To the person I thought was my best friend.

hey arsehole,

I know there's no point discussing any of it with you. I'd love to hurt you, but I'm not vain enough to assume anything I had to say would have any effect (beyond giving you the satisfaction of knowing you're living in my head rent free. congratulations fuckface).

I didn't deserve your cruelty. and even now, if I thought there was any of the version of you I loved left I'd go right back. that's how fucking manipulative you are.

you took one of the most vulnerable memories of my childhood, made up a story loosely based on it, and spread that story to someone you were fully aware I would never have wanted to know anything about me in order to improve your sex life. and then when I called you on that bullshit you gaslit me into believing I was the problem somehow. because how were you supposed to know that gossiping about me to whoever you happen to be fucking wasn't what good friends are supposed to do? I should have been more explicit.

well, how many times have I taken my rings off and left them on the table in front of you to go for a piss? and how many times have I chosen not to say "my engagement ring is still my property, and I will be back for it. I explicitly do not consent to you taking it to a pawn shop and spending the money on sweeties" when doing so? would you have been insulted by me saying that every time?

so, perhaps there is a basic level of assumption you expect me to make in your good judgement.

you made me act like an idiot, and I hate you for it.

...but still I tried to fix things. I spent MONTHS carefully explaining theory of mind to you in the hope that you would understand that me and your fucktoy are both separate people from you, as if you were just separated from understanding the situation by the exact right combination of words. as if I just needed to phrase it clearly enough and, poof! problem solved. I kept talking. I reached out. I set boundaries. I even extended my trust again as an olive branch. I swallowed each new fuckup to give you more "processing time"

...and none of it helped because you just don't give a shit. you didn't want to fix things, because to you the problem was that I said something unflattering about someone you chose to fuck and I needed to be punished for that "disrespect". not that I had just learned that every single thing I'd said to my best friend for nearly 20 years had been fair game for gossip on the flimsiest of excuses. not that you'd gone from one of the safest people in my life, someone I hoped would be there at the birth of my children, to a stranger.

and what a punishment. if I gave all the information you had on me to a sociopath and asked them to come up with the most cruel actions, I doubt they'd come up with what you did.

• listen to the initial boundary "I am no longer friends with X, stop forcing it or I will walk away from our friendship" and express "concern" to gain my trust. lay it on thick. but at the same time act confused. those words couldn't possibly mean their literal english language meaning. spend at least the next 6 months trying to manipulate me out of that, because I couldn't possibly be allowed to set a mildly inconvenient boundary with you.
• take the most vulnerable thing you can get me to say (and at this point, I still fully trust you have good intentions) and repeat it to X, with some fictional details added to spice it up
• wait for me to ask about that. drop a few hints to make me question if you might do this in a moment of "bad judgement".
• admit it, and tell me X had a right to know all my intimate secrets because boundaries are mean, and this has been hard on them (yeah, I imagine learning "my actions have consequences" for the first time in their 30s would be one hell of a trip for X. guess what? that's not my problem.)
• tell me you couldn't possibly have known I didn't want you to repeat it. go further, tell me I'm an arsehole for NOT consenting to this (poor X. if you have information that could soothe their ego, of course you have to share it with them. anything else would be mean)
• use a calm, reasonable tone throughout. say how much you love me, how much you want things to be better. sprinkle in as many moments of pleasant interaction as possible, to reinforce the illusion.
• take full advantage of any moments of residual affection I feel for the person I thought you were. use them to get X a wedding invitation (that X clearly doesn't care about anyway) and yet more gossip to spread.
• laugh at me for "leaving the wedding sewing to the last minute" haha, so typically disorganised! couldn't possibly be anything to do with who the shirts are for. no. why would hand making a shirt for the person currently using my mental health as a fucking chew toy be something I chose to avoid doing?
• let your mother seal the deal for you. remember the "take full advantage" step 2 bullet points above? you know how I know that was more fucking gossip fodder for you? well, she told me. as small talk of course, she knew none of the context you had. she didn't know that this information represented a much-wanted but still fragile lifestyle change that I'd shared with basically no one, a change I was terrified to dream about in case it all got snatched away at the last minute. so she didn't know it was a problem to tell me she knew. (I'm not angry at her. the innocent explanation where you didn't give her the context would make her your pawn in this. the less innocent, and far less likely explanation for her actions is an act of kindness in warning me off of you)
• when I finally stop being your fucking doormat, go full mask off. how DARE I judge you? that's your job. you'd "like to see me cope" with baby's first experience of caring responsibilities (because you really think none of mine count, because you're the only real and complete human in existence apparently). here is a load of gossip about someone else that I didn't fucking ask for to show that none of this was personal. it's just who you are, it's who you've always been.

I'll hand in my bells tomorrow. we'll never have to see each other again. congratulations, you won. I'm sure it was worth it.

I don't want you back, but I'd give anything to feel the easy and casual contempt for you that you obviously feel for me.

NotSwaps

this blogpost is brought to you by the BBCs "Eat Well For Less".

when I was a student, I was domestically useless. at last year's BiCon, I domestically fabulous.

student me: fuck, I need to eat. I should've gone shopping [mumble] days ago. hmmmn, what can I make with this random assortment of stuff? also, it's 10:30pm. why do I do this?

BiCon me: OK, everyone. I'm gonna start cooking the pasta at 6. if you don't want to eat then, it'll still be tasty cold.

student me: has no bras. laundry should really happen soon. laundry should probably have happened last week.

BiCon me: here are my perfectly planned outfits for each day.

now, a small amount of this is the fact that I was significantly older at last year's BiCon than I was as a student, but mostly it's about something else.

BiCon is a discrete event. it has well-defined edges I can work with. I know I will have to organise dinner for 3 nights, plus breakfast & lunch. I will need to pack or order all the ingredients, and think through the utensils I'll need. life...doesn't have edges. you can do whatever you want. it's up to you how much you spend. how often you shop. what you keep on hand and how you keep track.

open ended questions are hard. Being Domestic is an endless list of open ended questions, that aren't even phrased as questions.

so, what does this have to do with "Eat Well For Less"? well, week after week, they take a family who have found answers to the (many) food-related questions of Being Domestic that can mostly be summed up as "paying for convenience is working, but we wish we could save money". the presenters watch, perform shock at how wasteful the family are being, and embarrass them for ratings. then, they guide them through a week of "swaps". sometimes, it's straightforward "this supermarket own brand coffee is £4.23 cheaper than your usual brand and you didn't even notice the difference". sometimes it's not so straightforward. sometimes, it's "let's swap your regular Just Bung This Frozen Thing In The Oven dinner with a wholesome home cooked meal. it's easy! we'll take you through it with a professional chef and if you like it you can keep the swap." and it is easy. the hard bit of cooking fresh, nutritionally-balanced, flavourful and cheap meals isn't chopping a red pepper. it's building a routine of planning, shopping & cooking, and doing it consistently, so you don't open the fridge to discover you have don't have the pepper (or have the pepper and nothing else).

I wonder how much they really keep. oh, they all love the meat-free chilli or marinated chicken & vegetable skewers, and I'm sure they fully intend to continue. but then the cameras leave, the training wheels come off, and real life seeps back in. the well-defined edges are gone, and they've got to find all the answers to all the open ended not-questions again. when confronted with 20 supermarket aisle of options, suddenly bunging the frozen thing in the oven or buying the ready made sandwich for work seems very appealing.

I'm not sure what the answer is, I'm just sure it's not what the program is offering. it's answering a different, much simpler question. "starting with this selection of fresh ingredients and a recipe, make a meal" is not the same as "here is a supermarket. go buy food for your family".

everyone should know - RED INSTEAD 15

everyone should know, when something is described as a "life long developmental condition" that means people don't grow out of that condition. there will be 5 year olds with that condition. there will be 35 year olds with that condition. there will be 85 year olds with that condition. this is important.

routine - RED INSTEAD14

I don't need routines, except when I do.

I didn't think I needed routine, because doing things outside an arbitrary, prescribed order causes me no anxiety. I'm not Sheldon Cooper, insisting that Tuesday night is laundry night. I'm more of an "erm, what day is it today?" person.

and that's why I need routine. if Tuesday night was laundry night, but I have to do something else on a given Tuesday, I could do laundry on Monday or Wednesday. if I don't have a planned laundry time, undergarment emergency day becomes laundry day. if I'm busy on a given Undergarment Emergency Day, I can't do it the day before due to lack of time machine, and I can't do it the day after because it's Undergarment Emergency Day. I become Sheldon and I hate it.

routines are great, because they take the brain out of the equation. an established routine means almost mindlessly following the steps rather than having to remember all the things I need to do. the problem comes with establishing the routines in the first place.

I've felt out of step recently. I love my new job, but the hours feel really chaotic. I work evenings & overnight when my metamour works. they follow a 5 week rota, with 1 "relief week" which could be literally anything and they can't tell me until they find out a week before. I sort of have 2 homes, which need different routines, and struggle to switch between home-Lambeth mode and home-Croydon mode, so days are lost pissing about online in the executive function equivalent of jet lag. the result is I feel like I have no time for projects I want to do. hmm.

now I have something to think about, at least.

family - RED INSTEAD 13

well, that's a complicated prompt.

they love me, but the geek social fallacies run rampant.

I love them, but they drive me mad.

favourite charity - RED INSTEAD 12

I can't think of any that operate in my country and are actually decent.

ASAN is doing great work, but not here.

NAS... run support groups for parents and not much else...?

Autscape is autistic lead, but also a clique that repeats some of the dysfunction of the worst parent-lead groups.

so I don't have a favourite.

stims - RED INSTEAD 11

stim on.

this is like coming out, in that it's often the most visible sign of my neurology. therefore I owe it to myself to stim on whenever it's safe to do so.

fortunately, it's almost always safe for me to stim. my job is informal enough that I could probably do it in my pajamas. my friends accept all of me. my girlfriend thinks it's cute.

I'm very lucky, but it should be that way for everyone.