#feeling shitty

I’m mostly posting this because I want to refer to the incident in a future post. To be honest, I’m pretty much just copying and pasting what I sent to a couple people when talking about it with them. It’s not a pretty thing, and it still niggles at the back of my mind.

Towards the beginning of a happy hour about a month ago, I noticed him hitting it off with someone. I was pretty sure from the way he was interacting with her that he wanted to play with her, and she was flirting right back. I tried to ignore the ugly feelings rising up, but I couldn’t. It was a mixture of jealousy in the moment, dreading how I would feel when he told me they were going to play, and frustration at the fact that I can tell when something like that is going to happen. When we went next door for some bubble tea, she joined the little group Reaction Junkie and I were with. I wasn’t getting tea, and seeing them talk was getting painful, so I left.

When he came back to the happy hour, Reaction Junkie and I went upstairs to play. He started hitting me, and the pain, in combination with how I’d felt earlier in the evening, made me start to cry. I must have indicated something about being sad or jealous, because Reaction Junkie cut through my tears to talk to me. He said some complimentary things about me, and then said, “And you’re jealous of some girl whose name I can’t even remember?” (He said it in a nice way, like a reassurance, not a mean, snarky way.) I immediately started sobbing, partially because I was embarrassed about being so obvious, and partially I was relieved that for once I was wrong about him wanting to do stuff with someone I saw him hardcore flirting with.

Reaction Junkie continued hitting me a while longer, but he was growing tired. He sat on the floor and looked at his watch. He told me it was 9:50, and I asked him for ten more minutes. He motioned for me to sit with him, so I sat down, thinking we would cuddle and do aftercare for a while. Only a moment or two after I joined him on the floor, he told me, “I want to do something with someone else.” I felt this cold, sad feeling go through me because I’d thought I wasn’t going to have to deal with that that night.

I was quiet for a moment and then asked who he was going to do it with. “[Name],” he told me. That was the girl who he’d referred to moments earlier as, “The girl whose name I can’t even remember.” I got upset, and tried to skip aftercare entirely. but he wouldn’t let me. I asked him what he wanted to do, and he said rope. I lobbed back at him, “Why don’t we do rope?” like that was the problem. We talked for a few more minutes, and then I headed downstairs. It wasn’t until later that I parsed out all of the reasons I was hurt.

There was my normal jealousy, of course. And that wasn’t helped by the fact that I’d thought something that would hurt was going to happen, and then was told it wouldn’t, and then, almost immediately after that, I found out it was. It was like emotional whiplash. (I was upset about them doing rope because he and I hadn’t done much lately, but of course then later when it turned out he choked her, I was still upset. It wasn’t really about what they were going to do.) Plus, this girl was new, and now I have this negative association of her with feeling hurt, and even now it get’s triggered when he plays with her.

What hurt most of all, and what we talked the most about at the end of the night (and what still really hurts to think about), was the fact that he fucking lied to me. I know he did it because he was trying to make me feel better and didn’t know else what to do, but that doesn’t make it okay. No, it wasn’t a big deception, and the truth came out very shortly after the lie, but it sets a terrible precedent. It was the first time he’s lied about something like that, and it makes it just a tiny little bit harder for me to feel confident about things he says with regard to other women. I hate that so much.

I also can’t shake that negative association of this poor innocent woman with that night and the lie, so when they played together more recently, after I realized it was her who he’d played with, those feelings resurfaced, which is why I decided to write this post. In addition, the fact that he felt the need to lie to me to cheer me up…that makes me feel bad that I get so upset about things that he couldn’t figure out a better solution. Of course, that’s not really my fault. Lying was never a good solution.

Reaction Junkie and I talked about it a couple times, and he felt super shitty for lying to me, and apologized for it multiple times, without prompting, and even thanked me for bringing it up a second time when I did so. But after last week when I had a negative reaction when he said that’s who he’d played with, and because I cried (even if just a little) while I was writing this, I feel like we should talk about it again. It hurts when he’s dishonest about his intentions, even if he’s doing it to make me feel better. I’m going to find out the truth, and lying just makes it that much worse. And it’s disrespectful of me as a person. And I don’t know, I’m out of articulateness about it, but I just think we should discuss it again, and I should let him know that it’s affected me since the night it happened.

I’ve been feeling super shitty lately (see previous post). Happy hour is tonight, and I think I want to go.

But I don’t know if I want to be cuddled and complimented and comforted or intensely beaten and hurt for at least an hour until I’m sobbing and shaking and terrified, even if I beg and sad cry and ask sincerely for it to stop.

Maybe both.