Aquarium Conflict

I'm trying to convince Mom to go to the aquarium in Toronto next month. But like. Without my Stepdad. :|

I have this complicated relationship with my Stepdad where I love the man the death but I don't LIKE him very much most of the time, and one of the things I can't stand about him is that he feels the need to be attached to Mom at the hip nearly 24/7, especially now that they're retired. She can barely manage to go outside to the yard and do gardening without him. They go out together to do things SEVERAL times a week and spend most of their down-time sitting on the couch watching (shitty) TV together.

Once in a while I like to do something with Mom just the two of us, is that so much to ask? Once a month we go shopping together for my groceries (only because I can't carry the cat litter on the bus) and that's IT. It wouldn't kill him to let us go to the aquarium without him, right?

But the instant I asked about it, Mom was like "what about Lee?" and when I rolled my eyes she gave me attitude.

SORRY but occasionally I like some quality time with my Mom, okay!

She said she'd think about it but I get the feeling it's going to be a "only if Lee can come too" sort of thing. >:/

It's Complicated...

I still follow Poe on Insta, mostly because it's the only platform they didn't delete or block me from when they abandoned ship back in January. I mostly follow them there for updates on their books (they have a new book coming out next month, Conversations With Monsters, go preorder it now!) and because it makes me feel better to see that they're doing okay now, because I know for a while they weren't. I still care about them deeply, despite everything, and all I want is for their happiness.

But. There's also a part of me that hates to see them happy after everything they did to me. And that's the part that makes it HARD to follow them on Insta sometimes, makes me a little angry, makes me cry when I see a video where they look totally at peace with their world because they fucked up MINE so badly. And I know they didn't mean to be cruel in what they did, they were just doing what they felt they needed to for their own self-preservation, but it came ACROSS as cruel, and still does at times.

I really should stop following them on Insta just for my own sanity, but it's the last link I have to the best friend I've ever had, so I keep hanging on despite the pain it causes me...

More Poe Stuff

I think the reason I'm having so much trouble moving past Poe and everything that happened in January is that I never got any real closure with the whole thing.

Poe just ghosted me, completely out of the blue, just days after what I thought had been a really good Birthmas and "hoped I'd get the hint" as they later told me, when my panicked flailing forced them to send me a card "explaining" what was going on.

But how was I supposed to magically get the hint? I'd never been ghosted before, and that aside, as far as I knew everything was GOOD between Poe and I. They never even gave me a CLUE that something was wrong or any chance to fix it. So why would I assume they were ditching me if everything was good? That's not something best friends do to each other. It never even crossed my mind that they were ghosting me, that they would do something so cruel to me. I thought something had HAPPENED to them and they COULDN'T contact me for some reason.

When they finally sent me a card with an "explanation", AFTER I had already had a literal minor heart attack because of the stress of the entire thing, all they told me was that they found me "very uncomfortable" to be around and that it was frustrating watching me get nowhere in my work on TKA, and that their Mum had been pushing for them to break away from me for some time. (WHAT DID I EVER DO TO THEIR MUM??) THAT IS NOT AN EXPLANATION.

WHAT DID I DO?? WHAT DID I NOT DO?? WHAT DID I SAY?? WHAT DID I NOT SAY??

They gave me NOTHING beyond "don't contact me or my family again."

So I've spent the last four months analyzing and re-analyzing and OVER-ANALYZING all of our interactions and conversations, trying to find CLUES as to what I did to fuck everything up (because I have no doubt it was a Me Problem) and getting nowhere. Poe never gave me ANY indication that things were going bad, or that they had a problem with me, or that their MUM had a problem with me, because apparently she did! They just dumped me like so much trash and expected me to put the pieces together myself and I just... I CAN'T. EVERYTHING WAS GOOD. I DON'T UNDERSTAND AT ALL!

I have NO closure on this, and it's just eating away at me inside because I KNOW it was something I did or said, but how am I supposed to UNDERSTAND or COME TO TERMS WITH THIS when I'm working in a functional VACUUM??

Windows Downgrade

Last night my laptop did a Windows update and restart while I was sleeping, which is normally no big deal it happens all the time, I just have to re-open all my Word documents and stuff, right?

Well I just discovered that THIS TIME, it "lost" all my journal entries all the way back to January. >:[

The good news is that I have most of them backed up on Google Docs (Poe insisted I start using it when we first started hanging out) but like the last month or so WASN'T backed up yet and so is just... gone. Goddammit.

So fucking mad at Windows right now.

A Quote That I Love, Regardless

"Burn it all to the fucking ground and start again with what is left. Paint your face with the ashes of who you used to be and bare your teeth against the DARK." -Charlotte Amelia Poe

I want to get this quote as a tattoo (just omitting the word "fucking") at some point, I just haven't decided where. I'm thinking possibly my inner right forearm, maybe? And I think I might chance going to Black Dog again for this one. They were dicks to me a couple years ago but they do text and black tattoos really well. =/