was I really that stupid

A descriptive phrase that leaps to mind nowadays is "passionately self destructive behind a facade of everybody play nice".

I'm feeling the need to write out the "Was I really that stupid?" eye rolls that keep washing over me today, knocking me off my little surfboard into undertows of head shaking regret. I nearly whined privately to someone, then felt childish and deleted it, then mentioned it to someone else and realized I was dragging baggage of stupidity in, like did I really want to drag it all out and have to explain it, noooo, so I dropped it. I went over to Pond of Death and tossed out a few paragraphs, but they remain in a draft because some of the stuff just can't be shared, so I walked away and did a few chores and worked on something in minecraft, and I was nearly past it when another eye roll hit and knocked me off the surfboard again.

Words mean things. When someone uses words to mold and control a friendship and won't allow another person to use those same words to question the friendship, that friendship is obviously dysfunctional. Being told what I couldn't say on my own public timeline several times, or who I couldn't be friends with, or when to shut up and let stuff drop instead of trying to figure something out with other people was tolerable because I thought, assumed, that this person had my best interest at heart. After awhile I started questioning this assumption because if this were true, then I wouldn't be watching the self destruction spectacle, and I wouldn't have seen switches being flipped and strings being pulled so I'd know when it was time for me to perform. I keep saying I'd make a really good dog. Most people only get the nice part, like the loyalty and devotion, but a lot of people miss the I'm stupid enough to keep jumping when I'm told to jump part.

Timestamps don't lie. I love timestamps. I love finding old timestamps and things I thought I sort of kind of remembered and it turns out I'm remembering correctly, but I'm looking back and seeing it all with fresh eyes now. Less gullible eyes. More experienced eyes. Eyes that can watch myself with someone, watch me try so hard to please and then bite and snap when I get taken for granted by someone who's had me trained to sit still and be good while I watch them pull all the other strings in turn around me.

People who are good at emotionally manipulating other people without any kind of remorse while convincing the people around them how wonderful and sweet they are kind of mystify me. I'm fascinated because I don't understand how that works. I'm not good at pretending, or lying, and I epic fail at head games. I follow leads really well, though. I'm good at winning games, but I'm better with a team, and if there is a team leader who likes stepping up and directing, I'm the perfect dog, because I'm really good at taking simple direction without too much question.

But I do notice when I'm being lied to. Or like when sometimes someone tells me this is the rule of conduct and then they break it freely. Or like when my head gets stomped for a roundly condemned mistake and then the other person does the same thing as a power play over other people.

That last part. See, that's what's really bothering me today, remembering watching someone get their head stomped in private messaging in the past over something less brazen than what was done by the stomper lately. And it's not the only thing. Rules of conduct have been breaking right and left. I was read the riot act more than once for language and content and being friendly with the wrong people, for openly expressing honest opinions about a TV show, and went through silent treatments, cut offs, being left dangling for punishment. Then the making up kisskiss and all is better because we don't talk about it. Just drop it. I'm a bad guy if I try to reason, if logic tells me I was punished for putting a toe out of line but the person punishing me stuck a whole foot and leg over the line and wiggled their toes at everyone. I'm not sure this person understands that it's things like that which make friends not want to come back.

All I know is that if I or a mutual friend had posted on Sunday what this previous friend did, we'd have been so thrashed in private messaging for spoilers and nudity that there would be no question who was right and who was wrong.

Sometimes it's just time to call a person what they are, especially when they are a two-faced hypocritical bitch. More than a couple of friends tried to warn me, and I was stupid enough to stick up for loyalty.

I think this needed dealing with before I can truly move on. Sometimes a person needs to stand up publicly for actual real principles, instead of trying to please someone's messed up ideas behind a curtain. If we'd never been friends, this wouldn't even be a problem right now, but because I was told what I could and couldn't say, and when I had to be quiet, and then rewarded or punished for my behavior, damn betcha this is a problem. It got personal. Someone made me a pet project, then someone couldn't control the pet they created, so then that someone dumped the pet on a highway.

Call me slow, because I'm aspie and I process emotions excruciatingly slowly, and because I take the time to thoroughly digest my thoughts before I make final decisions on things, especially when I say I'll be there when the crash comes (and it *is* coming). Call me slow. But don't call me whining about a house of cards.

My apologies (again) to the people who watched me go through the whole mess, some of whom are still caught up in the mess and likely don't even know it because I was so good at promoting that mess, and to the people who offered to wade in and pull me back from the cliff's edge a few times.

And for the brilliantly strategic maneuver of all my other friends surrounding the mess with their presence in the event of a firefight, I thank you. I don't want a firefight. I loathe firefights. I've been in firefights. They're stupid. But on behalf of one friend in particular whose head was eaten over and over, this post was the bazooka with a silencer on it. You're welcome.