“You’ve got so many rules,” says Nic. Because I’m trying to establish boundaries so we don’t both end up dead from overconsumption tomorrow morning at 1am.
I was going to try to pretend to be teetotal, but that got blown out of the water when it seemed like a lovely idea to go to the park with beer to celebrate the unfamiliar company. Then he got home and immediately broke a glass because he was prioritising opening and filling a receptacle with alcohol over making space on the surface.
I exploded with rage and made him put the bottle away immediately which made me the bad guy.
Now it’s the classic wreckhead logic. He’s telling me that my self-regulating strategies are bullshit, with a smile, because he doesn’t want to regulate himself. But I don’t want to just smash myself.
I’ve taken myself off to regroup and write this blog. It’ll be fine. I like him, and he’s not stronger than me.
It’s partly that I’m not used to having people around. I have a very well examined self destruct mechanism and I’m not particularly interested in getting swept up with someone who has as aggressive a destructive mechanism as me but without the self monitor.
I certainly won’t be made fun of for drawing boundaries and every time he does that I lose respect for him.
Another interruption, this time asking “How many subscribers?” Not listening to the answer either (I deliberately don’t look). Lining himself up against his rival – this blog – which is taking attention away from him. HE’S BEEN ON HIS OWN FOR MONTHS AND WE’VE JUST HAD 4 HOURS OF CONTACT?!?!!!
Constant shouts from him of “How many words now?”
He has been careful. He sanitises his shopping when he takes it out of the bag. He’s not a teenager, he’s a big boy now. He is capable of being alone for as long as it takes for me to get this down? After months…
I fear I have to get this down now, early in the night, because his need for attention will not allow for it later. And I like him so I’m ok to run alongside him in the wreck so long as I sniff mutual respect there too.
Sometimes with this blog it’s hard to explain why I have to go off for a bit in the evening, especially as it’s not a sparklemarket bullshit blog and I’m not choosing my friends for positioning. The slow drip of the poison that the word “influencer” has become.
It helps socially if people have read at least one of these, and it particularly helps if they’ve gleaned something from one of them and understand that it’s as vulnerable as it is wounding.
For him I’m perhaps just an idea of “blogger” which is often synonymous with “narcissist”.
For him this writing now – it’s a thing that takes my attention away from him. From him on his first day in company. But … for fuck’s sake. He’s here for 4 days. And … the last few months … …
He arrived with two expensive bottles of white wine and a massive chunk of beef, bless him. He’s now working something out with potatoes. Very generous of him to provide sustenance.
He just came into the room to show me the meat and now he’s making me feel like a neurotic when I told him I don’t need to see it and that this time is sacred to get this written. Again he says “You’re so full of rules,” and I’m so fully wise to the nature of this thing that I know to be called gaslighting that every time he says it from now on I’m going to draw my boundaries tighter around me. It’s like when I’m driving, if the guy behind me starts aggressively honking and it’s clear he’s just a dude on his own being a dick, then I’m likely to slow down at much as is safely possible on purpose.
Right. I’m going in. I’ll take a photo of the meat. I reckon it’ll be something…
No photo of the meat. It wasn’t something. He has almost completely resigned interest in it. He was angry and weird and drunk.
He’d found my whisky while he was cooking and had necked enough to render himself functionally useless.
He doesn’t get my priority structure, and why should he?
His dinner conversation kept resetting to oh how generous I am giving him a place to sleep – as if I think he owes me something. He owes me nothing.
I don’t know what to do on this basis.
Other people, eh? They’re difficult fuckers. I’d forgotten.
Three more days of him making me feel like he owes me something and resents me for it? Bring back isolation. I hate it already.
…
We’ll be fine.
But I’ll evidently need to manage booze in this house because things went south very very quickly. But managing? “You have so many rules.”
On the plus side I’m now sitting in the living room listening to Nirvana and he’s in deep down sleepytime in my room and it’s only half ten. I’ll probably have a considerably earlier bed than usual but I feel like a father when the kids have turned in.
AlBarclay 