Kindness To Myself Is How I Will Erase Him.

Kindness to myself is how I will erase him.

when i was a teenager it felt very revolutionary to be cruel to myself. like some kind of slow passive protest against how much everything hurt. i starved myself of sleep and food and tenderness because it felt right. it felt sharp and angry and radical and i wanted to be those things. adulthood is the realisation that the world is already working to cut into you well before you learn how to do it yourself. caring for yourself and others is the real protest

Four years ago today he kicked me out. That was certainly not the end of my torture, but it marked the beginning of my escape.

I don't know if I would have ever taken the leap and left him on my own. I would like to think that I would have, but I believe I had resigned myself to being invisible forever.

I owe him nothing, but I'm grateful for this date as it helped me begin the rest of my life.

There were so many examples of this. No matter what I chose, it was always wrong. I questioned the rationality of all my decisions all the time. And I was wrong every time.

It wasn't long before my mind went blank when it came to decision making. And then he'd start screaming at me for not being able to make decisions.

Food was always a Thing

He'd tell me he was bored with the food I made so I'd find a new recipe. He would criticise everything about it, say it looked disgusting and ask why I was so stupid.

So he'd give me one to try, I'd make it and he'd love it. If I made it again, it was never as good as the first time. If I made it again he hated it. If I never made it again he would tell me that he loved it and I was withholding it because I was lazy/a cunt.

It's been 105 weeks since I last contacted him.

Find you a partner who, knowing you love them, will make oatmeal peanut butter cookies despite hating both peanut butter and oatmeal themselves.

FuuuuUUUUUCCCKKK

One of my clients is someone he used to work with. They've kept in touch. Dan doesn't keep friends very well, but they're friendsish.

This very vague and loose connection was irksome at first, as my ex could have used him to attempt to fish for information about me. I've relaxed a lot since then he's always remained focused on the business and never asked any probing or suspicious questions. All of the information he had access to was stuff my ex already knew, so no additional risk.

Well.

I stopped by his house to pick up some documents today and there's a person i know from my theatre group sitting on his couch. They met on Bumble and have been dating for 6 months.

We're not best friends or anything, but she's on my Facebook and has seen pics of me and my woman together. She knows I've moved just outside of my city. She knows I'm involved in a theatre production right now. She knows things that could trickle down to my ex through my client that would give him more information.

She may even say something off hand that would be damning. Like how I'm queer. I have no idea how he would react to news like that, but I'd bet money it wouldn't be good.

No longer a low risk connection. And I'm fucking LOSING IT. AGAIN.