess we “made up”. Then the dream ended.

When I woke up, I remember the thought of how crazy that dream was. I’d never really seen her out and about in the neighborhood at that point so it didn’t seem likely that it would happen until it did. Don’t even get me started about that I know I’m the one with a uterus and her (at least for now) with male parts and so it just can’t happen the other way around but dreams right? I understand they all have symbolic meanings.

The running into her started mildly after that. One day after she started talking badly about the manager she had been seeing, and I was out for a daily walk, and passed her about a block away from where we lived. I was mildly happy to see her, we smiled at each other and that was that. After I initially rejected her, I barely saw her for two weeks.

I thought it would pass. Then I had a mild fever the next day and had run out of toilet paper so I’d walked to the corner store to get some. I wasn’t gone fifteen minutes and that’s when I saw J outside. She kind of looked at me with that captivating way she has of looking at me when she saw me, I liken it to a bee pollinating a flower. That’s the best I can describe her eye contact. It’s not racy like one of my former LO’s; it’s like a hint of sexuality while innocent and not overbearing but with a purpose, anyway, moving on.
J whispered “hey baby,” while mildly stifling a smile and I said hi back and that was that. I was kicking myself after that, as I knew I was already back to square one.

All because I didn’t want to stick to no contact and be one more person I thought was being rude to J when I came across her and two people would normally greet each other. There was nothing wrong with that, or so one would think. So that’s when suddenly I’d see her everywhere. I mean there were breaks where I wouldn’t see her for a few days, but no more than that, and usually way more than that, at least every day, sometimes twice or more.

These things happening once in awhile would be one thing, but it had gotten to the point in recent weeks that it was literally every single day. As time went by, the feelings I’ve had around trying to avoid her have done nothing but intensify. Being afraid to run into her, the inevitable sense of hollow disappointment I’d feel when she’d come into my view after a weeklong (or two-week) period of not seeing her.

At first, due to aforementioned issues, I forced myself to walk past her and say hi as like I said, I knew people talk crap about her and I felt bad about this, and I know how it feels. After accepting how much it was affecting me emotionally to continue communicating with her when I saw her, as well as realizing I might’ve taken it a bit too literally, I realized something had to change.

No, I wasn’t going to start ignoring her. I just wanted to avoid her. But try as I might, I can’t seem to go more than two weeks without seeing her, most of the time seeing her way more than that. When I rejected her initially, which I discussed in the second post, I barely saw her for a time until the store incident.

So guess who was plopped right out front when I got back? Yep, that hollow disappointment. At first J was looking down at her phone and didn’t see me. I thought briefly about walking around the other side of the building to go in the back door, which meant circling half the block one way or the other. Yes, I thought about circling the block to avoid her! Because all I could think was, I finally stopped thinking about you!

So all I could do was stare at her with disappointment and walked past her into the building. I knew it wasn’t over. But even then, it seemed silly to think about even though I knew this in my heart. She was just another neighbor and she’d been mad at me for having rejected her, just because I saw her once didn’t mean it was all going to start again, as I told myself at that time.

Unfortunately my emotions took me on a huge throwback. You see, I truly am interested in her which was why I almost dated her. And I’ll be honest. When I said she asked me on a date, actually she wanted to start a relationship right away is how it went. That in itself triggered me.
That was exactly how a guy who was a friend of my neighbor’s whom I dated years before had acted. Like J, this guy had been the type of guy I could see myself with. He was intellectual, interesting, attractive and seemed to be honest. He took me to the local botanical gardens.

But trying to get him to slow things down didn’t work. He’d freak out if I didn’t text him back, he’d show up at my apartment including right after our first date I was not in the pool outside for five minutes and he’d shown up gently asking me what was wrong. I had tried to be honest with that guy, that I wasn’t sure I wanted to date somebody with kids and an ex-wife but he just didn’t listen, which was another trigger point for me as a child with an abusive stepdad, etc. I asked him if we could slow things down and he agreed but refused to stop his crap.

I got off the subject, but the long and short story is, not only did this guy have an ex-wife, brought his daughter onto our second date, checked her teeth right in front of me (and the rest of the restaurant), but he also had an ex right in my building, in the building across from mine, whom he told me might be mean to me!

That freaked me out so much that I had to get away from him but it was so difficult. He texted me and left notes on my car for weeks. I feared leaving my apartment, expecting him to step randomly out of the shadows. I imagined him smearing me to my neighbors, but the mutual friend whom he was there visiting when I met him, seemed to understand what he was like so it didn’t seem to sway her. We barely talked about it after she was the one who told me about his ex in the building.

So that was my most memorable freak-out experience dealing with somebody who knew where I lived, that this was but one reason why the prospect of dating neighbors forever freaked me out. I had another experience with a queer neighbor years before that, which I discuss in another post, who had lived with his gay boyfriend next door to me.

Then they broke up; he’d moved down the hall, asked me out, love-bombed and hoovered me despite my rejecting him, then playing jealousy games with both me and his ex, before finally marrying a woman he’d just met and moving out. His intensity and prompt discard of me certainly hurt but I was never afraid for my life or anything, until that other experience with the friend of my neighbor. It just made me go WTF…

So when J was trying to rush things, and was still an authority figure at the front desk, I had an unhealthy flashback to these other experiences and I know that now. But there’s the other realization; the fact that she hung out with me under the guise of friendship, while seeing the former manager, obviously knowing she was interested in me, that really stuck with me.

That she had an agenda of taking me to a movie theater of all places where I would have to continually assert my boundaries and how that would affect me if I went. It’s what they talk about when they talk about signs of PDs and that they always have an “agenda” they’re trying to run. It felt like she was trying to run a script of some sort.

I felt bad even then when my gut was screaming at me and all I could do was think of my modus operandi of “give everyone a chance” “don’t judge”, “give the benefit of the doubt”. Which has gotten me in plenty of trouble btw. I still feel bad pegging somebody with a PD even then.
J is a very outgoing person as I’d said. It’s really a shame that she is no longer working the desk as that was the perfect job for her but I’m really glad she isn’t. I go back and forth in my mind in how I feel about her and the situation. Some days I think I’m overreacting and other days I feel validated in how I feel and wonder what exactly she was trying to hide from me.

But even then, it was hard not to imagine that she was really a narcissist grooming several people including me with her proximity to everybody who ever came in and out of the building. It was hard to imagine that women she gave attitude to, she wasn’t being spiteful for once being possibly interested in them and them rejecting her or whatnot (and these weren’t even things I thought of until later).

Before one thinks that I was overreacting about this, one would have to see another thing where I’m coming from. So back to J’s one female friend, who happens to be biracial like her, I first met her when J was still working the desk and this girl had come to spend some time with her at her work. J had tried to get me to stick around also, was talking to us both, but had said something flirty to the other girl, which I think I recognized as such, but again this was back when I wasn’t interested in her (and this other girl talked openly about another man she was dating so you know, I didn’t really think about it).

J had gone on about how she was hungry and couldn’t leave the desk so I had offered to make her top ramen. I would do this for anybody, only the subject had never come up with anybody else. I hardly knew most of the people who worked the desk. I was seriously just helping when I made her food and brought it down, but that was when the flirty texts started. She saw more than there was.

It was always hard to decipher what flirting was with J many times. I never thought she was flirting with me. Because she reminded me so much of a gay guy I used to be friends with, and acted in a similar manner as him and others I’ve known, such as with her open use of terms of endearment, both in text and in person, which I thought nothing of, but which came back to mind later when she had insisted she’d been flirting all of this time by asking me about my relationships, etc.

I haven’t seen her greeting other people enough to see about the terms of endearment thing, but yeah. Other than the flirty comment with the one girl, and her ability to have lengthy conversations with anybody and everybody else (but again can’t tell if she did the same thing she did with me, trying to prolong conversations while I was leaving, etc.) so can’t speak for that on account of others but didn’t think about it.

But back to this other girl, so that one day I ran into them in the lobby on a Sunday afternoon, I went out for a walk, and was actually afraid I’d run into J. It was never that I didn’t want to see her, I was actually afraid that she thought I was stalking her we saw each other so much. That was where the fear originated and I was starting to notice the affect on my mental health every time I ran into her.

I remember that day, it was a nice day, I was in between my work shifts, I wanted to go for a walk outside. It didn’t seem like there was a lot going on around the building. I told myself there’s no reason J would be down there, and I’d be quick. I’d never seen her on weekends.
Only she was downstairs as was her friend. J was near the door and the girl was sitting on the desk. The girl looked at me when I came out of the elevator and I had gone toward the door and seen at the last second that J was there and she greeted me. I stopped short I know, and walked past
J, who scrambled at the last second away from the door and caught my attention again since I’m so hypervigilant.

I ignored J that time for the most part. I said hi but I was looking at my phone since I was doing something anyway and walked out. But I know a part of me wanted to give a clear message that if she was trying in any way to triangulate me and this other chick, I wasn’t game.
It’s hard to say why this idea came to mind. Mostly because this other girl was really friendly with me until at that point, recent days before that incident. I’d seen her shortly before that another time at the elevator and she completely ignored me and walked away which I thought was strange for her, but thought nothing of it. She’d clearly seen me and (presumably) knew me as we’d talked briefly before in and out a couple of times. So I thought something was really strange about that incident and I couldn’t let it go. My spidey senses were piqued.

Later on I wondered if maybe J was talking badly about me to her (she didn’t talk to me about her but you know…) The reason I know that J is capable of quite a bit of manipulation, aside from the crap with the former manager, I’ll explain. Shortly before all of this happened, I was coming in one night and this older woman cancer patient whom I’d made friends with was hanging out in the lobby with J, after I had resolved in my mind to avoid J. The woman, who had talked badly about J and kept bringing her up, before, was now sitting side by side with her hanging like buddies.
Aside from the creepiness in general of two-facedness, it seemed clear to me that J had become friends with her just to get to me, or at least it was possible (unless they’d gotten in a fight sometime back and just now made up, but I doubt it as this woman was clearly threatened by J’s status as a trans person).

Or that J was using her for some type of narcissistic supply. Or they might have a sexual relationship! Really the “whys” could be endless but the whole situation rubbed me the wrong way, that’s all that’s really important here.

As I walk in, this other woman calls me over to her so I guess I felt I had no choice but to go over to say hi to my friend. Keep in mind this was before when I wanted to keep my reluctance around J as low-key as possible. It wasn’t her problem to solve, it was mine. As I’m briefly catching up to my friend, J cuts in and whispers something to her getting my attention.

As I’m staring at J, mesmerized by the sight of her soft, light brown, beautiful 5-o-clock-shadowed face leaning in so close and wanting compulsively to be near it myself, she suddenly turned to me, dramatically, feet pointing at me and everything, so close, eyes heavy-lidded and glistening, and says “how you doing, baby?” in the softest voice. I couldn’t help smiling as I responded and asked her the same.

My friend had thanked me for correcting when she’d messed up my name. I had completely spaced out her name myself for the umpteenth time.
This is one reason why it’s also possible that all of this had been in my head, as surely people talking smack would remember your name right? Really the only people who ever remembered my name were J, desk guy G, and the new manager, E.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that all of it could’ve still been a setup, and the “forgetting my name” thing could’ve been a cover to hide that anything else was going on, but I just told myself I was being paranoid and it wasn’t even a thought; until that other girl snubbed me for no reason that one day. Up until then I started actually thinking at other times that maybe I was blowing things out of proportion, that J was simply showing her interest and maybe I should think about giving her another chance. Until that day with the run-in with her “friend” in the elevator when she’d snubbed me.

So when I saw them in the lobby that Sunday, I had this realization that I’d been so upset about the idea of running into J, that she might’ve been doing this on purpose to run into me, and I realized she could be doing this for any reason, and that this other girl and anybody she’d dated before could easily think the same thing but didn’t seem to. I was the only one trying to attach meaning to it (though it’s clear J just doesn’t seem to have much going on in the way of life I guess but back to the topic). The song that was playing on my headphones as I walked out? Seeing Things by The Black Crowes, which was ironic.

[JupiterTaco]

10/27/19

In my case, I initially rejected my neighbor because, like someone else mentioned, I saw signs of manipulation/game playing and just in general other things that turned me off about her personality early on. In some ways she reminds me of myself five years ago (definitely has given me a new insight into my former LE).

But back to what I was saying, J is so fun. So interesting, so endearing, distracting, all of those things that make it so hard to walk away. I like her so much but I know we'd never work. Believe me when I say it is hard to stay away. It's like every fiber of my being wants to be near her while my brain is going "NOOOOOO!"

She has triggered me in other ways and somehow reactivated my C-PTSD wounds. I had a narcissistic abuse experience with our mutual friend as well, in which she’d criticized some of my belongings the third time being in my apartment. I know this didn’t help.

Plus, the neighbor thing really sucks. I've had so many bad experiences with neighbors that I just would prefer not to date one. I mean J and I haven't even done anything and look at how awkward it is for me now! Imagine how worse it would be?

I'm LC with J, as that's all I can manage. It is so hard to avoid her, I've really been trying. I don't want to be rude about it, but I need the distance. I don't think I'm limerent over her, but much of my life in recent weeks has become about avoiding her, which isn't really any more healthy IMO. Only I see her once a day versus the four times a day before, and the one day I’ve been going to the park all day.

Today I wasn't outside this morning two minutes to throw my trash out, and almost ran into her in the elevator on my way back up, and she sort of grimaced at me and said “hi” in a mocking way and walked past me to go to the laundry machine.

The day before that I went shopping and was bringing the cart back downstairs to put it in the stairwell, and there she was out front talking. She wasn't there when I first got back. I slipped into the stairwell and took the stairs back to my apartment.

Wednesday she was out at the picnic table when I was on my way to work, and she was walking up behind me as I walked out and I didn't know it until someone whistled and I turned around and saw her, and she stammered that it wasn't her, and it ended up being the guy in the church yard, which was surprising to see him whistling since he was the grumpy jackass prone to playing parking lot traffic cop, (unless I’m confusing him with someone else, so many old white guys look alike to me) but anyway. J proceeds to start saying "let me try to whistle" as I'm heading off to my car and I just smile at her. This happens constantly. No matter what time, etc. I see her out front talking in the afternoons when I’m leaving and she calls out to me as I’m leaving.

Although Wednesday I just happened to notice it was 11:11 a.m. on my way into the elevator before I ran into her before the whistling incident. Remembering and actually scoffing at the idea that this crap meant anything spiritually. I'm finally starting to understand how this crazy can get started. I used to look for "signs" with former LO but only saw a few. This situation literally makes me scoff at that one.

Today I wasn't outside this morning two minutes to throw my trash out, and almost ran into her in the elevator on my way back up, and she sort of grimaced at me and said “hi” in a really mocking way and walked past me to go to the laundry machine), and I actually started wondering if I'm manifesting all of this somehow.

Seriously, when I have to go in or out or come back from somewhere and am nearing the neighborhood, my stomach tightens and I find myself pleading the heavens not to run into her. The other day I actually prayed to God that I wouldn’t see her, and guess who was out front yacking with people?

Half the time when I see her, either she sees me first and greets me, stares at me (if far away), and the other half, I see her first and either try to avoid being seen but particularly early on, would find myself watching her and then feeling like a stalker. This felt like some weird unconscious cat and mouse hunting game in more than one way.

Other times she’d get my attention from somewhere behind me when going out of the elevator and she was in the lobby. It said more to me than just greeting me. It said “I see you first” and comes across in an almost “hunting” manner, that word again, which in itself triggers me. One thing I’ve realized in this situation is that I don’t like being pursued (or feeling pursued) as much as I thought.

Other times, I’ve tried to just will myself not to think about all of this. I’ve wondered briefly if she’s stalking me and felt horrible for wondering. Then alternately wondering if she wonders the same about me and wondering if psychically I am? That was what really upset me. I would never do such a thing to anybody and being that she’s a trans and I worry so much about her safety in our neighborhood, I would hate to feel that I was making her feel unsafe in some way.

Which in turn leads to me thinking I’ve got to work harder to avoid her and prove I’m not. Which seems to make it happen more and therefore my anxiety worse. That’s really why it’s so hard. The more it happens the more freaked I become.

But I really just don't think she's doing this on purpose. We live in the same building, it's bound to happen. I've been trying to keep track of how often I run into various people to ensure that I'm looking at this fairly, but it's true, I don't see anybody, not even the apartment manager, who is always in the same place, as much as I see her! It's truly insane. So today all I could do was laugh at the irony on my way back upstairs after the elevator incident. Laugh until I was almost in tears. Laugh like I was losing my mind. Laugh that I was only outside for two minutes! What are the odds? Hahahahaha!

I really care about J which she probably doesn't know. I'd be terrible for her anyway. Even though I acknowledge her as a woman, I know that deep down I still see her as a man, who purportedly wants what he wants, who could hurt me, etc. Whose basic instinct is to pursue. Perhaps that’s her shadow. She doesn't need that crap from me you know? Having some form of distance has helped take the emotion out of it, but yes it's still tough and these things are still reality.

I just have to assume that if that synchronicity crap is true like people say, that if she is here to teach me a lesson, which I truly believe she is, then I just have to wait and see what it is. Until then, I have ideas.

I hate my femininity. Like truly hate it. I hate that when I show my femininity, it evokes cattiness from other women and creepiness from random men. I hate that I don't want kids but still have periods, etc. which I already talked about.

I hate myself as a sexual being. I was raised by a woman who slept around and told me all about it, and emphasized how people who do that are sluts and that she herself is a slut who hates herself and that I should never do that (and then later hear that people have to find out that they're sexually compatible before getting married? ). Duh!

My neighbor, who lives somewhere above me, seems to embrace these things fine. When we were friends she told me about the things she’d done, including with some of our neighbors.

She's also very outgoing and seems to have a way with people, and all of these things are very triggering for me. I never judged her for anything, but I have to be honest, I don't understand why anybody would want to be a woman. Why? So you can learn to fend off sexual advances before you learn how to walk???

I hope this doesn't trigger anybody, but I feel very strongly about these issues...I don't think I'm angry at her but maybe there's a part of me that thinks, "oh, you get to become a woman and decide that you like being on the opposite side of being objectified and cut up based on how you look because nobody sexualized you before you were old enough to understand it (or at least what it meant)?

When I was born with a hoo-ha and didn't ask to be, and aside from what I've talked about, was continually told what I could and couldn't do based on what sex organs I had, and my whole future was assumed just because of it? That mother dearest clearly wanted me to become a bland, normal little office side-piece like she did, who lived with her limitations as a woman who needed male help and silently lived gender roles while devaluing men?

That today, I have to decide to inhabit my own born gender because I don't want to change it and society expects it of me, but by the same token, it's likely to limit my professional success and make me unhappy, and make me distrust anybody with power who wants to help me, which were reasons I was so jaded about my career in the first place. Well, wherever you go, there you are! And it’s clearly reflecting in bright neon signs off of J every single time I see her and am reminded.

But I don't know anything about her. She might've felt these things in her born gender, I don't know. It would be a very triggering conversation to have! She could’ve been sexually abused as a boy or as someone who projected her to be a girl. Who the heck knows? Nobody knows these things! It’s not right of me to assume and project.
.

[JupiterTaco]

11/7/19

I’ve had more time to think about this situation. This Sunday it’ll be two weeks since I ran into or saw J. For the first time I feel like I’m settling down and seeing things clearly without seeing her throwing me off and sending me into an emotional tailspin. I still feel nervousness leaving and returning to the building, but it’s not as bad as it was. I sometimes think I could handle seeing her around again, but remind myself of how little it could take to send me back into a downward spiral. It happens every time I stop seeing her and start again. It’s better this way. Besides even thinking about the idea of running into her is still a huge trigger for me. I know it’s not good.

But then something would happen that could argue “synchronicity” and/or reminding me of her existence when I feel like I’m doing better. Such as yesterday I got called for delivery twice to the restaurant we went (where she used to work) when we were still friends.
I’d never been there to pick up a delivery that I can remember, but I was triggered when I went around the front after not being helped in the pickup section where they instruct drivers to go; and realizing it was the place where I went with J.

Nobody helped me but I’d seen three people at least, walk past me when I was still in the delivery section, and it occurred to me right then that people might remember me and were purposely not helping me. It makes no sense now, as I can’t remember who we talked to while there so how would they remember me (people always remember me before I remember them). My kindergarten teacher randomly recognized me in sixth grade after six years of not seeing me! So anyway…

I promptly unassigned the order and left, but was annoyed. I got another request from the same place later that night but declined the order. Then I was heading toward one hotspot on another side of town after that and an order I got took me directly by a church that happens to share a name with J. I thought, wouldn’t that just be the effing case?

So is it true? Is it synchronicity or is it just life kicking me and enjoying it? The church isn’t terribly far, and I remember associating the church with her in my mind based on what an unusual name it was and laughing in my mind as I imagined jokingly asking her if she knew there was a church with her name and if she was a member or the subject way back when I first met her two years ago, but never did. Can you imagine the narcissistic supply that would’ve given her?

Aside from that, other than the intense feelings of longing for J from time to time that seem to come out of nowhere for no real reason, and soon leave almost as quickly, I’ve found myself slowly getting my equilibrium back. I’ve finally been able to tackle things I’ve been putting off for months because I just couldn’t focus on it before, such as my lost real estate textbook I ordered way back in August but haven’t received.

Dealing with the reality of the debt I’ve incurred trying to “self-employ” with a company that sits up nights thinking of ways to fuck me out of my hard-earned money while I continue to run my car into the ground. Knowing that I have to figure out a more viable solution to my need for increased means for the endlessly increasing cost of living (and people are still saying to “live below your means”. HA!)

How to go into the next step in my career, by learning sales. Whether I should do it or just wait until I get my real estate license? How I’d put off for at least a month, an interview with one place in which my position would mean door-to-door sales to get people to buy expensive cutlery. I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t seem to just bite the bullet and do it. I thought it meant I didn’t really want to. I felt the negative voice that my mother might’ve had, telling me I was lazy and unwilling.

Surely I’d be jumping to do it if I really wanted it right? Now I understand I’d rather start out with phone sales if possible before going head-on to face-to-face sales. It would give me a chance to learn what I need to know and get a handle on my triggers in the meantime, which can be triggered so easily by people. Aside from that, I know this would be a GREAT lesson to my career, whether it’s eventually only in real estate, as an agent, investor, landlord, all of the above and/or someday also becoming a discrimination attorney, which is something I’ve also thought about doing.

Aside from that, the idea of becoming a landlord so soon when I’ve just barely (within less than a year) started learning about it, was kind of intimidating and that was something that was going on around the time this started happening. Not only the idea that every time I learned something new, it gave me something else I had to read up on which seemed to never stop.

But the idea that despite what big-time investors say about how anybody can get into real estate investing with little or no money, and that there are plenty of examples of investors who started with no money of their own. That it seems to be true that there are plenty of experienced investors willing to help a newbie in the form of mentorship, partnership, or even forms of owner-financing for new investors who can’t get bank loans and know how to find them. There’s still that voice of doubt, the idea that having no money and failing credit and how that must look, is something that plagued me. The idea that someone I met off of a website like BiggerPockets might be willing to help me given that I have such a hard time meeting everyday people who will treat me with basic common decency and that my own mother wouldn’t give me basic emotional support and the rest of my family abandoned me to take her side.

How was I to run a real estate business if I couldn’t deal with my own affairs, financially and emotionally (despite years of evidence that I could and did until the past few years!)? These things are a huge source of my shame, things I had put off dealing with for years as I settled into what I thought I had to be just to survive, but nevertheless probably increased my vulnerability and sense of powerlessness, which made me a prime target for what happened with J (again, I’m not blaming her).

Before I got sick, I was seriously looking at a fourplex that was for sale via owner. The numbers the owners gave me about running the place weren’t adding up, and I couldn’t figure out why. I was doing that before I got sick, and afterward somebody had bought it.

It was a reminder of how quickly life can change and that no matter what we think, we’re not truly stuck in our lives unless we want to be. People can be stuck but if you stop looking for ways out, that’s on one. At least that was the case in my life. I had a ton of learned helplessness.

I can vouch for my own struggles and that they are an obstacle for me at times, but they’re also a lesson. A call to change your life. Most people won’t do it until the status quo becomes more uncomfortable than the possibility of change. I know now that I still have a lot of learning to do before I’m comfortable moving forward in that situation. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as too much due diligence. Nevertheless I find myself trying to figure out how I can incorporate my old self with the person I’m becoming and what I have to leave behind, and what that means.

Aside from that, I’ve been able to really think about the red flags regarding my experiences with J. Why would I want to date somebody who reminds me so much of past people in my past, particularly extroverts and flirty people that I have nothing in common with? Knowing where the relationships just like the past ones, are likely to go, but the other person can’t ever seem to see it (or just doesn’t care because it’s not a risk for them like it is for me and they just want what they think they want right now)?

The short answer was, I didn’t, initially. J was the one who went out of her way to flirt with me. J was the one who made her interest in me very vocally known (in front of only certain people of course which I know now). Such as the example when after the incident with our friend and J hanging out, and my friend and J were sitting out front and had started giggling and whispering “there she is!” as I walked out of the elevator to go somewhere, while the desk guy was shaking his head at them.

Earlier when we had all been inside, my friend had asked me if I was “going to hide out in my apartment?” First of all, I don’t consider having my own solitary interests “hiding out” but I guess I can see where extroverts may see it that way, as myopic as it sounds.

Honestly I’ve done the “spend time with people so you’re not alone” bit, including that day. As my friend and J talked to people coming in and out and barely at times acknowledged me. In fact, I’d learned years before that, that the wrong company makes me feel worse than no company.
Situations like that remind me of why it’s so. So that comment, by someone who’d forgotten my name, was off-putting to say the least, and changed my entire opinion of her even more than the fact that she swiped half a bottle of vodka from me, and insulted my belongings the second or third time she was in my apartment.

It’s hard, especially considering my lifetime conditioning, not to feel like people are doing this on purpose. Whether they are or not doesn’t really matter in all honesty. I feel bad in this type of situation, and therefore it’s a valid reason for me to avoid these situations. Anybody with a healthy sense of self in that situation would feel the same way (but then they’d avoid people like this in the first place. I’m getting there I guess.)

I know now that when in situations where I’m being excluded, either purposely or unintentionally, I’m going back to past experiences (so many) in my mind, from elementary school on, where this happened and where unfortunately, people were doing this on purpose and at worst, making sure I knew, and at best, hiding behind probable deniability to keep messing with my head and self-esteem while giving the appearance of being good to me. It doesn’t matter to me if someone like this has a personality disorder or not. It’s just not behavior I’m willing to subject myself to.

I’m also aware that people may think (as I initially felt) that I took a major step backward when I returned to wondering just what people say about me behind my back. In reality, I realize that I should’ve always been paying attention to someone’s relentless silent attacks on me behind my back and under my nose). I’ve lost much over the past five years because of it. I’ve lost jobs, friends, even family, and I had to change my whole life situation partially because of the instability in my life that was largely caused by other people.

My first best friend R early on in elementary school, I first met in the after school program when she asked to borrow my scissors, and then kept talking to me as I was working on art. We soon became close and started spending every second of every day together. This is how many of my unhealthy friendships and relationships started looking back. I liken it to what is called today as love-bombing but I’m not sure if or how that applies to friendships. I just know it was a probably pattern in nearly all of my friendships and when it started with her, I remember thinking it was strange that we were always together but not thinking about it because R was so warm and inviting.

We intensely enjoyed each other’s company and that was what mattered in those days (but which I can see as a red flag now when it happens). Normal people would resist the urge to spend every waking second with one person and the why is obvious. You get sick of the same people after awhile! Which is obviously something that would happen with us later on but moving on. Even married couples who love each other need a break.

The types of people who want to give you all of their attention and expect the same from you right off the bat are just not healthy people. You had a rich life before them, so what was their life before you? Oh right, someone else they focused intensely on…

At some point, R started giving more attention to another friend she had made, and then another girl who joined our group, who decided she hated me and would subtly and later non-so-subtly insult me in front of the group.

When it first happened with the first friend, I remembered the feeling of hurt, abandonment, which probably came from earlier times in my life that I didn’t even remember. We as humans and especially women, are raised to see these things for what they are, since for so many millennia, humans’ survival depended on group inclusion regardless of gender.

The idea that women are so much more in tune to relational aggression is thought to be both because of the social disdain of women harming other women physically, and therefore disrupting human reproduction, and the fact that their relationships revolve around the subtle and emotional, with veiled hostility and such.

So when this first happened at that age, eight or nine, I never imagined it was done on purpose. My friend was just interested in new people but I remember that moment when it occurred to me that her latest friend was the coolest in her eyes and it was like I wasn’t there.

I tried to put it to her in a lighthearted way that I might like more attention too, as I gave her mine. But it never stopped, and got worse, and eventually friends of hers from her own neighborhood whom I had been only mildly aware of for so long eventually turned the whole group against me. I had tried to explain to my good friend that this girl made me uncomfortable by the way she treated me to obviously no avail.

I can’t remember a specific example of that these days but I know I did, and I got emotionally crazier as that year wore on. That should’ve been my first lesson of the drama triangle but it wasn’t. Every time I wanted to walk away from that friendship for a whole year, and it was nearly every day eventually, I told myself I was walking away, I went back because she was my only friend in that class. (I was friends with boys but you didn’t play with boys at that age, at least not when girls were around).

My mother to this day tells me that I was the one being too clingy to my friend. And not in an educational way, but a shaming way, the same as she was in those days. But my friend was no doubt the one who initiated spending every second together when we first met. Imagine that I only thought of that just now but my mother never questioned that apparently! That wasn’t any more healthy in my opinion, but I understand sometimes we just like a certain person’s company and the school years are the time people are learning social codes, boundaries, etc. It’s still just no excuse.

What should’ve been a clue with her was how quickly a girl she was friends with when I came along, exited our friend group before the other two came along. We all got along fine it seemed, until that other girl left. We never fought that I remember. I remember I missed her, but we just went separate ways with her and I never knew why.

So I know it wasn’t that I was possessive of my friend initially. These two never talked again and though I wondered what had happened since I’d enjoyed her company, we never talked about it. I just assumed they grew apart or something. It was none of my business. Then the one girl joined our group and two others. It was likely from what I know now that the first girl was used and discarded the same way I would be and I just didn’t know because I was happy to have a doting new friend. I know I was aware even at that age that sometimes people just drift apart and sometimes life tears you apart. So I have no problem discarding my mother’s opinion on that regard.

Or how another girl who happened to live in my neighborhood, who went right along with the new girl scapegoating me, was eventually discarded herself. All of these things should’ve been signs but my mother never taught me to see them. If I’d been able to read the stars at that age with a little brother who attached himself to my hip because he couldn’t be alone, or my childhood best friend for pretty much the same reason, I wouldn’t have known to. My mother was an even worse example.

She was too busy triangulating all of her male “friends”, including the psychopath she’d be intimately involved with off and on for several years in our childhood. She couldn’t just explain to me that there was a difference between adults with opposite sex love interests and same-sex childhood friendships, and what it was. She couldn’t tell me because she couldn’t be honest, with herself or me.

She was using most of these guys as supply and only seriously wanted the psychopath, but for some sick reasons that I now at least partially understand, she couldn’t let them go, or let on what her true intentions were with them, not even to her kids, who had to learn to avoid people like her out in the world, but didn’t because the teacher we had was someone who was the kind of person we should’ve been learning to avoid. We got all of the wrong ideas about love and life and our own mother.

Much of society seemed to think similarly as we got older. We had to be the “cool” friends and significant others who were not jealous of other people. There was never any reason allowed to be such, and if we were, it was our problem and we were terrible people to feel that way.

I know now that there’s a difference between pathological “I want you all to myself” jealousy and simply being vigilant about what’s going on around you, especially in a relationship. I definitely understand that given not only what I’ve been through and my own limerence but also my family history of limerence and the likelihood of attracting a partner who is also prone to limerence or of enacting my limerence whether through their own emotional neglect/incompatibility with me or their own mental games or both.

I also know that if I’m feeling that way either because of a person or a relationship, that it’s time to just bail. It’s too late to be saved and there’s a reason why it’s happening, and it’s not good (but of course I’m single with no kids so that’s an easier decision. It’s harder to leave a relationship with money, houses and kids intertwined).

So I know now that this situation with J was triggering me badly at least partially because of that. Before I’d thought all of this through, I couldn’t figure out why I was reacting the way I was around her, so viscerally, so primitively, for no reason that I could understand.
I know now that I had phased out that initial flirty comment J made to that other girl months before, when J and I were friends, until I saw them in the lobby that day on my way out for a walk and remembered it right in my gut.

When I walked past J going out the door, I’m pretty sure I started dissociating right there as I looked at my phone and ignored her, and she scrambled away from the door really close past me and I went out. I couldn’t admit it then but that was the defining moment when I knew what I had to do, and I couldn’t ignore it any longer. It wasn’t even a question. I had to stop giving her my energy, period.

It’s worth noting that J also triggered some more serious stuff in me, which I talk briefly about in my first sexuality post, but will quickly recap since I never posted that on here, and I hadn’t even thought to add that to that until this happened.

The psychopath my mom was involved with for years, and their relationship, really affected how I see relationships. I know that now but just thought it was normal back then.

I barely remember this guy despite knowing him from roughly ages six to eleven, and he came up in my memory briefly when I was journaling my post After School Program/Stranger Danger where I discuss how his new girlfriend’s daughter, a classmate of my brother, managed to turn their whole second grade class against him at the coaching of this man just based on the fact that he’d never liked my brother and tormented him quite a bit when he was with my mother, and continued to do it to screw with my mother after they broke up.

I had run into this guy and the girl who was my brother’s classmate at my school one day on a weekend shooting hoops. There were very few people there, probably five at most. The girl had invited me over to his car, and I declined and went home. The near-kidnapping incident that I experienced happened on my way home by two guys I didn’t know, which I also discuss in that post. My mom wondered years later if he was behind that, if perhaps that was one more jab at her or a random incident but moving on.

Since then I’ve realized I must do a post dedicated strictly to this guy, but in the meantime I’m just going to say, that he’s been on my mind quite a bit lately (which in itself scares me because I worry that spirituality stuff like soul ties might be real and I might manifest a tie with him).
I actually started worrying that J and I had a soul-tie and how to remove it. It was just too strange how we kept running into each other. I couldn’t figure out how I myself might unconsciously know where she’d always be. Or how the opposite would be true for her. It made no sense, just to see what all of this has done to me, but back to the subject.

This ex of my mom’s was a limousine driver when they were together. My mother claimed he drove prostitutes around regularly. When he lived with us for two months when I was in fifth grade, according to my mom, the cops were nosing around our house about him, in the interest of a prostitute who had turned up dead or something. This kind of thing never happened in our part of town, there was a specific area of the city where prostitution was centered and we almost never heard about it in those days. This was a hush-hush call-girl thing, and he was, according to my mom, driving girls around in his limo involving their work.

My mom hadn’t heard about it until then. It wasn’t on the news and so therefore I didn’t even know about it until she’d told me years later. Then interestingly that incident came up in one of my college classes later when one of my professors, a chief of police, had discussed how he really had to shift gears emotionally so to speak, to deal with one young girl, who’d run away for some minor reason and her dad felt bad and wanted her back.
He really had to shift gears to deal with them versus the other people in the case. That was my chance to ask more details about that case, I really wanted to but didn’t. Of course back then I was still telling myself, maybe it wasn’t the same case, maybe it was a different one. Sure, the same year, same part of town where there was no prostitution? Sure…I probably was afraid of seeming too interested in it considering what had happened earlier and it really freaked my mom out, so much so that she kicked him out supposedly for that reason. Also maybe I just figured the less I knew the better. What good would it have done me to know anything about that or him?

He never was arrested for anything that I’m aware of, and it’s possible that his only involvement was as a guy driving people around and nothing else. But understandably my mother freaked out and kicked him out. He’d shown up one night with his new girlfriend, the mother of my brother’s classmate, shortly after that to introduce her to my mom, who was still in an emotional tailspin. My mother flipped out and told him to leave her alone and got really upset. I tried telling her to just not answer the door because we knew who it was, but she didn’t listen and they had a big blowup. He last called my mom at her work when I was in high school and my mother told him never to call her again and he went off on her and said he wouldn’t and hung up on her. At some point my mom got a magazine in the mail under the subscription (first name) Drunkard (last name) and thought it might’ve been him but that was the last I heard about him or the possibility of him.

Now he’s a prominent real estate investor who owns several properties in northern Colorado and was married and had children at one point. He has almost no online presence whatsoever and seems to be a normal type of guy, who would raise no red flags to anyone based on that. It’s possible that he’s one of the psychopaths who never hurt anyone physically but he definitely had a dark side.

To say that he didn’t would be like if he were the sky and someone were to say it wasn’t blue, it was just obvious it couldn’t be true. He is who he is and the damage he did to my mother and brother was palpable. My only fear of getting into real estate and networking though I’m now two states away, is the idea of running into him anywhere. Hopefully the world is big enough these days. (A former bully of mine is also in the field, so you can just imagine that I’d never considered this field whatsoever before reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, though it’s right up my alley).

It’s strange to think of my mom’s ex, when I think back and most people have personalities, words you would use to describe them. He wasn’t that way. He was just like a big human walking nothing, that’s the best I can explain it. There was just nothing there, it was the strangest thing, but nothing I really felt threatened about or anything. He was just a part of our lives like everybody else my mom associated with. We never considered questioning our mom’s associates, or at least I didn’t, and quite frankly the vast majority of them picked on my brother, either because she allowed and/or encouraged it or because he was somewhat more vocal with his thoughts and feelings. When I think about these things, I know at that age that I had somewhat of an understanding of empathy by then, so I’m remiss that concerning this, I thought nothing of the constant haranguing of my younger brother that my mother mostly allowed. It was just the way things were.

Her psychopath ex would be in and out of my mom’s life over years. They’d be inseparable for a time, then we wouldn’t see him and then he’d reappear and they’d spend hours on the phone together when they weren’t together. Frequently when he called my mother would make me play the middleman instead of just taking the phone and talking to him.

The first time I met him at age six, I was at my mom’s friend’s kid’s birthday party and wasn’t feeling well when they came to get me. He was driving and my mom was really concerned and he acted like it too, mirroring her concern for me, and even at that age I could tell he was full of shit. I guess I appreciated the gesture but I knew he wasn’t serious. But I guess he seemed like a playful type for some time, based solely on that. But he never really grew on me. He had a Nintendo (early 90s) which he gave to us, and gave us a Super Nintendo when that came out, so you know.

But seeing my mother’s emotional state before, during and after the years-long debacle with this guy was something that, thinking about and understanding now what happened considering how educated about this that I am; it was truly baffling and devastating as the eldest child.
Coming into my preteen years, to see my mother falling apart over several years right before my very eyes as I was reaching an age where I needed a mother’s guidance probably more than ever and wasn’t going to get it, was probably so terrifying I couldn’t deal with it.

Long after he was gone, and even after my mother had gotten into her first healthy relationship that I can remember, my mother’s mental health continued to deteriorate. She started drinking a lot when I was in fifth grade, the year her and her ex broke up, and it would get worse.
Grandma M was no help and contributed directly to her worsening problems and isolation, as she infiltrated herself in my mom’s friend group and her subsequent dating life.

I have a mind to think Grandpa and Grandma L didn’t really understand what she was going through. My mom got anxiety. Three years later it got to the point where she could barely leave the house, thirteen hours from our old home and any reminders of the guy, though one of the reasons she’d ultimately decided to move away was to get away from this guy and everyone else who’d hurt her, including her mother. Her isolation ultimately hurt her even worse and was possibly the reason that, though she could’ve used a new start somewhere else, we ultimately moved back.

My mother was probably always an easy target as a single mother but I don’t know that I would’ve seen it that way when I first started reading about personality disorders. What made me realize the truth recently was taking a quiz on a website called LoveFraud, gauging my vulnerability to a psychopath. I scored quite high. I was shocked! What would I have that a psychopath would want? I don’t own property, have a run-down car, no money, no connections and crap jobs.

Now I know everybody is vulnerable to a psychopath in some form, and people wounded by their own childhoods and no understanding of self-reflection are no exception. This probably fit my mother. Her marriage was ruined from an affair; she was alone with kids and her own narcissistic tendencies to use her looks and vulnerability as a woman to get whatever she wanted from men. (He’d take pictures of her when she woke up in the morning and then use them against her later which was something she really hated).

In other words she was perfect prey for this guy. She didn’t necessarily have to have anything he would want (though she thought he was behind the break-in to our house when they barely knew each other). People like him are perfectly happy dismantling a newly single and free, independent woman who hasn’t the boundaries to block him out, just for the sheer fun of it.

When she first got divorced, my mother was happy to play the field, and had within a year amassed quite a collection of orbiting guys, including the psychopath’s best friend, whom my mom had met first, who hesitated introducing them, and later warning her about him according to her.

This guy stole my mom right out from under him, which he knew would happen. Commence almost five years of push/pull games. When I think back at that age, it did seem strange that he was contacting my mom constantly (she didn’t lie about who she was on the phone with day and night but I never was sure what was going on between them, and I didn’t ask). Especially since this continued to go on after my fallout with my friend group and my mother shaming me for calling my friend so much.

There were other incidents such as when my brother once showed up at sunrise to a neighbor’s house to play and their mom was livid and chewed my mom out. My mother does not take any responsibility for this incident or any others showcasing our apparent lack of basic boundaries in childhood.

I understand that these things contributed to my shame over my normal human need to connect to others. To this day, I don’t know why my mother wouldn’t just tell us the truth about healthy boundaries. Was it that she just didn’t know, or was it more that it was beneficial for her to have something to shame and trigger us about, while not teaching us some very important information about living in society?

I don’t know, but for years my mother painted herself the victim quite well and I never really questioned it. The first clue that I should have, was years later when I was in college and my mother was once again going on about this guy. At that time, I didn’t remember him whatsoever, just the name. It was only stumbling upon a picture of him sometime later that I remembered his face which was strange. Then I went from not remembering it to not being able to forget it, but moving on.

In college, my mother had told me out of the blue that he took me for a ride alone in his limo “for my birthday” one year. At first I was dumbfounded and told her, I don’t think that happened, I don’t remember it. She told me it did, she remembered it and she was worried because according to her, he was always trying to bond with me (they call it “grooming” now).

I don’t remember any of this. I remember specifically at age eight knowing exactly how people had intercourse without remembering how I learned about it but I didn’t think about it, if I did, I guess I would’ve assumed everybody knew.

I didn’t really know what to say then, so I guess the subject was dropped. Mom was the one who told me at that time that she thought this guy might have been behind the near-kidnapping incident after they broke up and I’d run into this guy at my school, with his girlfriend’s daughter, who had hurt my brother so, and I’d refused to talk to him, and had almost been kidnapped on my way home by strangers afterward.

My mother didn’t really acknowledge that this had happened until we talked about it all those years later, but it seemed clear that she thought he had done that just to get one over on her, get to her one last time and it was hard not to agree since two guys could’ve easily gotten me at that age if they’d wanted me. Not to mention there were just too many coincidences leading up to it.

How did this guy know I was going to be at the school that day? He had to have been stalking my mother to know. Had he followed me there? These were things I couldn’t sit and think about until I first started journaling the kidnapping incident last year. I didn’t write about the limo incident because I really didn’t think about it and I guess I just figured I couldn’t prove it happened or what my mother implied happened so it really hadn’t affected me that much, though I always remembered it in my mind.

When I tried to bring up the limo incident at a later time, my mother denied saying that, saying he’d taken all of us in the ride in his limo, which I do vaguely remember, but that was in the fall, right before he moved in with us, far from my birthday.

I always forgot the limo incident until I was close to having sex with somebody, and then it would come back into my mind, along with other sexual shame. It happened with my narcissistic ex fourteen whole years ago, and then with my neighbor J. That’s it, two times. The other time I was going to lose my virginity and get it over with was at a show, and a friend talked me out of it which I talk about in my friendships thread. It was after that incident that at some point my mom had told me about the supposed limo ride. Other than that other than mild thinking about it, I didn’t really have to deal with it much and I was relieved in a way.

Probably because when you tell a guy you’re a virgin, you presume to know the truth. I know now that hymens can and do break for a lot of reasons and some women don’t even have one, so it doesn’t make that much of a difference whether someone has one, but particularly as a young woman I was aware that there was this idea that it was expected that a virgin would have a hymen and would bleed. It was almost like a rite of passage for guys to expect that experience with a virgin, and until that time, I’d assumed that would happen.

Guys in high school joked and talked constantly about it. In high school, I guess I assumed I had one, never thought about it. Movies in my generation showcased the same idea. I also heard the stories from my childhood best friend how much it hurt to do it (she was raped at twelve).
And how my brother had once told me that I was probably so small that somebody would “tear me in half”. Such a thing to hear from your brother but yeah. Another of mom’s boyfriends, whom my mom said was attracted to me, got me a Playboy t-shirt for Christmas one year. I didn’t let myself think about that after it happened. I felt maybe he just wasn’t prepared for the holidays and that was why he’d done that, or maybe it was a joke.

I didn’t know and don’t remember really thinking about it but that, combined with being blatantly ogled by my older stepcousin’s husband and once being cornered and grabbed by my uncle, made me start realizing how vulnerable I was. I started wearing really baggy clothes soon after that. At that point, I barely had a memory of being sexually harassed by a bunch of popular boys the one year we lived in a small town in Iowa or how I was relentlessly pursued sexually even younger than that by my childhood best friend’s brother, who was my first unwanted kiss.

For many years in adulthood I had a relationship with a long-lost adopted cousin of my mom’s which had an undertone of attraction on his part, which freaked me out but I felt I had to deal with again because he was family and I had no close friends. Quite possibly on top of all of the sexual shame I had to deal with from my mother, the addition of that was just compounded shame for me. In all actuality aside from the limo incident, I arguably had enough sexual shame, but only in certain situations.

I guess it’s confusing, the thought that I’d been bugged for sex from entitled guys way more than that, but perhaps it was easy for me to avoid some of my sexual triggers when I didn’t take the guy seriously and had no intention of facing my inner demons to start a sexual relationship. I have no idea as I’ve never been that aggressively earnestly pursued. I thought as years passed that this was what I wanted and needed to happen but I know now that it’s not true.

With my narcissistic ex, yes he pursued me but he did it in such a swift way that it didn’t make me feel threatened whatsoever. He did it through love notes and barely uttered a word otherwise. That was his game. He piled it on so much so quick that the fear was only a brief feeling and it went away when he gave me the (illusion) of safety with him. Until it started shattering and I lost interest in the idea of sex with him when I realized he was a lie.

It wasn’t quite as easy for my neighbor J I don’t think. J was someone I almost ended up with. I could truly see myself being with and having sex with her. The chemistry was crazy and we got along well and all of that. She was funny and engaging and interesting and all of the things that drew me to her when I first met her and then briefly when I started getting to know her and the manipulation wasn’t as obvious yet. I was really curious early on and I think she knew it. I could talk to her about things that I couldn’t talk about with anyone else regarding sex and stuff.

But anytime thoughts like that happen, there’s the reality that I have so many issues around my sex and sexuality and childhood that I need to deal with before I can even think about having a healthy relationship. It’s confusing given that my childhood best friend, who was sexually abused over and over, who remembers it and still has a sex life, and my mom who was also sexually abused in childhood, certainly had a healthy sex life (she later told me she’d fake it a lot, IDK why she told me that…). There was more than enough evidence even to us kids that she enjoyed herself. We heard it and then heard all about it which possibly wasn’t very healthy either.

My childhood friend, as of last time I talked to her, remained obsessed with the older man who had narcissistically abused her in her youth. My mother had two decent relationships in the wake of the psychopath but it was clear she really couldn’t trust.

Aside from all that, I had to deal with the reality that the last guy I had something going with sexually assaulted me while I was unconscious (I briefly came to when he was rubbing himself on me aggressively and I’d passed out again. I didn’t drink that much.

When I woke up my panties were on sideways). I was horrified but had kind of been into him before I started drinking so I’d told myself that he had no reason to think otherwise (and he appeared to be drinking quite a bit also. Thinking about it now, I think he was sober and knew what he was doing and possibly drugged me because I know I didn’t drink that much and had eaten a lot also). I went to the doctor only to see if there was a chance that I could be pregnant, opted to take a plan B since they didn’t know if I could be pregnant. I thought about STDs but again didn’t think about it which is another thing that I kick myself for.

Yet I kept seeing this guy mostly because we worked together and I was kind of afraid to break it off. When he two-faced me acting buddy-buddy with the bully boss who bullied me out of my job, and when he spent excessive time with another (taken) girl at work who seemed not to like me (no doubt because of bully boss’s smearing but quite possibly for whatever he might’ve said also or crazily that she could’ve been interested in this guy though married). There were red flags that I know I should’ve looked at (to my knowledge, nobody knew we were seeing each other).
When I think about my reasons now, I guess I just assumed, it was time to move on from former LO, he and I were never going to be, and this guy seemed cool at times and I settled for it. I know now how that has affected me. But for years I felt bad about the idea of thinking that what he did was assault. It wasn’t even a question for the longest time.

My cousin had accused my brother of raping him when we were kids, and my mom and brother insisted he was lying. My mother, the ultimate man-hater always seemed to make excuses for men accused of abuse. The knowledge that a woman’s character was always called into question in cases like this. Aside from that, this was my family. My mother was undoubtedly a victim, but everybody else was always lying. We were a family that had skewed boundaries to say the least.

This coworker of mine knew what was happening to me at work probably before I did and honed in on me, isolated and alone, one more person to get a piece of me at my own expense and that’s basically what he did.

But back then I was more worried about chastising some guy for my own undoubtedly reckless behavior (as someone who didn’t drink much, and had eaten a lot, I didn’t think much), assigning him with the ranks of guys who genuinely have been falsely accused and had their lives ruined. I didn’t want to be one of those when I’d contributed to the situation.

I had a sort of flashback sometime after that when an older man who used to be my neighbor before I moved away; who’d befriended me, kissed me out of the blue one night. I was not interested in him that way and wasn’t expecting that and had a flashback of a huge man over me and I freaked out and ran out. That was the first time I’d had what would be considered a flashback on that type of situation at least and I couldn’t tell where it was from but it was likely from that night with my former coworker.

My childhood best friend had once told me out of the blue that she was sure I was molested as a child and didn’t remember it, which I thought was just insane. There were Lifetime movies on the subject and all of that but I guess I’d just assumed there was no way you could forget something that major.

Until extreme bullying incidents at subsequent workplaces which I barely remember bits and pieces of, some of which I wrote about but now have forgotten. Now I know it’s probable that people can and do suppress trauma, but it’s a controversial topic. These were things I just tried to shove down and not think about, but like anything, everything needs to get dealt with. That’s the whole premise of the book The Body Keeps The Score.

I never dealt with the fact that I might never know these things. I’m leaning toward that the limo incident never happened, or I’d remember something at least but I’m not a therapist. But I might never know if my mother had made the whole limo incident up, or if he’d told her, whether true or not, just to bait her (which would’ve been arguably a dumbass move on his part under normal circumstances but there’s a chance he was trying to gloat about how wrapped around his finger she was if he was feeling particularly arrogant, but who knows). Nevertheless enough has happened to me to really skew my view of sexuality negatively anyway.

But I’d be lying if that whole thing didn’t affect my potential sex life as a young woman, and eventually when I got to the age where being an actual virgin would be questionable in itself, the fact that I don’t know would’ve been largely irrelevant by that point I guess. Regardless of whether I am, am not, have always been or have always not been, I don’t have any experience about having mutual pleasure with another person.

So perhaps I avoided relationships for so long to avoid having to answer this question, with “I don’t know,” or dealing with these issues. Of course there’s always been the inner fear that what I don’t remember could surface at any time and if it did, what it would be, for what reason and how it would affect me. These things are much more prominent now that I’m alone and have no one to turn to. It’s not a question that I must mentally keep it together now more than ever because nobody is here to help me if I fall apart, and I’m certain that’s what my enemies around me want.

I don’t know why J was the one who ultimately triggered me in this major way. I don’t know if it’s just that I thought seriously about her and that anybody would trigger that in that situation (I kept pushing it down with my narc ex). I was also unaware at the time that I had vaginismus, and that was the reason my ex had trouble entering me and I mistakenly thought it was my hymen. I don’t know if it’s that J seems more self-assured in ways, or had more experience sexually, and maybe I felt rushed and possibly intimidated somehow by that fact and her behavior.

Or if it was her capacity to play cat and mouse with me in such a way that one of us was or seemed to be always almost “hunting” the other and how it made me feel, so put on the spot and vulnerable. Which gives even more insight to my former LE, because I thought being pursued would be great, and something I should want, but in actuality I don’t like it (or perceiving such) that much. Former LO seemed to be making himself available to me when he’d first started our workplace and we had instant intense chemistry, but after incidents that also triggered me in the same way, he soon stopped and I hardly saw him after that until the incidents that I talk about in my first ever post.

Is it that I loathe to have the conversation that if I’m a virgin, then I’m a virgin at 35 years old, but that I have no way of knowing for sure. How I would feel if I found out that indeed I was? If I found out or otherwise thought I wasn’t? Whether virginity means something, which could change from person to person. It’s not as major in the queer community but I don’t yet have much experience there.

I’ve had both sides of the coin thrown at me at other times. I’ve been picked on for being chaste, and been chastised for sexual behavior I never engaged in, by my mother and others or for wearing something in some way that said I was “sluttier” than I was. The time her long-term boyfriend, got me a Playboy bunny t-shirt for Christmas in ninth grade, like I said.

I’ve been sexually harassed at work and as a young girl at school. For years I couldn’t admit how I was sexually harassed at school because I was made to feel like I should be glad that “all” the boys liked me, and particularly members of the popular crowd when I moved to a small-town school in middle school. I’m not angry at them about it now.

They were little twelve, thirteen-year old boys who obviously didn’t know any better. I’m sure they learned their lesson, given most of them are married now. But it’s sad to think of how it ripple-affected my life. How my fifteen, sixteen, seventeen-year old self felt so compelled to dress down and hide my body to avoid male attention probably long after these guys had forgotten my existence.

The irony it was, that my mother saw it as a plus to move up there in the first place because I was “growing up too fast” in my home city but had limited experience with boys at that point and strong boundaries. It’s also probably why I developed such an affinity for the quiet, distant, shy guys such as my former LOs.

Many people can relate to these things. It’s one of those things where you feel like a drama queen for thinking about it, but which every time I try to forget it, it comes back. A woman’s comfort is not seen as important the way a man’s right not be called out on his behavior or linked to being an abuser (or that behavior of his fellow man) is.

Not even considering the fact that even considering speaking of the idea of repressed child abuse amongst sexual abuse victims who remember their abuse and know the affect it had on their lives makes me feel. Like this would take from them which they don’t deserve!

In this case, J, being the huge trigger of so many of these things just when I thought I was finally going to be able to start moving forward in a healthy way, reminded me every single time I ran into her. Every time I didn’t see her and she called out to me from somewhere behind me almost pointedly.

How it made me feel. Not good. How she objectified me and others over and over, either with her words or with her eyes, which even five years ago, I assumed was normal, but how it made me feel small and helpless. After how hard I’ve worked to be seen for who I am inside and not how I look outside. And considering one of the pressing issues with my mother being that she could not stop commenting on my appearance.

Then there’s the gender/sexuality facet of the triggering which I discussed. The fact that I am so LGBTQ-friendly as a bisexual/asexual spectrum who understands the feeling of being marginalized and discounted in society, could be triggered so terribly by someone else’s choice to become who they are and explore their own sexuality, which everybody has a right to do, and which under normal circumstances I would say everybody should do if they choose. How J’s ability to inhabit her transitioning status as smoothly as she seemed to, without seeming to hate her born gender either. I can’t even like my born gender, let alone the other one.

I felt like I’d stepped backward in a horrible way to realize this, which makes me cringe to think about it. I am truly ashamed that I was triggered into hostility towards a trans woman, even one that I like so much. I still think about it and it still upsets me. For the first time I’m starting to understand the hostility that some people feel around these issues (I’m not saying it’s an excuse for homophobia or transphobia, etc. It’s not! But we can’t be shocked in a society that refuses to discuss sexuality in a healthy why that we have these problems.)

What’s more, is how the more triggered I was, the more I was afraid I might react badly and how and when. After all the reading about triggers and projection and mirrors, etc. How could this happen? Wasn’t I further in my healing than this? When was the triggering ever going to stop?
Why at my age, I couldn’t yet control my emotions? Why would I hurt an innocent, if misguided person, due to my own issues? What right would I have? How would I feel if she felt the same way? How would her loved ones feel knowing nothing about the situation? Who would I be to expect them to?

More importantly, how did I not know this was going to happen? I went from feeling really drawn to her, to attracted to her, then to insanely triggered by her in a span of a few months! Was I really this unaware of what was hiding down inside of me? Or did it all just come out of nowhere? It really scared me.

Wondering if she thought it was because she was trans or that I didn’t like her and was afraid of her. All of these things came to a head for me that one day when I went out to throw my trash out and nearly ran into her in the elevator going back up. Intense fear that must’ve shown on my face and then the inevitable awe of being close to her afterward and what that always did to me.

Only she said “hi” back in a mocking way like she was truly annoyed with me, that time and walked out of the elevator past me and that was that. Not knowing why she reacted that way. Though it’s always probable that she was actually as tired of seeing me as I was seeing her given the inner turmoil I was dealing with, I have at least a sneaking suspicion that she was getting frustrated that I wasn’t responding to her attention in the manner she wanted me to and that was what it was about.

Because she’d done it once already, giving me attitude when we’d run into each other the first time I rejected her. But I still felt bad but that told me all I needed to know about her before round two even started. So I should’ve been prepared for it to happen again.
I know now that I can’t take it personally when someone doesn’t want to have an honest conversation with me and build trust, which is what it would take for me to let my guard down with somebody. If these things had happened instead of the manipulation, game-playing, and signs of triangulation from J so early on, we might’ve had a different outcome and it’s possible none of this might’ve happened and we could’ve had something smooth going with none of the negativity. But it did happen and that’s reality. The other fearful reality is that she may remain a reminder of all of that triggering for the amount of time that I know her. That was the last interaction with J. I am more than convinced that I don’t need a partner like that, regardless of the healing I’m well aware I still have to do.

When my last guy threw a tantrum because he got turned on and we couldn’t go further; when he went too far in the first place; when the guy before him got mad that I didn’t see through his “friends” manipulation to his true intentions. I didn’t accept it when he wanted to backtrack and show me the extent of his manipulation with plausible deniability after propositioning me in the rude way that he had and then texting me later that he hoped it “wouldn’t ruin our friendship”.

When my narcissistic ex wouldn’t just get tested for STDs and respect my boundaries; these things were about them, not me. They are a direct reflection of their own issues and my indoctrination into a toxic immediate community that didn’t teach me to look out for myself. Nobody healthy would put themselves on path to be abused by somebody.

But I have to live with the reality that I had a mother, who couldn’t be honest; who thrived on manipulation, toxicity, shame, etc. A mother who let her friends and boyfriend bully her little boy and what that did to him (but she miraculously stepped in when it spread to school, where other adults were watching and she put a stop to that, but didn’t care that I was bullied and ostracized for years at school, not the least of all him by her own friends).

Not even considering what having a man-hating mother did to my brother, there’s always the effect it had on me. I have an inherent mistrust of men regardless of whether or not I repressed some sort of sexual abuse, the same way as if I was sexually abused and remembered it the way my mother and best friend were and projected it onto me.

A mother who would let her little girl ride in a limo alone with a man she herself didn’t trust; or who would lie about it as a way to get me to keep bringing up this man she was still griping about ten years later. Who told me outrageous things about almost everyone I’ve ever known. Why?
I’ve often wondered too if maybe my mom made all of it up, or if at the least, she might’ve embellished details about this guy, but I don’t think so.

There was something pretty sinister about him and I think she was right about him, but invited him right into her home.
I wrote this post in the hopes to emphasize how deep these triggers can go. It’s safe to say I had no idea how deep my triggers went, and I have no idea if that was because of mental illness or arrogance or what.

[JupiterTaco]

12/2019

I saw J again one day, after months of not seeing her. First I saw her outside one morning when I happened to be heading out there to hang out. She was at the table and appeared to know I was there, as there was a slight scowl on her face. I decided to go to the park that day and promptly left to go.

A couple of days later, or maybe later that day, I don’t remember, but when I was coming in one night, she called me over being friendly, and I was relieved and went over to talk to her, the manager and the new maintenance guy. As we were talking and catching up, she’d laugh at my jokes, complimented my hair, etc. At one point a conversation came up about the former maintenance guy, and J said he was cute, she’s not gonna lie. Nobody said anything and she said it again, and again nobody said anything.

She’d asked me if I still walked around, and before I could answer, said “it’s been really cold huh?” and that was that. A few minutes later, J gave me what appeared to be a onceover with a dirty look, and turned away, to which the maintenance guy also turned away and left me standing there. I awkwardly said I was leaving, and J turned around and called “see you, baby,” or something. I just stopped short with utter confusion considering what just happened, and didn’t respond, but that was very eye-opening.

[JupiterTaco]

1/10/19

I saw her again. It’d been weeks, to the point that I realized I guess when I saw her that I hadn’t seen her aside from one time when I was sick about two weeks ago and had to go to a nearby store and everybody was outside smoking. As I was sick and didn’t want to spread germs, I simply walked past everyone with a slight smile and nothing else.

So that was the last I saw her until one night I had come back from a walk a little later than usual (about the time I’d normally be going to work for my evening money). I’d considered not going for a walk in case I would see her, but I hadn’t seen her at all so I figured it was cool. Plus this is truly getting ridiculous after months, don’t you think?

So I saw her when I was coming back, out in the back parking lot smoking (she doesn’t even have a car, or at least didn’t before, IDK about now but I doubt it). She was talking to a woman, and it appeared she was flirting. I didn’t want to seem like I was interrupting or anything so I just hurried past them. J looked down smiling and I just walked past them and went inside. The elevator was taking forever and a whole group of people was waiting so I decided to check my mail. At which point J and the woman she was talking to, came in and parted ways, and the woman ended up getting in the elevator with me, giving me a strange look at one point as she got off at her own floor.

J had walked into the building while I was checking my mail and around behind me and was sitting on the table and when I snuck a look at her she looked in my direction. I got into the elevator and left. At first, I felt better. I was once again validated that I made the right decision in not going there with her. But as usual, as time goes on, I start to doubt myself.

Why do I keep, dare I say it, abusing myself in this way? It’s one thing to seriously not be able to control my triggers, even months later, which in itself is annoying as fuck. It’s been months since what happened between us happened. Though she may still be attracted to me, it’s likely that she’s over the whole thing so why can’t I be?

Not to mention after all of the thinking I’ve done about it, the realizations of things, what else might I have to learn from her? When is it going to stop??? And if I still have something to learn, will it hurry up and get here so that I can get back to what I was focusing on before all of this shit happened? Because in all honesty, if I could go back and do it all over, I wouldn’t have allowed any of that to happen.

I already said that if there was a chance that I’d known she was hitting on me, I would’ve treated her a lot differently and avoided all of this. But as I said before, it’s too late for that. I just wish that it had never happened. I was perfectly fine focusing on my future for the first time, after years of dealing with PTSD, workplace bullying, family issues, family estrangement, grief, etc. I felt like my life was finally mine until this happened.

But it happened, and it happened months ago, and still, even seeing her makes me react so adversely it’s embarrassing, and quite possibly noticeable (at least by her) so that’s where I am right now. I know that her continuing manipulation is at least part of the problem, and why my body, despite being drawn to her at the same time, is trying so hard to keep her at bay. But why can’t I just let it go and treat her like everybody else? She’s certainly not the only manipulative person in this building.

G, the former potential-limerent-transference guy I talked about first, is almost as manipulative as J is, but for some reason, I’m not thinking about him or his behavior at times whatsoever. Maybe because J is obviously the next phase of my education and G, who was comparable to my last LO, was of my former lesson group, if there is such a thing, but yeah.

You know the sad thing is, I don’t think I really want J. I think a part of me is just focusing on the romantic idea that after all of this time, after all of this loneliness and isolation and pain, the person who came along, who interjected themselves into my life so intently, was actually a good partner for me, someone I could have a future with. Maybe in my mind it’s the least I deserve after all this. Someone who, if not mostly good, could, maybe with a little coaching and understanding, could heal with me instead of causing such chaos in my life.

But that’s not what’s going on here. No matter how interesting and engaging J is, no matter how much she otherwise has taught me and fits the bill of someone I would like to have some fun with, she could not be a healthy partner for me, nor I for her in my present state. Even G, whom I’d had a lengthy conversation with one night, seems to be able to tell. He brought up J’s need to look for external validation, out of the blue. We weren’t talking about her whatsoever until he brought her up.

I stared down sadly as that was exactly what I thought. J is so incredible in some ways. She doesn’t need to be this way, there’s a bit of a disconnect. But I didn’t say it. Just like I didn’t say “you’re awesome too,” when J told the manager that I was awesome. And I had to bite my tongue and not ask why she snubbed me in the elevator one day. That’s going back to the drama triangle.

So back to the conversation with G, G also ventured soon after bringing that up, that he knows intimate details about J as she’s been explicit with him about her transition process thus far. To which I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything and the subject was dropped. But the confusion ensued. What was the point of that??? Was he just trying to fish for my reaction on J’s behalf? Was he trying to warn me in some way? (He’s a bit two-faced so I doubt it). I didn’t respond to the comment and the subject changed swiftly after that, as G and I can talk about numerous subjects. It was the night after that, which I saw J outside with the woman.

Another thing I’ve thought about, is how this whole situation has made me feel like such an imposter in my own home. A place, arguably the one place where I should feel safe and calm and like I have a right to be there (for god’s sakes I’m paying way too much to live here!). And for months all I can think about is that J’s somewhere in this building and I don’t want to see her but I worry and feel guilty when I don’t, etc.

I did feel that way with G early on mildly, particularly after he kept harping the point that people thought he was hitting on them when he wasn’t (and I can vouch for the serious lack of social skills around this building by now but moving on) so I just made it a point to be sure he knew I wasn’t hitting on him in case he thought I was hitting on him or something. No matter how much I avoid, ignore, or act civil to J, or friendly to J, and no matter how much time lapses between seeing her, I still feel like this when I see her and I don’t know why.

Am I doing this all to myself or is J doing it to me or both? And the guilt that this recent situation could’ve been avoided if only I hadn’t gone for a walk when I was going to go for a walk, and just waited until the next day. But dammit, how long am I going to feel like a prisoner in my own apartment??? Why can’t we both just be in the building with none of this crap?

[Watchmaker]

I read every word. So sorry for the trauma you have been through. I admire your resolve to heal and do the self care.