AITA
I got to thinking as I was processing my Big Will Smith Energy yesterday.
Am I the asshole?
Yes.
Do I feel any particular way about that?
Not especially.
I was thinking about all the shit I wish I said over the years. Every time I smiled publicly and wept privately. Every time I walked away and the perfect zinger popped into my brain 10 seconds too late.
After you’ve been hurt enough, your filter disintegrates.
Not to say I haven’t said some mean and accurate shit over time. If there’s anything I miss Psycho for, it’s how we could sit and be bitches together. It was when we turned on each other that I felt the sting. Like, damn, we are evil when we feel wronged. Better to team up and be evil together, at least for my own sense of safety.
I remember the day I walked away for good. He called to tell me his dog had died. I loved that dog and wept more than I’d ever admit. But then more calls came. And I didn’t want to go back to that cycle of (co)dependence. I didn’t want to go pick up the ashes. I didn’t want to be there for the other favors that would follow.
I thought about the night we had to call the cops because a friend OD’d. How I had to beg the cops not to arrest these clearly troubled souls for the trace amount of pot they found and were marking as evidence. How we camped out in the OR at the expense of a major deadline I was on. How my heart was just wearing out from the velocity that came with “having friends.”
He always made fun of me that I wanted to be a homebody. It wasn’t that. Anyone who knows me, knows I can’t sit my pudgy pork roast ass at home. I just didn’t want the drama that sometimes came with going out and the substances we all consumed that amped it up to 11.
In any event, I know he holds that time against me. It was me choosing me. It was a rare occasion of me honoring my boundaries.
It also led to living in absolute fear of being stalked, attacked, having my identity compromised and losing my job. All of those fears were founded, BTW. All of them.
Again, enemies are often better closer.
Happy anniversary, “Beetlejuice”
What’s sad is the few thoughts I’ve had about this person, he would probably have appreciated. We always did love a good joke, even when we were the butt of it.
I think that’s why I don’t let much slide anymore. For all the years I shut my face so Beetlejuice wouldn’t reappear. It’s the reason comments are closed on the blog, after years of getting cute comments from cool bloggers with whom I am real-life friends now. It wasn’t worth it.
I’ve oft pulled the plug on my social media for the same reason. But determined people get around the blocks and bans. It’s really not worth it to exert effort for people you wouldn’t even hold a door open for if you saw them running toward you.
Read away. Thank you for finding me so wildly compelling.
In any event, I could very well admit to being wrong or at least being an asshole about some things. But when I dig deep in my black heart, I see nothing.
Heck, a part of me WANTS to find some ounce of compassion to prove that I have some for beings other than my mom and cats.
And if that makes me an asshole, well, as I told the original menace, I hope the next time you’re up someone’s ass, they get diarrhea.
I guess that makes me Team Chris Rock after all.