Psychotic Little Drama Gremlin

Every story needs its hero. And its villain. And its monster.

― Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff, Obsidio

I tried not to have any beef with the other woman. It’s so cliche for two women to be at each other’s throats over some man’s bad behavior. All I wanted to be was strangers. Look, I’ve made my own mistakes. There are so many choices I am not proud of. I can’t condemn anyone for their past.

I’m not the most practicing of Catholics, but I haven’t been excommunicated or anything either. It is officially my religion. The Rite of Confession has five steps:

1. Examine your conscience
2. Be sincerely sorry for your sins
3. Confess your sins to a priest
4. Resolve to amend your life
5. Do the penance the priest assigned you. 

Number 4 is an important part of that reconciliation process. Stop doing the bad thing. Don’t ask me to get over it, if you can’t stop doing it. Not only did they not stop having the affair (which I didn’t expect from them), Side Chick insisted on rubbing it in my face. Who does that? She did her best to make this as painful as possible. Surely, there is a special place in hell for bullies like her.

At a time when I was already isolated, by geography, by personal circumstance, by losing my best friend, she made social media feel unsafe. Notifications were transformed from a source of joy to anxiety, from connection to isolation. I’m not linked to my ex on social media. I’ve never been to her socials.¹ I don’t even know how she found me. 

All I know is that she woke up and chose violence, kicking me when I was obviously down, repeatedly. Follow. Unfollow. Like. Unlike. She kept poking around in my social media, deliberately keeping herself and her profile pictures of the two of them together in my notifications. Now I know exactly what being cheated on looks like, exactly how to picture what was going on at home while I was in Portugal. She knows it hurts. That’s why she does it.  

I asked my ex for one thing regarding his side piece. I sent him a screenshot of one of the social media notifications. Please, make it stop. The wound was still too fresh, too raw, to have her showing up like salt in my notifications. My family was dealing with an unrelated crisis, she was the one more thing I couldn’t handle right then. I told him how much it hurt, and for a moment it stopped.

This baby princess mean girl is going to have to accept that some things aren’t for her. I blocked her from my personal Facebook. I know my friends would dogpile on her there. It’s not that she doesn’t deserve it. It’s just that it wouldn’t help. I could sic my friends on her. Then she could sic her friends on me. A whole bunch of us could waste our time and energy on making each other miserable. Or, and just hear me out for a second, we could put that time and energy into making our own lives, and the lives of our loved ones, better. Apparently, she prefers tormenting a total stranger.

I still keep my Instagram public. My blog and its Facebook page are public, too. I’m stubborn and don’t like to yield when pushed. Also, I can be too forgiving sometimes. It’s good to be reminded that she is still a monster. I choose to give her enough room to show me who she is. If she doesn’t like my posts, I cordially invite her to stop reading them. I have never written a single word to, or for, her, but she’s managed to make this about her. She chose to keep poking, and the poking hurt, and from pain anger grew. The anger fueled action. All I had left was my side of the story and I might have let it go, if she had ever let me stop hurting. 

It sucks to be bullied. It’s especially weird to be hounded by a stranger. Is she trying to punish me for being cheated on? For not being more cheerful about being cheated on? What is her motivation?  What exactly is the endgame here?

It’s easier to just shake your head at people who insist on beating the proverbial dead horse when you aren’t the horse in question. The harassment hurts not because her opinion matters but because it’s an ongoing reminder of that time the person I trusted most in the world betrayed me. The only things I know about this stranger are that my man was cheating on me with her and that she chooses to be cruel. With such qualifications, her opinion of me, good or bad, has no value. 

That Man left my heart like a crime scene and I’ve been examining the evidence ever since, going through my journals, pinning pieces to the board, running strings between them, trying to find the message in this mess. I’m doing everything I can to be sure that no one ever hurts me like this again. 

This story has gone from travelogue, to love story, to break up drama, to some kind of Hitchcock stalker thriller suspense nightmare. I wanted to write a travel blog. Instead, what I’ve written is a love song, an impact statement, a eulogy. It’s my conspiracy board forensics as I try to sort out for myself what the F just happened to me. This blog is a memorial service for the romantic girl I was before that man betrayed me, before he sicced his rabid side piece on me. 

My romance has turned into horror. The man I trusted to always be in my corner, to have my back, didn’t just abandon me. I thought abandonment was my worst fear. No, he invited something malicious into my life. Where I used to keep his friendship now I have a stranger who deliberately and repeatedly hurts me. His sancha knows one thing that hurts me and she wields it relentlessly. This is the worst part, knowing that someone I loved brought this into my life.

That man was my teammate, my accomplice, my love, my best friend, my weirdo, my geek, my powerful sexy beast, my beloved cootie buttbrain. Her association with my man grew, aggressive and malignant, a tumor inside our relationship. The prognosis was already fatal before I even knew something was wrong. That still wasn’t enough for this malevolent nightmare. Side Chick trespassed into my personal and private correspondence, reading words that were meant for his eyes only. 

Just two months after we broke up, she was on our campus. She put her nasty hands all over my man and the place where he and I have worked and loved together. He put her name in my professional Google Drive, sharing my documents, and had me counting the days until I could leave a job I’d loved, just to get away from the constant reminders. She had me flinching when my phone had a notification until I cut myself off from my long-distance social support network. She was greedy and she was cruel.

I was afraid I was too much, but That Man really went and found less. If she is what he was looking for, I am so happy that I’m not qualified for the position. At least I can take some sense of victory in knowing that my ex leveled down when he left me. I should be able to enjoy that karma. I know there can be no peace for him while this psychotic little drama gremlin is in his life. It is a little unfair, though, that it doesn’t seem like I’ll have any peace until she’s out of his life either. 

That Man was constantly changing direction in our relationship, acting like conversations had never happened. Looking at me like I was coming out of left field when I was just responding to him. Self-righteously acting as if he would have handled the thing if I’d told him sooner, unwavering in his sense that he’s being rational and I’m not, but dude, I did tell him sooner and he forgot. I have never felt so insane as I did while we were together. Not a general insanity, just in regards to him.

I was jealous when I had no history of jealousy. He would say a thing and then forget he’d said it. He’d let me say a thing he knew was wrong but not correct me. So, I thought we were on the same page when we weren’t. Then at some point later on when I expected him to back me up, he wouldn’t. He was so confusing. He didn’t just run hot and cold, he ran alternate universes.

It makes me wonder if his crazy ex before me would have stayed sane if she’d never met him. I get it. He’s crazy making. That Man really does collect crazy exes. It’s not a competition though. Side Chick can ease off the gas a little. She doesn’t have to work this hard at becoming his craziest ex.

If she had kept her hands to herself, even a little, no one would need to know who she was. But at a certain point the harassment felt so relentless I sent screenshots to a friend telling her if I died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances to share the images with the investigating authorities. 

When I realized that this meant I had to revisit those screenshots every time I scrolled through our texts to find a picture or some exact date or time, I created a folder to share with my friend instead. It doesn’t have every instance. Side Chick was more dedicated to harassing me than I was to documenting it.

Still, even this incomplete record says a lot about her character. Seriously, though, if I am mysteriously unalived and/or disappeared make sure investigators have this. It’s a little scary just how unhinged Side Chick actually is. That Man has never put as much energy into either of us as she puts into stalking me.

I don’t really think she’s dangerous, but clearly, I’ve been wrong about a lot of things. Case in point- the whole entire situation with my ex. I was too trusting and a little naive, but I am not dishonest. Side Chick can’t have it all. She can’t take away my side of the story, or the voice with which I speak this truth. She isn’t going to badger me into silence. 

It’s not easy to make me dislike a person so much, but I am all out of cheeks to turn. I guess we’ll have to settle for something adjacent to gratitude. I can’t imagine I would have finished this project if Side Chick hadn’t been so determined to deny me any peace. Writing out this relationship has been cathartic and very healing, but also painful. I surely would have abandoned it if she’d allowed me to move on. 

I love a good redemption arc. Hopefully, her next relationship starts when all parties involved are sincerely single and they live happily ever after. I can still hope good things for her future. More than anything though, I hope that I never hear from, or of, her again. I don’t have the attention span to be an actual enemy, but I’m not willing to to be a doormat for anyone.

I’ve been telling on myself for months, sharing this foolish relationship and my humiliating betrayal à la public diary. Side Chick has been telling on herself too though. She has shown me who she is, over and over again. And now I’m showing all of you who she is. Anyone who chooses to come at me with their toxic bullshit better be sure they brought enough for the whole class. ‘Cause from now on, I’m gonna share with everyone.

So yeah, if you’ve ever wondered what possessed me to post all of this, now you know the demon.

You have turned my blood cold and bitter

Beat my compassion black and blue

Hope this is what you wanted

Hope this is what you had in mind

‘Cause this is what you’re getting

I hope you’re choking

I hope you choke on this

Tool
Ticks & Leeches

1. Full disclosure, I did look at Side Chick’s LinkedIn the night That Man and I broke up. It’s his only active social media, and she was his coworker at his other job, so it was the easiest place to find her. I don’t know what answers I thought it would give me, but it definitely didn’t make me feel any better. I went there one more time to block her on LinkedIn after she started harassing me. So, while I’ve never been to her social socials, some people consider LinkedIn to be social media and not just a job hunting site. ↩︎