u/ptdomesticengineer

Mirror, mirror-who do you call

I wanted to tell you every discourse that brought me here. Why I would never come back. Every moment you failed me and the us we spent all this time creating.

But for every failure of yours, I unexpectedly saw my own. And that was…humbling.

it’s still not worth it. neither of us are happy and not just because of lack of investment, it’s who we are as people. I don’t want to continue this chapter any longer. i still don’t want you to touch me,
you’re a okay dad and horrible partner for me.

I’d like to say it’s why I’m in this position and that’s partially true. In this set of circumstances, it’s my own. I can end this pattern now.

I wish you well. I hope for your own sake you can make the changes you need to recover and live again.

Just even further away from me than you already are….keep going…go on now, git!

I didn’t know I was playing a game. Until 15 minutes ago. I don’t know what the rules are. I don’t know the players. I know I kept looking to you both to figure out a way to speak, what do I even say to ask, “what the actual fuck Is going on?” But it reads that even that was misinterpreted.

Had I known that’s what this was, I would’ve picked the person I came here for in the first place.

I apologized to someone’s, thinking it was you.

I want to thank the people dearest to me for showing up and showing out. Thank you for carrying me when I couldn’t anymore.

I completely blacked out that night, I don’t know what info was shared with me after that “O” word. I have literal blips. It’s a trauma thing. I remember something about a game.

There has been a fuck ton of misinformation shared about me. There’s been a fuck ton of misinformation shared about my friends. I kept my posts under this account.

I have something else for the person who took my voice, but like I said. I just discovered.

J & J

Ever heard of the term DARVO?

I’ve used it before. The day you screamed and called me a bitch in front of the princess. That was the official D-day. I finally figured out your narcissistic tactic that you’ve used since day 1.

Let me employee everyone’s least favorite tool because I’ve got a lot of ground to cover while recovering from psychological abuse.

“DARVO” is actually a real manipulation pattern coined by psychologist Jennifer Freyd.

It stands for:
Deny
Attack
Reverse
Victim and
Offender

Meaning: when someone gets confronted for harmful behavior, instead of accountability, they flip the entire situation upside down.
Classic sequence:
“I never did that.”
“You’re crazy for accusing me.”
“Actually YOU are the abusive one for bringing this up.”

“DARVO is when someone gets caught acting badly and suddenly turns into the most oppressed victim alive while making you the villain for noticing.”
Examples:
You bring up disrespect → they accuse you of “starting drama.”
You mention a boundary → suddenly you’re “controlling.”
You point out lying → now they’re wounded you “don’t trust them.”
You react emotionally after prolonged mistreatment → they focus entirely on your reaction and ignore what caused it.
The reason it’s effective is because it creates confusion and forces the other person into defense mode. Instead of discussing the original behavior, now you’re busy proving you’re not insane, abusive, jealous, dramatic, toxic, etc.
A lot of people miss the “attack” phase because it’s not always yelling.

Sometimes it’s:
mockery
condescension
weaponized therapy language
“concern”
acting hurt
subtle humiliation
bringing up your past mistakes to discredit you

The biggest tell is this:
After the conversation, you somehow leave feeling like you have to apologize for bringing up something that hurt you.

“Some people could crash a car into your house and have you apologizing for making them feel unwelcome.”

“I’m worried about you”

My attorney and I went over everything yesterday. Psychological abuse is still abuse. And greatly changes everything for you, toots.

Did you know I met with the alphabet digital forensics team Tuesday?

Kisses to the bottom boys.

The Black Keys "Everlasting Light"

Magdalena Bay - Image (Grimes Special) [Official Audio]

What’s my line in times of pressure?

I did what I had to. Now I want to.

Dating in this era feels less like romance and more like participating in a low-budget psychological experiment funded by a man who owns three rings, a podcast microphone, and unresolved maternal grief.
Everyone keeps talking about “mind games,” but nobody prepares you for the fact that modern psychological warfare is mostly just:
disappearing for twelve hours,
watching your Instagram story immediately,
replying “that’s crazy”
and then returning three business days later with “sorry, been in my head.”
Oh.
Were you?
Because I’ve been in the fucking trenches.
At this point I need military ribbons for surviving male communication styles alone.
One man flirted with me by becoming emotionally unavailable in increasingly creative ways.
Another tried to establish dominance through vague tweets.
One hit me with:
“I just think we mirror each other too intensely.”
What does that even mean, Theodore.
You work at a vape store.
And the thing is, I’m not even built for psychological warfare.
I’m too direct.
I’ll be standing there like:
“Do you like me or not?”
And a man will answer:
“I think our connection transcends labels.”
Translation:
he saw one shadow-work TikTok and now believes clarity is oppression.
I swear some men treat emotional honesty like it’s a hostage negotiation.
You ask a simple question and suddenly they’re pacing internally like:
“Don’t give away too much information. Stay evasive. Maintain tactical mystery.”
Meanwhile women are over here conducting forensic investigations because someone changed punctuation patterns.
“Hmm.
He used ‘lol’ instead of ‘lmao.’
Something catastrophic has happened.”
The worst part is the accidental escalation.
You think you’re having a normal interaction and suddenly this man has constructed a twelve-part internal mythology where your delayed response represents:
abandonment,
destiny,
betrayal,
and his villain origin story.
Sir.
I was in the shower.
I’ve realized psychological warfare isn’t even about manipulation anymore.
It’s just two emotionally exhausted people trying to regain control of themselves through increasingly strange behavioral choices while pretending they are “nonchalant.”
Nobody is nonchalant.
You’re all one emotionally charged voice note away from staring at the ceiling listening to The Night We Met like a Civil War widow waiting for a letter that will never come.

I used to think I was emotionally available.
Turns out I’m just accidentally lethal to the male ego.
Not intentionally.
I don’t wake up in the morning stretching like a Disney villain going, “how can I psychologically devastate a man with one mildly disinterested sentence today?”
But apparently my natural resting state is:
asking clarifying questions,
maintaining eye contact,
and not immediately collapsing into worship because someone has a beard and read half of Meditations once.
Men will survive wars.
Economic collapse.
Three divorces.
A CrossFit injury they bring up for six years.
But let a woman say:
“I just need consistency.”
And suddenly they’re outside staring into the middle distance like a Victorian child diagnosed with sea madness.
I have bruised egos in ways I didn’t even know were possible.
One man told me I was “hard to read” because I answered “okay” instead of “hehe.”
Another spiraled because I took a nap.
A third looked me dead in the eyes after emotionally free climbing Mount Everest for six months and said:
“You make me feel perceived.”
Sir.
That is not an attack.
That is eye contact.
I’ve learned the male ego is less of a fortress and more of one of those tiny orchids people keep alive through prayer and indirect sunlight.
And I—
despite my best efforts—
simply do not have the green thumb for it.
I water it wrong.
Too much honesty? Wilted.
Too much independence? Brown leaves.
One boundary? Entire root system gone.
Sometimes I think I’m nurturing it correctly and then suddenly I hear:
“I just think you think you’re better than me.”
Brother, I watched you eat shredded cheese directly out of the bag at 2am while explaining cryptocurrency to me with your shirt off.
Please be serious.
The craziest part is I actually like men.
Deeply.
I find them endearing.
Beautiful, even.
But emotionally?
Some of you are one unread text away from joining a monastery and posting gym quotes over grayscale selfies.
And somehow I always end up cast as the femme fatale when really I’m just standing there like:
“Hey, maybe don’t build your entire psychological infrastructure around whether I used one exclamation point or two.”
I don’t mean to bruise the male ego.
I just keep discovering it’s apparently stored in the same place as raccoons store survival instincts:
fragile, unpredictable, and deeply reactive to perceived rejection.

Forgive me, Father, for I have apparently been community property for the last four months.
According to the internet, I’ve been in:
three secret relationships
two toxic karmic entanglements
one forbidden workplace romance
a situationship with a man who “couldn’t emotionally handle how deeply I saw him”
and somehow also the emotional mastermind behind at least four strangers’ personal breakdowns.
Meanwhile I’ve mostly just been buying groceries and dissociating in parking lots.
Every week there’s apparently a new man whose life I irrevocably changed by:
making eye contact once
replying “lol”
or standing too close to him near a seasonal candle display.
At this point I don’t even ask questions anymore.
If somebody tells me I ruined a man emotionally in February, I’m just like:
“Damn. Which one?”
Honestly, some of these men seem to have dated an entirely fictional version of me inside their own heads. Or never got the time of day at all.
One guy heard me say “drive safe” and built a six-part internal miniseries about forbidden love, fate, and personal transformation.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.

Forgive me, Father, for I have absolutely been outside.
In my defense, the economy was bad, the moon was weird, and several of those men approached me with the emotional intensity of dying soldiers returning from war. What was I supposed to do? Be reasonable?
Anyway.
Yes, there were 84 men in 17 months.
No, I will not be taking questions at this time.
Before you judge me, understand that not all 84 were actual romantic prospects. Some were merely:
emotionally attached baristas
men who fell in love because I remembered one detail about their childhood
one guy who mistook basic eye contact for a spiritual covenant
several “divine masculine” podcast casualties
two men who absolutely should’ve gone to therapy instead of downloading poetry into my DMs
and at least twelve who simply saw me in low lighting and lost all neurological function
Frankly, the numbers became difficult to manage.
At one point I accidentally developed a rotating cast of emotionally bewildered men standing around me like I was the last emotionally available woman before the apocalypse.
Everywhere I went it was:
“She’s different.”
“She understands me.”
“She looked at me in a way that altered my molecular structure.”
Sir, I asked if you wanted fries.
And the thing nobody tells you about becoming a modern harlot is how administrative it gets.
The scheduling.
The lore maintenance.
The remembering of niche emotional details.
One man was healing his inner child.
One was discovering vulnerability for the first time.
One was texting me paragraphs at 2 AM about fate after I complimented his jacket exactly once.
Meanwhile I’m sitting there eating soup like:
“God, another one?”
The worst part is I genuinely liked some of them.
A few were beautiful.
A few were kind.
A few kissed me like they were trying to apologize for every bad thing that had ever happened to me.
And a few absolutely needed to be tranquilized spiritually before entering the dating pool.
But eventually I had to accept the truth:
I was not dating.
I was accidentally running an emotionally haunted Renaissance fair.
At any given moment there was:
a tortured poet
a man rediscovering feelings after a divorce
a heavily tattooed avoidant staring at me like I personally invented yearning
somebody’s ex trying to “win me back” despite never having had me to begin with
and at least one man whispering, “you scare me,” while actively pursuing me harder than anyone else there
Exhausting work, honestly.
And before anyone says “84 men is insane,” I need you to understand most of these men folded emotionally within fifteen minutes of sustained attention. The average male ego is structurally unsound. That is not my fault.
I simply existed in a vaguely magnetic way and suddenly everybody’s writing playlists and staring at ceilings.
Would I do it all again?
Absolutely not.
Probably.

To my twenty soul-bound kings from the last 3 months,

From the moment each of your uniquely identical brown eyes locked onto mine across various emotionally unavailable situationships, I knew destiny had entered the group chat. Every single one of you healed me in ways no therapist, healthy boundary, or period of silence ever could.

You are all simultaneously my peace and my chaos. My calm in the storm. My storm in the calm. My twin flames. My divine mirrors. My enemies-to-lovers arc. My “we met at the wrong time” cinematic universes.

Heinrich, thank you for teaching me vulnerability.
Jehusaphat, thank you for teaching me trust.
Tymmothy, thank you for teaching me betrayal.
Elliott, thank you for teaching me growth.
Christian, thank you for teaching me that love is patient.
The other fifteen of you, thank you for liking my stories within twelve minutes of posting.

Every connection was sacred. Every “u up?” was poetry. Every avoidant withdrawal was a lesson from the universe itself. Together, you showed me that love is not about possession — it’s about rotating emotional availability schedules and decoding Spotify lyrics at 2:14 AM.

Some people would call this a pattern.
I call it expansion.

I will carry each of your hoodies, mixed signals, and inconsistent communication styles with me forever. Even now, as Mercury retrogrades through my frontal lobe, I can still hear your voices whispering:

“damn that’s crazy”

And honestly?
That changed me.

If loving all twenty of you at once is wrong, then maybe I don’t want to be emotionally regulated. Because real love isn’t linear. Real love is a constellation of soft-launches, private stories, gym selfies, and one emotionally devastating six-hour phone call that altered my brain chemistry permanently.

Thank you for being my lessons.
My blessings.
My lore.

Forever yours,
The girl who said “I’m done” nineteen times but came back after one cryptic song recommendation

I see you. I see the hurt and fear. I’m sorry, I wish I could hold you through it. I see you trying to hurt me by attacking perceived weaknesses, you want to make me feel and understand the pain. I’m sorry my words have made you feel that way at all. That wasn’t the intention. You are deeply loved and desired. The effort has always been there but it’s difficult when everyone isn’t keeping notes. I see you projecting. I’m sorry you ever went through a rejection so difficult, that’s not what this is. I’m just holding up a mirror.

But this Is the exact behavior that creates pause before speaking. I can make it go away if you like, I’ll honor it because I respect you.

Every day I find more of them and it leaves me disappointed. I’m disappointed because this time could’ve been used more wisely for understanding the family and expectations. When we spoke a little bit ago and I found out where it happened, I’m just so sorry, I misunderstood you in that moment back then, I wish you could’ve told me then, I promise I would’ve listened. We could’ve talked. We should talk.

There’s been a lot of avoidable misunderstandings, that I would like to work out. Over the years of knowing you, I notice that you internalize. It was foolish of me to think that it was just everyone else and not me. It’s okay to have a voice, i long for it, even if we disagree. It’s okay to be passionate with your voice. I know you know that I wouldn’t be able to contain myself, if you did.

Even if it’s just a whisper.

No, but that was funny.

well family at least. family that was clearly reporting to you.

Different day, same push & run.