#I could just remove overt references to make my space less horrible to be in | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shadowmayura · 3 years

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I didn’t think I’d be doing this, but it’s gotten to the point where some things have to be said.

Someone from my past has been making vagueposts about me lately and I can’t allow it to go unaddressed any longer. They are disingenuous and at times downright false, and they imply a certain type of relationship that simply did not exist.

If at this point you don’t know exactly who and what I’m talking about, please scroll by. I’m not going to be mentioning her by name and I’m not here to drag additional people into this big mess. This is solely to address any misconceptions for those who have already seen this person’s posts and are left confused by the strange phrasing and missing information.

(TW: harassment, emotional abuse, stalking, vomit)

This person and I met online in the spring of last year. Soon after, she confessed to me that she had a crush on me. I wasn’t interested for a variety of reasons (distance, not knowing her very well, and a lack of attraction on my end) and I gently let her down but suggested that we could still be friends. At no point did I promise a romantic relationship with this person.

We got to know each other better as friends. For a while, it was genuinely fun. I did not harbor any romantic feelings but I did enjoy being her friend. But in the summer, we began to spend more time together, and that’s where it started to go wrong. In reality, it was gradual, but it felt very sudden because the realization that things had changed came all at once. Her flirting had become a lot more aggressive and she was implying to other people that there was something between us. Playful teasing had turned to something far more demanding, and we were talking to each other nonstop, up to 10 hours per day every single day. When I realized how drastically our interactions had changed, I tried to pull back. I became very uncomfortable with how much couple-like behavior had emerged on her side when I did not want to be in that kind of relationship.

My decision was met with a lot of resistance. She was upset at me that I wanted to cut back on the amount of one-on-one time spent together, and she also was upset when I took a week-long break from Discord as a whole. We had our first argument over this. I thought we reached an understanding, but at the end of the conversion, she expressed her need for significant quality time between us, leaving me feeling like I hadn’t been heard at all. It’s worth noting that I hadn’t cut her out entirely at this point. We were still talking almost every day, but we weren’t on voice chat for hours on end any longer. I just wanted interactions that were closer to a normal friendship rather than a romantic relationship that I had never consented to.

It got worse leading into fall. The flirting continued and escalated. She drew “friendship portraits” of the two of us with strong romantic undertones. As she continued to push, I drew back. She didn’t like this. I was met with passive aggression when I tried to set boundaries and put a comfortable distance between us.

September is where it reached a head. On September 17th, she coerced me into a video chat that essentially served as an intervention for my choice. I had a bad feeling going into it, but she insisted that we video chat rather than text chat. I reluctantly agreed under her false pretense that it would be a conversation solely about fandom matters, but within 5 minutes, she was crying on video. I became very uncomfortable and I continued to look at a document on my computer so she could compose herself. She calmed down, but as soon as I claimed to be done looking at it, she turned the crying on again.

For about an hour, I was berated. She was crying and yelling, not allowing me to get a word in edgewise. She was, once again, very upset with me that I had been pulling away from her. I desperately wanted to leave the call, but I knew that there’d be hell to pay later if I did. I forced myself to sit through the whole thing. When she was done, I was shaking. She expected me to speak but I was unable to form words for several minutes and I was additionally berated for not saying anything, even though I had already been cut off many times. When I was able to pull myself out of the state I was in, I told her that our interactions had become far too romantically-focused for my comfort and that I didn’t want her to flirt with me anymore. I then ended the conversation as quickly as I could.

I vomited several times after we hung up and was shaking for hours. I couldn’t sleep that night. A few days later, I lost clumps of hair. It is stress-induced alopecia areata that I’m still receiving treatment for. I don’t say any of this to garner sympathy, but I want to emphasize that this was not a conversation that I look back on fondly. It was traumatic. This unfortunately is relevant later.

At this point, it is safe to say that I did not want to associate with this person any longer, but this was not an option for me. There were fandom commitments that tethered us together, and I knew I’d have to weather out the storm. If I didn’t, I would tear friend groups apart, drop commitments that I cared a lot about, and potentially ruin both of our reputations in the community.

I tried to maintain some distance without angering her significantly, but it was all downhill from here. She continued to disrespect my boundaries and push me romantically. Flirting occurred less commonly in private chats since I would shut it down, but in public spaces, she continued to flirt with me, and I felt pressured to allow it in order to avoid awkwardness in group settings.

Her romantic interest turned into obsession. She became fixated on my Tumblr posts and Discord statuses, accusing me of referencing her when this was seldom the case. Jealousy arose about my friendships with other people. She didn’t trust me to make my own decisions with my friendships and disrespected my decisions when I made them. There was also a huge increase in emotional manipulation and guiltbaiting. Whenever calm and rational criticism of her behavior was given to her, she would exaggerate and call herself a terrible person so that the criticism would be dropped in favor of coddling and comforting her. It was impossible to bring up serious issues without her playing the victim.

She also became increasingly hard to deal with in a team environment. I often felt as if I was being disciplined for not loving her in return. My ideas were constantly nitpicked and shot down. I was condescended to. I began to feel unwelcome in group spaces because of these behaviors. I felt like she was pushing me out of public spaces in hopes that I would flee to private ones, though I tried to avoid that as much as possible.

In November, a flip switched. The romantic harassment almost entirely vanished and all her interactions with me became unkind. In some ways, it was refreshing because the worst of the stalking subsided, but the hostile environment was not easy to deal with. I retreated from fandom in order to avoid it as much as possible.

Finally in December, my fandom commitments finally ended, giving me the ability to end my friendship with her. Right before this, she spoke negatively of me in some public ways. One of these actions I cannot name here because it would reveal her identity, but it spoke ill of a community that I oversee.

The worst, however, was a fanfic that she published several days before I cut her off. She projected her and I onto the main couple of the fic. I was cast as Gabriel and she was cast as Nathalie. The further I read, the more sickened I became as the references became more overt.

Near the end of the fic, Gabriel and Nathalie have a huge argument. I was shocked to find exact quotes from our September 17th video chat in the dialogue of the fic. They were large sections of our conversation. At the end of their argument, Gabriel admitted all wrong and they make amends. As a couple.

I felt ill reading this. I still feel ill thinking about it. I hate that one of the most traumatic conversations in my life still exists on the internet for anyone to read, twisted into a scene that is meant to be read as good and romantic. I am reminded of all the harassment that I endured and I hate that that is a feeling I now associate with one of my favorite ships. There are other creators involved as well whose work has now been tainted by these real-world associations that had no business being in a fanfic.

After this, I cut her out of my life entirely. I was considering less drastic options, but this was the last straw that I knew we could not come back from. I removed her from several of my social circles and blocked her on all social media.

Before I blocked her, I sent a letter explaining in explicit detail why I would be cutting her out of my life. Despite this, she has recently claimed that she was never given a reason.

And that’s where we are now. My life has been more peaceful since December and I have begun to come out of my shell. For a couple of months she left the situation alone and that was fine with me. I was happy to peacefully coexist as long as I wasn’t having to interact directly.

However, my friends began calling my attention to recent posts on her blog that implied I had destroyed her mental health. Some of them have since been deleted. While I was willing to let the first one slide, these posts have increased in frequency while pushing an increasingly false narrative. I don’t enjoy the implications that I did something horrible to her by not consenting to a relationship.

I’m sure she will disagree with my take on things, and that’s fine. If she disagrees with my reasons with cutting her off, that is her prerogative, but I cannot allow her to claim that I didn’t give any reasoning when she did receive it through multiple channels of communication.

And I hope I haven’t gone a step too far in revealing that this person was in love with me. I debated not including it, but I’ve realized it’s an unavoidable issue that is central to the entire situation. At the root of it, I was romantically pursued and harassed. I cannot defend my reasons for cutting her off without disclosing the base motivation for the majority of her actions.

So that’s my story. I’d ask those who read this to please refrain from engaging in any harassment. This post has not been made with the intention to hurt her, as can be evidenced from months of me holding my tongue. I really did try to let her preserve her dignity, but I was left with no other options after being smeared multiple times. My purpose here is transparency.

I genuinely do wish her well, for both our sakes. I really hope that this will finally end her obsession and allow her to move on. But whatever happens, I refuse to be a doormat any longer in this situation.

#life of a corn #non ml #kinda #summary of the last 10 months of my life

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