Bad.

My wife and I broke up several days ago. We were never legally married, and I suppose that makes it a lot easier, but still not easy.
We both had severe emotional control issues, for different reasons. I tried countless meds to help, and keep myself, and us, together. Tried therapy. But in the end, more often than not, there was no voice of reason in our relationship. We could reach points where we’d go a month or so without fighting, but it’d always happen again some day.
Finally, at a time where we were both calm and unemotional, we came to the decision that we needed to work on ourselves separately. When the consequences of our mental illness were not just hurting ourselves, but each other, it was just too hard to cope with.
We’re still friends. We’re still supporting each other, but I feel like I’ve lost the best thing I’ve ever had in my life and it’s my fault. I’m happy that she no longer has to feel chained down by my angry outbursts, my constant panic attacks, and wondering every day if I’m still going to be with her tomorrow, but I wish none of those things existed in the first place, so we could be happy together.

On top of all this, the catalyst for making this decision in the first place was that there was a new guy, who was very interested in me. When he found out I was already taken, he tried to back off, but… I guess now my ex-wife encouraged him to keep going. We’d been open to the idea of polyamory from the beginning of our relationship, so that’s how we were hoping it would go. Unfortunately, it turned out he couldn’t be comfortable with polyamory, and wanted an exclusive relationship.
And that’s when we suddenly realized that there was a choice. I could try to stay with her, hoping one day things would get better, or find a new relationship and hope it doesn’t end the same way. We realized quickly that the second was the only healthy option, even if we really, really didn’t want that.

And now, several days later, this new guy is already telling me he’s in love with me. He said it was love at first sight for him. I told him I’m going to need a long time before I can even consider anybody else romantically, and he’s told me he’s willing to wait however long it takes, but the concept scares me.
My last relationship ended largely because of emotional and psychological problems that feel insurmountable. I’m terrified if this goes anywhere that I’m going to screw it up the exact same way.

I just don’t know what to do anymore. I’ve checked up on my ex a few times, and it feels like she’s handling this better than I am. At the very least, she’ll survive, and that makes me happy. I was friends with her for a long time before we even started dating, and I’m just really hoping I can learn to see her that way again. But this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with emotionally and I don’t feel like I’ll survive, even if I know consciously that I will get through it.

A very wise person once said “the only way to win is to deny the battle”. This advice is working well for me this week. The guy at university that I have developed a strong aversion to keeps trying to talk to me, and I have been ignoring him. If you’re reading this and feeling inclined to call this mean, this situation has arisen because he repeatedly refused to respect my boundaries (and I genuinely cannot express them more explicitly than the literal words “do not touch my laptop”), repeatedly started arguments because he can’t accept his opinions are not facts, and repeatedly obstructed our group project to the point that I ended up doing every single task that was assigned to him, because he either didn’t do it, only did half of it, or did it so badly that it was unusable by the rest of the team. He is quite capable of talking non-stop for 8 hours without even pausing for breath, including talking through lectures, talking over other people, and talking while others are trying to concentrate on their work. He does not think the word “no” should ever apply to him. He has broken my belongings, lied about it, and when confronted about it, neither apologised nor offered to pay for them.

I’ve been getting some pushback on my decision to start pretending he does not exist, because he’s neurodiverse (autism+ADHD+oppositional defiance disorder) and we have to “be kind to him”. I’ve really struggled with this, because I normally have no difficulty getting on with neurodiverse people and I have genuinely tried my best to be understanding with this guy. My default approach to interactions with anyone is to be(e) nice. But that has to be a two-way street. Having had my very reasonable boundaries trampled over multiple times, with all the evidence being that he misses the unspoken social cues, isn’t listening when asked politely, and argues about why “no” should mean “yes” when asked grumpily, my conclusion is that my own self-preservation has to take priority now.

By refusing to engage with him, he has no opportunities to ignore my boundaries (except for his continued attempts to keep talking to me) and he has no opportunities to start arguments. He can’t do any of his usual shit if I completely blank him when he speaks. This is the most control I’ve had over my interactions with him in four months, and it’s the least stressed and suicidal I’ve felt in two months. I would also, perhaps, argue that this is the best way I can “be kind to him”, because the one thing that will consistently make me lose my temper is when someone keeps pushing me even after I’ve told them “no”. Refusing to give him the opportunity to keep pushing me is a kindness to both of us.

It’s been a bit of a shit one. Finances are rough right now as I’ve been looking for a job for quite some time, and I learned just yesterday that my roommate is moving out on the first of February and didn’t think it was something she really needed to tell me in advance. So I’ll be on the hook for the full rent amount, which is around twice what I have in my bank account right now.

I did apply for a really cool job with a queer non-profit, so fingers crossed I’ll get that and my luck will start turning around!

Woke up. Got out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head…saw water damage in a room. Had a cup, noting I’d be late chugga chug chug Saw a pipe spraying water out my wall.

So I got that going for me, which is nice.

Otherwise, not too shabby. Thanks for sharing everyone and hope you have a good week this week. Remember, even when shit hits the fan there are still people that care about you. Even digital strangers with water shooting out of places water should not shoot from.

I got married Monday at a Mexican restaurant. We decided Friday night, bought pawnshop rings on Saturday, and got the certificate on monday morning before work. My cousin is a universal life church minister so he signed it for us and our waiter was witness. As untraditionally romantic as this seems, it was one of the best days of my life.

Last week I got the breast cancer diag, so hopefully this is more positive :)

I am back home from groove cruise and had my first full night of sleep in over a week. It was honestly one of the best experiences in my life. I have a lot of thoughts on how to improve my next go at it (sleeping arrangements are top of this list), but like my first EDC it’s extremely clear to me that I want to do this most likely every year for as long as they are still doing this.

With all that being said, my shoulder is wrecked (and I need to spend a few hours on the line with insurance and billing to clear a multi month issue with coverage on getting the damn implant placed again), I still don’t quite have my land legs back, I’ve been feeling like I’m maybe getting sick for the last two days, I’m nauseous looking at my phone and typing this up right now, and my body is exhausted (averaged 60k steps and about 2.5k activity calories per day on the cruise). But amidst all that I have to say that my mood is excellent, I’m feeling a huge amount of gratitude to have had that experience and I’m feeling very loved and positive about the communities and people I’ve chosen in my life.

I’m American and yesterday I realized I made a mistake on my taxes less than an hour after I filed them. Some googling told me it’s not a huge deal, just have to file an amended tax return after my initial one is accepted but I can’t ignore it because the IRS will know I did it wrong because they will have received a form from another party with the numbers I forgot to put in. It’s baffling to me why it’s a weird negotiation to pay taxes instead of them just telling me what I owe since they do know what I owe.

Pretty good, got a date on Saturday with this super cute girl that has similar interests with me and has autism (like 1/2 my friends have either ADHD/Autism and that seems to magnetize people with either together in a weird way, so that looks like it might work out well), then I have another date not currently on the books but theoretically planned with the girl that I mentioned who was asexual on the Sunday, but not 100% if that’s actually a thing yet.

EDIT: And I have a third date officially in the books with a third girl for a weekday either this week or next.

We got some good snow overnight and I took the skis out to make some trails for myself. The skis were great but now I’ve got to go replace my boots. I still went and took pictures for you all because it was so lovely. Still, I’m a little sad that my time on the skis ended like this:

Fixing things that made Sopuli crash so often in the last few days. Apparently some swap space is necessary to prevent kswapd0 gobbling 100% of CPU which also causes all user processes to freeze. This is so tiresome.

slowly recovering from tonsil surgery! pain’s still a problem but i’m most of the way back to eating normally which is nice.

Boo, the nice asexual girl I was talking to and planning on a date with just silently unmatched me on bumble without a word, feels great man. Like I get the fact I am likely option #20 on the number of potential dates but it still feels really shitty to do without a word.

Still have two other dates with two other girls but this really bums me out since I liked her the most so far out of all of them.

Today’s date with the chef girl went very well, we had a great time chatting and getting dinner, then she shared her fav memes with me till my ride arrived and she was trying to extend the date as long as possible, tbf I was too lol. She asked for a second date immediately. Meeting next Saturday again this time in my city :)

Better than last week, so far. I made a decision earlier in the week to try something that I’ve been wanted to do and pitched a cowriting project to my sister, who was really enthusiastic about the idea. We’ve both struggled to write in the past, I think we both have a hard time getting stuck on details. I feel like there’s a real chance that having a writing partner will help us both push through those times when we get stuck on a word or phrase or detail, because we tend to obsess about different things.

Also, she’s better at punctuation than me, which is good because my approach to commas is usually just to sort of sprinkle them liberally wherever I would naturally pause. I know that isn’t right but so far it’s a habit I haven’t been able to break.

the foster dog still has a limp in her right front leg after she’s been napping, so i’m setting her up for a vet appointment.

RAGBRAI (largest organized cycling event) announced the route for this year, which will be shortish but also very, very hilly. guess i’ll need to get some hill training in before july!

i’m taking some time off alcohol, currently on day 10 with the plan being to stay sober until valentine’s day. i really only drink on weekends when i am drinking, but it had gotten a little out of hand with the holidays like it tends to, so a break was much appreciated.