clearing rumors, legal stuff
I keep hearing the rumors about me and legal action being spread around. this has been an annoying rumor that people just, let hang, for years now, and at the time I was advised not to engage with stuff -- but I'm done doing that, so bear with me as I lay out the story
clearing rumors, callout stuff
like 4 years ago my ex bf made a callout that was factually backwards in nearly every way. the only thing he conclusively didn't get wrong was that he had a lot of really bad feelings about me that escaped in the form of a post that was hard to follow and really upset
at the time, when it happened, i was completely fucking baffled by it. because everything he said conflicted with what I was SURE was true, and it left me confused/dazed
clearing rumors, callout stuff
the majority of his complaints were about a stressful AX con weekend where we sold together;
I had invited him to sell at my AX table during the first con we sold at.
it was kind of a mess because he had trouble respecting my boundaries; during the first con, he offered our room out to his friends without talking to me privately first, which is also what he did when it came to offering up my limited table space without asking me privately first. it sucked
clearing rumors, callout stuff
I tried really hard to go along with everything he wanted, because I liked him a lot and wanted him to be happy. he confessed liking me during the first con, and... that made it even harder to say "no" to tonedeaf requests that pushed past what I was comfortable with.
I just got put in positions where I constantly felt used and unappreciated, but i knew he had severe anxiety and tried my best to understand how to communicate through that, and to be understanding
clearing rumors, callout stuff
it was hard. it was frustrating. i had never dealt with anxiety like this that manifested in this way for someone else, and I didn't really know how to address unspoken issues... how do you talk to someone who pretends things are fine?
if their actions don't match the feelings they're putting out, it becomes really jarring for me, and that made it difficult to understand how to help or how much space to give or anything like that! it's a guessing game then
clearing rumors, callout stuff
I really wanted to help give him confidence in his work, since he was a talented musician and had such a cool eye for his original world; I wanted to help other people see that, too, which is why I even invited him to the first convention we sold at!
I really wanted to help get him started in having confidence in his work despite the fact that he'd felt bad about dropping out of college a few months prior (because I'd been in that spot before, too!)
clearing rumors, callout stuff
so when we were at the first con... and he kept offering up my time, space, etc to his friends without consulting me about the idea privately first...
i really wanted to help them, too, because he wanted it. but I realize NOW that this was him not realizing that I had boundaries, and not realizing that he was heavily trampling on them by offering me up like that to anyone he also wanted to help. like i was just a resources machine for his friends
clearing rumors, callout stuff
before the 2nd con (AX), there was some stress because his friend put off prints until the last moment, for personal reasons I was never told. I was frustrated because this friend wanted me to print her stuff for her, but I was told this very last minute, and I had very limited space in my bags! there was a huge amount of guilt applied to me over this.
I tried hard to explain the feelings weren't personal, but the friend would hear none of it, and that sucked
clearing rumors, callout stuff
for trying to enforce a boundary, here, the friend got super upset and started talking to my ex. the friend wouldn't trust anything i said.
this was fucking maddening. i had gone out of my way to make arrangements for this friend to sell with us; (as an aside, with influence from my ex, I also bought the friend a DS game that we could maybe all play together at the con (animal crossing))
anyway the friend got upset, and became paranoid about me for some reason
clearing rumors, callout stuff
this was frustrating. i found out THROUGH MY EX'S CALLOUT some 15 months later that the reason this friend wanted help with prints instead of doing it locally was because of an immediate death in the family.
anyway the callout made me out as a monster for not caring about this family death i had only learned about FROM that post, despite the fact that i PRINTED THE PRINTS FOR HER ANYWAY.
the only thing that made sense was that my ex thought i knew, for some reason
clearing rumors, callout stuff
I legitimately didn't know what to do, here. he was very cold and stressed during the 2nd con, and nothing seemed to be going right. none of my efforts seemed to matter.
near the end, everything devolved into everyone having petty feelings of frustration, among everyone. no one was able to communicate what was wrong, not even if I asked pointedly
I had no idea what to do. this was so beyond me; if someone doesn't want to talk, to communicate, they won't.
clearing rumors, callout stuff
anyway let's skip to after the con.
he was supposed to fly back to my place afterwards, and did not, because of all the misunderstandings that accumulated making him decide to make plans to go back home, instead
which... fine. i mean that sucked hard to find this out last minute, to not even have a chance to talk about it, but. you gotta do what you gotta do to not explode from anxiety, i get it. it was probably for the best this way
clearing rumors, callout stuff
so...
after that, things were strained, and our attempts at understanding each other were stressful.
I was heartbroken thinking we'd not be able to be friends again; it looked like he blocked me on skype (...I found out from him some 2 years later that HE thought *I* blocked him.)
since (I thought) he blocked me, i was devastated, but I didn't want to circumvent the block! so i... stewed on it a little and became agitated, not knowing what to do
clearing rumors, callout stuff
in the meantime, my (soon-to-be-divorced) husband was still talking to my ex.
and here's the part i've never talked about until recently.
i was distressed bc my husb was trying to make arrangements...
...to visit MY EX? which, what? what the fuck? he wanted to go visit him instead. what? why? I couldn't fucking understand what was going on and KNEW it was a bad idea and he WOULD NOT LISTEN TO ME WHEN I ASKED HIM TO STOP TRYING TO PLAN FOR THAT. i HATED it.
clearing rumors, callout stuff
let me state it clearly.
1) my ex and i break up, he doesn't visit me when he was gonna
2) my husband wanted to visit *MY* ex, instead...
2a) ...and wouldn't listen to me tell him "no you can't fucking do that this is a bad idea"
I should have realized what I felt was mistrust of his intentions. i should've probably broken it off with my husband years before this past month.
but i didn't know i could do better than someone who ignored my boundaries, so I didn't.
clearing rumors, callout stuff
anyway. my bad feeling about my husb wanting to visit my ex...
made me feel urged to do something drastic. so... what I did was write a vent post about him on my side blog. all my frustrations about the weekend that my ex wouldn't listen to me over. all my frustrations about my efforts to help him getting turned on their head. but my tone in it was just so regrettably mean, because i felt so stupidly cornered. it was a bad decision to make those thoughts public.
clearing rumors, callout stuff
but here's why I did it: I knew I had to write something that would signal "we can't talk again". because in my mind, if I didn't do that, my husb would have kept on trying to pressure my ex into a visit, and I... I didn't know how else to deal with that.
I went for the worst possible way of doing it, the least constructive one, because all my options looked horrible and so I had to pick between two kinds of shit
this does NOT excuse the hurt that he was caused
clearing rumors, callout stuff
...so when my ex made his mile-long callout over a year after separating, and I found out it was "in response" to my short vent post...
I couldn't even read my vent post without feeling the embarrassment of "why did I post this publicly. this was stupid. this is so mean." and it's one of like 3 times I can remember being that mean on purpose with a destructive intent.
i just wanted to cut him away from my husband, and it ended up shattering his confidence.
clearing rumors, callout stuff
so I completely understood why he felt so hurt, after giving it some time.
think about how jarring that'd be. you're with someone who's encouraging at every angle for the entire 6 months you know them, and then, instantly, they can turn around and make a vent post with mean angles that destroys the confidence that they built up in you.
it doesn't matter that my reason for doing it was with "good intentions". i should have striven for a better solution
clearing rumors, callout stuff
but yeah. seeing his hurt, magnified and multiplied...
seeing him remember every good time we had together in the lens of "this person secretly hated me all this time"...
that hurt my heart sooo fucking bad. because i never really felt that way about him, even though of course my vent post would've given him every reason to repaint the events with a more sinister light.
that hurt so bad, knowing even good memories became tainted by paranoia re: intentions :(
clearing rumors, callout stuff
I had no idea what to do though once he made his callout. it was all wrong, but I understood WHY it was wrong. as we dug through logs, he confused much of the things he accused me of with things HE did. (remember: I DID write a vent post! because it WAS a frustrating situation where he ignored my boundaries very often)
(..and then painted me as someone who ignored his boundaries, despite my multiple logs of checking in with him over any doubtful issue)
clearing rumors, callout stuff
so what do you DO in this situation? he started publishing anon hate, much of which I could recognize as people who had been awful to me in some way previously. and with anons, they have no reason to be truthful.
which is more or less how KF started paying attention to me. I was a perfect target -- my ex already started the hate train so all they had to do was hop on. all thanks to shitty misunderstandings, my shitty ex husband and my venting exacerbating things
clearing rumors, callout stuff
my ex wouldn't stop publishing anon bullshit, and also his callout EXPLICITLY asked people not to support my new budding project, Floraverse.
so what could I do? it got worse and there was a dip in my income, so I felt like my only recourse was trying to seek legal action over this. so i filed a lawsuit. I already had his address bc WE WERE DATING and SENT EACH OTHER STUFF but this got twisted into "doxxes and sues innocent people" because of course it did
clearing rumors, callout stuff
I only sought litigation because I had a solid case. he actively asked people not to support me, over things I could *prove* were untrue. I had logs and witnesses on my side. this was a surefire case for tens of thousands in damages.
it took a long time to move because the legal system sucks, but he didn't respond to the "you're being sued" thing which meant I was going to be able to win with no contest
but then i dropped it once he apologized
clearing rumors, callout stuff
we BOTH apologized. we spent many long ass emails venting our frustrations and sorting out what had actually happened and then we both felt kind of stupid at realizing "oh you didn't block me??" which sounded just... too stupid to be true? too bullshit coincidence? i don't know, it sounded literally unbelievable, but he assured me he wasn't lying and I wanted to take his word in good faith, here, so I do believe him
clearing rumors, callout stuff
these emails were 2 yr ago. but at the very end he did something that unnerved me. he mentioned that my husband "treated him like a piece of meat" and I told him I had no idea what that was about, but--
it sat with me really grossly for the next couple weeks, because it tickled my memory, reminding me of feeling URGENTLY that i had to cut my husband out of my ex's life - causing me to act out and vent publicly to solve this problem via indirect, hidden means. :/
clearing rumors, callout stuff
so. I don't know. we stopped emailing each other after that. I wasn't sure if my ex was painting things wrong in his mind again, or if there was something more to this. but it did make me feel a lot less trusting of my husband after that; there wasn't really much trust left, by that point. i knew he'd lied to me about various things and kept stupidly fucking believing "okay this time is different, i hope, probably, maybe"
but i didn't know what was real
clearing rumors, callout stuff
how COULD I? I knew my husband lied to me. I knew my ex had misremembered a great deal of things. I had no idea what to think or believe about it. so I kept it as neutral information for the time
fast forward 2 years and what I think is it was a combination of my husband having 0 regard for other people's boundaries, and my ex being as bad at i was at enforcing boundaries. horrible fucking combination i wouldn't wish on anyone, but empathize with deeply
clearing rumors, callout stuff
that was the start of the rift. during the 2nd con i tried SO hard to be accomodating of his anxiety, but at every turn in his callout he accused me of not caring.
but for him I:
1) checked in as much as possible
2) went to do errands (that he should have been doing, as my table helper) so that he wouldn't have to talk to strangers
3) tried to calm him down and let him arrange the table display how he wanted, after he was seething in annoyance
etc