Walking Disaster

It isn’t enough that some people are constantly coming to you and asking for advice regarding their problems, their relationships, and their problems with their relationships. They have to take it a step further and ignore the advice that you gave them for an entirely avoidable and fixable problem.

It would’ve been fine if they were simply venting, but when they ask for honesty or your opinion or your help, know that they don’t want to hear what you have to say, no matter how much they insist that they do. When they say they need your opinion and advice, they only want you to parrot their narcissism back to them, proving that the only-child syndrome they will forever ignore isn’t a problem, but is instead, a fun quirk of their personality.

Maybe your boyfriend isn’t a fat, predatory loser…and maybe when you come home crying because he fucked over your job (easy to do when he’s also your boss), you don’t want me to sit quietly and offer you comfort food. Do you want me to defend him? You want someone who has been blinded in her own kitchen by your boss’s nudity to help you trick yourself into taking his side when he gets confrontational and aggressive during an argument about budgeting.

And when it turns out that his aggression is due to his testosterone shots which he insists is a leftover habit from his Olympic swimming days, you believe him and turn on your friend of nearly ten years for floating the suggestion that he’s lying about this, the other thing, and almost every fucking thing. I’m sorry, but someone with the body proportions of the grandpa from Rollie Pollie Ollie and the need to take Ozempic and other semaglutides for weight loss has never been near high school-level swimming, let alone Olympic.

And if he was an Olympic swimmer, then it goes without saying he wouldn’t be allowed to take hormone shots! He is effectively stealing medication from trans people and diabetics. What’s next? Will he start hoarding hearing devices so the deaf can hate him too? Oh, but let’s take it one step further, and instead of taking your boyfriend/manager to task for fucking with your professional career (and again, he is a habitual liar so we don’t know what he did or said), let’s go ahead and apply for the same jobs as the friend who stuck by you. Just for funsies.

What about the other people in your life? It isn’t just with romantic relationships. People can be equally codependent with new friends in their life, potentially even more so. Some friends are constantly asking what you think of the people in their life, but the person they’re asking about treats you like shit because the first time they met you was when you were staff, so they continue to view you as “the help” in perpetuity.
Why would that be someone you would support becoming closer to? So you go ahead and dodge the question, or you get cagey because you know what happens when you tell the truth. Except you still end up getting mean messages over Christmas because they chose someone they’re so obsessed with they dyed their hair to match their new bestie/idol, and treated their friend of fifteen years like actual shit.

Is this a codependency thing left over from covid? Or is this a pattern that went overlooked because you thought it was an isolated incident when someone with a college degree bought into an alkalizing water pyramid scheme because she believed the people who told her water would prevent and/or cure the cancer she doesn’t have? Bonus points if your friend also adds lemon (an acid) to the alkaline water.

By her logic, she’s giving herself a tumor. Maybe her boyfriend-ager can hoard some chemo for her along with the rest of the medicine he buys for conditions he doesn’t have. You can’t ask for a “come to Jesus” talk and choose to ignore everything that was said because it requires actions you don’t want to take. Is it turning thirty? Is that why you’re so desperate to settle down and get married that I’m actually worried you name your eggs each month?

What is the appeal behind choosing people that are bad for us and ignoring the ones who warn of the incoming emotional distress? But you can keep asking me for advice, but you’re not allowed to get upset or fight with me when I don’t give it. If I do, you’re not allowed to discredit me because I stopped myself from making the same mistakes that have plagued you for years.

I think your self-sabotage is a way to introduce some measure of predictability into your life so you can give yourself the illusion of self-control. Or it’s just some version of martyrdom or laziness. I don’t know, I’m not a doctor, but neither are you so cut the shit.

I’ll just have to continue reminding myself to be nice. Mainly because hurting other people’s feelings makes me feel bad, but also because causing a scene of this magnitude would make me seem like the crazy one when it’s you assholes who pushed me to this. I’m selfish enough for that to be my reasoning. Time to turn on Spotify’s Happy Mix or whatever it made for me and pray that hearing Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard doesn’t intensify or compound my rage. A pipe dream, I know.