u/Eau_De_Chloroform

I’ve bought and moved into my (hopefully) forever house on a cute street. I want to get to know the neighbors and have friendly acquaintanceships and so forth. But people stay in their house so much - I’m not comfortable just knocking on doors, lol.

I need a scheme that will help me meet them! I’ve thought about putting up a little library (but of rocks, cause there’s already a book one.) Or maybe having a garage sale. I’d even do a hot dog stand. Should I keep shiny trinkets in my pockets to hand out when I happen to see someone outside, like crows???

How can I make this happen in today’s socially isolating world???

About a year ago I left a 9 year hetero relationship to live by myself as a lesbian.

Definitely worth it 100%, and had an entirely transformative year of coming into myself. Lots of joy and good times and dates and sexy adventures as a lesbian.

Today at the one year mark I am finding that I have a sadness about my ex male partner.

I wish he had been able to see that I had to come out or die. I wish he had cared about that more than his own preference to have me be closeted. I wish he had been capable of engaging in the mutual support I had wished for us in going through the process of me coming out. I would have supported him too.

But he wanted to go no contact as soon as it was possible. Wanted me to move out asap and then never speak again.

My therapist likes to remind me that he would not have been capable of engaging in a mutually supportive transition process. That I would have made myself responsible for doing all of the emotional labor and regulation for both of us, and that he would have constantly pulled me to self-abandon.

But I am sad for the fantasy that I had where we could have still been family in a different form. Because that’s what I wanted.

But no contact was what he wanted and so that is what I did. And even though I guess it never could have been any other way… I still miss the fantasy of mutual support that didn’t depend on me killing myself with a lie.

I’m sad and I’m always going to be the villain in his story and another reality was never possible.

Anyone else’s pwBPD delight in manipulative therapy speak?

The sheer DELIGHT she took in taking literally any possible thing I said about my perspective or my feelings and invalidating it as (literally any theory or diagnosis).

She’d get me to listen to a therapy podcast, then when I listened to one, would go down a whole written list she kept of how each thing in that episode reflected on me, or came up with me, or I was doing, ect.

And the MANTLE OF EXPERTISE she’d draw over herself like the most luxurious kings robe. If I disagreed with her it wasn’t because I had autonomous feelings, it was because I was ignorant.

I expressed a boundary around me not doing a bananas-level request to comply to her feelings and she immediately jumped in to telling me “that wasn’t a boundary, I didn’t understand what that word actually meant, I was using terms wrong, I didn’t understand what I was talking about.”

Sometimes the more therapy they do, the better they are at learning the language to gaslight you with.

No contact is so freaking sweet, I don’t even care what villainizing story she’s spreading out there. I’ll never let another chaos demon eat my peace.