..."but I don't know if you know who I am..."

I haven't been writing much recently. It isn't that I have nothing to say, but that I have not had a lot of time to devote to emotional processing.

Let's see, the good:

Rope Guy and I are still seeing each other. That has been going very well and I have a number of good stories to relate. I will be attending my second spanking convention with him next weekend. I have been learning a lot about myself, which is nice.

Keto and I worked out some of the communication issues that caused problems between us. There is still work to be done and it will be slow going. The nice thing is it looks like I am going to have some help. Keto has met a woman who lives much closer to him than I do. I met her last night and my first impressions are very positive. I did not feel any jealousy or anger. It was wonderful and very empowering.

There is a new fellow that has popped up out of nowhere. I don't even have a name to identify him with. He is a fellow teacher, although far enough away that we would be very unlikely to meet up at a professional event. He is a bit younger than I am. He is a widower. We also just have some very incredible chemistry, at least so far. I am trying not to get too anything about it, just enjoying the feels and the neurochemicals. (And I am trying to be really communicative to everyone so that the stupid doesn't get too stupid.)

I wish I could say that everything with DA is peaceful. It is not. I have stated and some of you have corroborated that there isn't a boundary that DA feels applies to him. I had intended to leave things well enough alone for the upcoming season of fair. I figured I would ignore him and he would ignore me. I know better now.

DA told me to go away in June. I have done so. I did not contact him. No emails, no texts, no phone calls. I don't stalk his social media, I don't look in on his current partner. I am not perfect, but I have tried to be a respectful ex-girlfriend, at least in person.

I have kept a tarot blog. It is not private and deliberately so. I have never mentioned names. The blog has really been a way for me to process via a hobby. I had the feeling that DA was reading it. I have been told that this is typical behavior for exes and it tapers off after a while. I don't believe I went on the blog and wrote about what a horrible person DA is and how I was going to stalk his girlfriend and ruin their lives. Mostly I wrote vague entries that probably mean very little most people.

I will say that I wrote two entries in that blog recently. One entry was about a dream I had and the other entry was about my fears approaching fair. I had been noticing that a particular individual was taking a significant interest in my blog. In the past couple of weeks, they have been visiting it every day, sometimes more than once. I decided that with fair upcoming, It would behoove me to put the tarot blog on hiatus in an effort to reduce drama.

A couple of days later a situation came up where I needed to contact the household that DA lives in. Including him in the list was to make sure that there were no misunderstandings. I did not engage with him directly. I imparted the information, explained my part in the solution and ended the conversation. It took me maybe 5 minutes. I then went to spend time with Keto, who does not have any cell connection at his home.

DA's roommate/landlord contacted me on Monday to clarify some points. She resumed the conversation on the list that DA had been included on. I took the chat off the list and moved it to a direct DM between Roommate and me. I explained that having DA on the chat was not constructive. I noted that since the issue involved money, it was triggery.

According to Roommate, she decided to tell DA that I said he owed me $800. After months of hearing nothing, DA sent me an email asking me to clarify. It was not polite, although it was not accusatory. Mostly it was out of the blue.

I could have (and should have) not answered. DA knows full well that I do not think he owes me money. I keep making the mistake of thinking that if I treat him like a human being, he will respond like one. Instead of accepting my explanation, he escalated the situation. He told me to stop misrepresenting him to "third parties" and other things that in writing were verging on threatening.

I tried to deescalate. I asked that we stop e-mailing. I offered to meet in person and to discuss things so that this year of fair would be better. I asked for an hour with a shared agenda. DA said that he did not feel it would be a positive interaction and that he had no wish to meet.

I believe he has no wish to meet. I do not believe that this was an isolated incident. I could list all of the issues and then some, but I will leave it at this. I have noticed that DA has a pattern where he is happy to let me ignore him for 5-7 weeks. Then I think he wants to make sure that I am still hooked, so he deliberately baits me, gets a reaction, escalates and then points out to his partner "See how crazy she still is?"

His comments about the Disneyland post were so completely clueless and self-serving about how the community is not supportive, I did a spit take. Dude, you posted on a group list serve an article that was only tangentially related to the topic of the group. The fact that you posted it while your roommate and your ex-girlfriend were at Disneyland was not lost on many people. The reaction you got was not because the group wasn't supportive. They just weren't supportive of you trying to deliberately bait your ex and her friends. 

It's been a little over seven weeks and here we are again. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

Last year I was very careful to never approach DA. I did not engage with him beyond a polite head nod or greeting. I did not go into any workshops where he was. I avoided his rehearsal areas. During the run of fair, I did not see him perform, I did not initiate engagement on the street. I went out of my way to give him space. It was not enough.

From the first day of workshops, every interaction violated a boundary that we had established. He called me out during breaks, he sat with my cast at meetings, he stood in front of the room where I was teaching and disrupted my class so much I had to close the door.

During the run of fair, it was worse. He showed up at my performances. He approached me on the street in front of patrons. He brought his father over to see me while I was on stage. I did not mind seeing DA's father. I minded having DA bring him over and expect me to engage with them both with little warning or conversation. I am bothered that DA told his parents that we were still friends and used me to keep up the charade that he still has people in his life beyond his partner. (I don't know if that's true, but I strongly suspect that is the case.)

I am not going to spend 2019 rehearsals and fair walking on eggshells, waiting for his next ambush. I do not want to be his friend. I do not wish to reconcile. I do not wish to address old wrongs. I want to make sure he understands that there are clear boundaries. I want him to understand that there will be consequences if he decides that they don't apply to him. I want him to stop trying to get my attention and throwing public tantrums when I don't respond the way he wants.

I didn't want to escalate it to the PTB of the fair. I know DA will hate having our dirty laundry exposed as much as I do. However, even my husband, who has said that I just need to let go and ignore DA agreed that his recent behavior was bordering on abusive and cruel. It is not my job to police DA or make sure that he can't see my every written word on the internet and make the assumptions about how that reflects how I am feeling. I have played by the rules, as I understand them, for dealing with an ex at fair.

I know I am biased. If any of you have a better suggestion or solution, I am all ears. This is the best idea I have come up with:

The PTB of fair have hired a therapist to deal with hostile work environments. I wrote a request for third party mediation and shared it with DA and my director. If I do not hear from him, I will submit it on Monday. My director has approved this action.

I don't care if DA doesn't want to meet me. He used an excuse to harass me after I went out of my way to keep the roommate interaction we had as professional, indirect, and brief as possible. In the more than a year since we broke up, I have never used the fact that he lives with my friends as a way to contact him. And I didn't use the contact to start a conversation with him. If he had not e-mailed me about the money, I would have continued the months of no contact that I have maintained since June. As a note, he has never asked me not to contact him, he just stopped answering messages.

I am at my wit's end. I do not know how to protect myself and I am tired of feeling like I am not safe in the environment that I introduced DA into.

I also better understand how DA's ex got the reputation for being crazy. DA is really, really good at making people look insane while maintaining a calm demeanor. I am hear to shout out that DA is very good at manipulating people and I will not allow it to ruin another year of the hobby that I love.

Today's song is the one I used as the last post before taking the hiatus in my tarot blog. I quoted the second verse there. I have never really understood the first verse until last night.

"Well if you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand
I've seen your face before my friend, but I don't know if you know who I am
Well I was there and I saw what you did, I saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you've been
It's all been a pack of lies"

I couldn't understand why the narrator would not help the person if they were drowning. Then I got it last night, The person said they were drowning. I think the narrator feels that the person is lying, just like they always do, just manipulate them. The drowner has forgotten who the narrator is and how well they know the person they are singing about.

I posted a version of this song by Lorde before. Now I will stick with the original.

Today's Song - In the Air Tonight - by Phil Collins