(Prepare for a long read. Also, if you comment, please don’t mention unique names, as I can’t risk this coming up in searches. Lastly, I had to drink to get myself through this, so ignore whatever.)

I don’t know what to do anymore so I’m going to describe everything that’s led to this point and leave it at that.

I’ve been a perpetual job seeker for almost 5 years now. I can’t count the number of resumes I’ve submitted. I can’t even count the number of ‘sorry, we selected another candidate’ notices. I can count the number of interviews I’ve had. I can quantify the amount of energy I have left.

All of my remaining energy goes into my temporary job right now. When I leave, I’m done. When I get home I stay in my room because I can’t stand the presence of my addiction-addled roommate who has stopped doing anything around the house. Occasionally I get a drink at Vera’s after work and pretend I’m in a different place, different time.

I’m crushing it at work. In 6 weeks I’ve given them 3 times that amount of work and far more vision than my job description entails. And it will lead to nothing. A month extension is dangled in front of me as if I should be thankful. It might get extended a little more if I offer enough of my soul.

I’ve done my best to restrain my woes from impacting my friends’ lives. I vent and move on, hopefully succeeding. I suppose I don’t, as a description of my being “a bit of a downer” is something that has stuck in my brain.

But then I think about where I am in life, and how can I disagree? My life is a downer compared to the people I’m around. Even if not, my mindset clearly is. I should be thankful I’m working and successful in the role I have, but I’m mostly annoyed at the temporality and drained by the continued search as opposed to some other being that might relish the challenge…or other bullshit term.

My friends…who are really my family…carried me through much of this time. Yep, I’ll be at this place for another year before likely being let go, but whatever, I’m able to spend the rest of these hours doing what I like with the people I like. Banter distracted me. Fantasies fueled me.

Then I made the mistake of following one.

Before I go on, I need to be clear that much of the following centers on Heidi, but this isn’t meant to attack. I guess I want to provide more caveats, but I’m hoping people will understand why I’m sharing this by the end.

For a long time, gaming and other common activities involved Terry, Heidi, and I. In general, it was a nice dynamic. There were a lot of positives that I can’t start listing out because I don’t know where to begin or end.

Unfortunately, there was also a reoccurring negative. I very much elicited a different response from Heidi than others in particular circumstances. It was frustrating for me. When I tried to confront it, in person or even through estrip conversations, they were pushed aside to another time which never arrived.

I would vent to Terry about this, only to hear that I “occupy a weird place” in Heidi’s life. It was easy to just accept this as it was repeated through the years. It was less easy to accept it after my first stint at ASC.

When I took this jump, I admitted to Terry that I did not possess a great deal of confidence. It had been eroded by my work status over the years and the outcomes of my recent erroneous professional decisions. It was difficult working through that, but it was Heidi’s demeanor towards me that led me to step away from that role.

In this case, I considered that it was simply professional chemistry that led to this outcome. It was frustrating, but easier to cope with under the pretense of other commitments on both sides, and not wholly unexpected. Where I really kick myself is two years later.

When Terry came to me for that project, he talked about how Heidi wanted to work with me again and his personal enthusiasm was difficult to turn away. I thought this was a terrible undertaking, not so much because of the goal but because of the people…more specifically, the chemistry between us. Being unemployed with dire prospects, I found little else to justify turning away this possibility.

Unfortunately, things turned out as I (and, I believe it’s safe to say, Heidi) expected they would. The project was largely successful, but personal relationships were severely impacted in the course. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I feel like this is where narratives sharply deviate.

As the project progressed, relationships devolved. What has been put out there is that sexism marginalized Heidi’s contribution, especially from me. (Maybe not especially, but I use that term due to the impact it had on those involved.) What I perceived as discussion and debate between equal parties was described as dismissing a party’s contribution.

This is obviously my interpretation. One thing I pride myself on is shucking labels. I’ve mentioned negative statements that have taken hold in my brain, but a positive is when Dianne once said to me that I’m “the least biased person” she knows. I’ve strived for that. I’ve done so because I watched my mother deal with strife that led her to a terrible place, that I came from a place that self-justified bigotry against non-heterosexuality under the premise of “nature” through reason, that I was lucky enough to not associate with any creed or race from an early age, and so on. That single statement meant more than it probably should, yet still less than it deserves. I will admit that I am crying right now due to just how much that meant to me.

I’m open to the possibility that I was unintentionally dismissive of Heidi’s contribution. I tried meeting with her towards the end of the project to try and address this. I would have met sooner, but I was so engrossed by the demands of the project and timeline that I couldn’t afford to put my limited energy anywhere else. When she did agree to meet, Dianne accompanied, and a true discussion never materialized.

Afterwards, I was frustrated with how the entire project went down, and Heidi said (from my grapevine connection) a number of hurtful things related to my part of the project and outcomes thereof. I reached out to Terry proposing a group discussion, but Terry’s predominant foible is with addressing conflict and that approach predictably fell to the wayside.

Heidi and I eventually met 6 weeks later. It was a one-on-one between two people with very different perspectives of and approaches to the world. It occurred after emotions boiled, at least on my side. My emotions are more akin to the ocean, slowly building up and subsiding with the phases of the moon as opposed to the hour of the day. I did my best to put those to the side and discuss the realities while sharing where I was coming from emotionally. In return, I felt like my actions could only be accepted if I first agreed that they were sexist. What was not acknowledged was what I experience during that project.

Early on in the project, when some more major points of disagreements started to appear, we engaged in group discussions about them. The earliest of note was surrounding the contracting of an external marketing agency. On my behalf, I was largely against what I considered a ridiculous sum for the services being offered (especially considering the number of hours I was putting into the project without any return other than equity that I couldn't rely on). Early on in the discussion, 4 out of 5 of us agreed, though a significant portion of this discussion agreed with 4 of us being a part of it while confined to a return car trip.

Still, upon arriving to a morning meeting between Heidi, Terry and I, there was an unquestionable hostility towards me and the position I was representing. I brought this out into the open, and Heidi responded with an understandable explanation conveying her emotional attachment to the discussion and the fact that she was entering it at a different place (for lack of a better way of summarizing it). We had actually discussed addressing these episodes previously, and I thought that maybe this was accomplished.

Unfortunately, this continued to occur. Two moments stood out in particular.

The first is when, after retrieving a laptop charger outside of the office, I walked back into Heidi and Terry’s office only to have Heidi scream at me in a very degrading manner that “you need to get out of here now!” Terry visited me later and apologized for things that he had no relation to, and Heidi never addressed it.

The second came when Terry and I gave our presentation demo. Heidi’s lone piece of feedback was directed at me, and delivered in a very aggressive and belittling manner. It was valuable feedback, feedback that I took action on to try and correct. But its delivery was extremely demeaning, distinct, and difficult to simply dismiss the intention behind it.

At the end of our one-on-one discussion, none of this was acknowledged. I was left feeling like I had to accept that my behavior was sexist, which I did not and still do not believe, and that I had to accept that her behavior towards me was justified (I don't think this is her position, but it is the logical conclusion of our meeting).

The meeting ended awkwardly, which wasn’t unexpected and was why I tried to establish a group meeting to help navigate the confrontation.

If it was merely that one experience, it might have been easier to push aside. This is why the context is important and why this fucking post is so long. I’ve been putting this to the side for what feels like the entirety of my relationship to Heidi. Our first bonding occurred when I posted in response to Tony, many ages ago, during my estrip birthing. It wasn’t my ideal way to enter the fray, but my calling out of his male chauvinism led to Heidi thanking me for ‘saying what we were thinking’. We wound up finding ourselves in mutual activities more and more, with board gaming being the most predominant. That was where my position in her life started to metastasize.

I represented a villain.

A moment that stood out is actually when Dianne first joined our gaming group. I believe beforehand I pointed out the role I held in that environment. That said, as the games progressed, Dianne exclaimed “damn babe” about her actions towards me, which Heidi’s laughed at in acknowledgement. It was a game and, were it confined to the game, I could also laugh it off and even relish it as I long did. But it wasn’t confined to the game.

Bringing it back to the now, I no longer knew how to deal with what was occurring. My choice became being around someone that thinks they’re justified in treating me like shit (…”different” is the more PC way of describing it, but not how I feel), or lose the companionship of my family. I would never ask the former of my family, and I didn’t want the latter.

I tried walking the middle ground. I didn’t want to be around Heidi. I hoped this would subside over time. …Actually, what I hoped is that we could eventually find ourselves discussing it as a group. Unfortunately, neither came to be.

I decided to exclude myself from the events that would put Heidi and I in a more intimate engagement than I was willing to subject myself to. In this case, I truly did hope time would lend itself to healing. This was around the time I received the offer for my current job.

The extreme hours I was working minimized the number of attempts I made to hang out with others. The few times I did were met with relative silence. I couldn’t ignore the fact that my own invitation to events was also noticeably absent. There was a 6-week period where the only invite I had was to Erica’s show, and when I couldn’t attend because of an exam the next morning I was made to feel like shit about it. (My reaction…not trying to lash out.) Here, more than anywhere, I need to recognize my sensitivity. It’s a part of me. And that’s where I find myself now.

Today I received a message from Dianne about how all of this is on me.

I acknowledge a portion of it is. I know I shelter easily. I know I don’t express myself as much as I should. I know I don’t easily dismiss things that seem to be considered inconsequential by many. I know there are others that I don’t want to go on listing.

But here’s where I’m at…I think it’s fucked up how easily I’m expected to simply deal with someone treating me the way that I’ve been treated. I’m hurt how readily people accept my absence. I can’t stand this characterization of my being.

If this is who I am. If I’m a downer, mean, sexist, abandoner, etc., then my approach is right. Rip off the Band-Aid and move on. I don’t believe any of that applies to me, but I sure as hell don’t have any energy left to care.

If not……I don’t know. Obviously at one point I thought a group discussion would be good, but I don’t know if I have that in me anymore. Maybe I do. I would like to not lose all of you.

I guess what I’d like to end with this is…Dianne I love you and sorry I couldn’t handle things better. Terry, likewise. Paul, message me too instead of just Masumi you fucker. Joe, thank you. Masumi, thank you. Tanya, thanks. Etc.