Söze of Cups

Waking up to Julian's text affirming his love made for a much better morning than yesterday's. I was similarly planless, but I thought the litter box needed cleaning so I did that. Then took out the rest of the recycling & trash, washed the dishes, put away clothes, and vacuumed. Filth has weight. I really should have gone over the notes for D&D but I wanted to at least get some work on my journal done. Julian called me in the afternoon and while I shared my admittedly vain joy at watching our porn yesterday, it felt off. He'd started drinking and was not reacting well to his anxieties. Even after I told him consent was a big deal, he kept asking if I'd declined to show the one with his face because I thought he was ugly or I was ashamed of him. He was worried about me cheating on him, despite that being very very hard to do given our Guidelines. Also, he needed me to pay his phone bill because he forgot yesterday. Okay, half of it. I explained that he cannot afford his phone, and even if he loves Verizon, they don't love him. He complained about the less expensive companies, despite that the less expensive companies still use the networks of the bigger ones. He went after my phone because of the admittedly wonky GPS signal, but also insisted loudly and vehemently that my phone was causing our call to drop. Then I pointed I was speaking to him on my desktop over Messenger. I finally got him to agree to move to one of the no-contract companies that use Verizon's network as soon as his contract expires there. He frequently pointed out that he'd just signed a few months ago and I let him know that didn't change anything. This is progress. I had to go for game, but he asked me to call after.

There were some technical difficulties. First Messenger wouldn't run a Group Video on Firefox, then in the middle of game, it froze. Everything. It stopped, wouldn't pay attention to the Task Manager, and *wouldn't let me restart my computer.* That is some HAL nonsense. Hard reset worked and I just viewed through Chrome instead. Fuck Messenger. There was some time spent chatting while we waited for the other players to arrive. I got to share my nuptial news and I was blunt AF about everything. Julian was(?) an alcoholic and I was an addict waiting to happen. Plus the difficulties with his tantrums and my night job. The other video player joined and eventually one more and I'm really delighted with the entire game. And I feel that even after a single game with this DM, I'm #blessed. Julian called in the middle because I told him that since he's not sure when he's coming back, he should just drop off the van early and save me $240. He had lots of excuses why he couldn't but I calmed him at least enough to let me get back to game. We'll meet up again in two weeks and I might have a few awesome edits to make to my character.

I called Julian back immediately and knew just as fast it would not end well. He snapped "What?!" when he answered and I couldn't quite tell if he was joking. And I don't think he could, either. I explained a couple times that he'd asked me to call him back after game. He'd continued drinking all day and his anxieties seemed to smell blood. He latched onto Justin, but not the way I'd have liked. I've come to peace (ish, at least) with Justin and I being what we needed for each other at that moment. Drunk Julian refused to recognize any difference between grateful affection and romantic love. Back to being jealous over any affection directed towards me. Jumping to Kevin et al, back to insisting I'd cheat on him but not by choice. Being raped is not cheating. He went on about it for a bit longer then landed back on the van. There was a lot of concern that my telling him to return the van until he was ready to come out meant I didn't want him to come back. In some sort of Poe's-esque Law, I couldn't tell if he was really plagued by that anxiety or just using it for emotional currency. First, he insisted we wouldn't get a credit, then that we'd prepaid, then continued insisting we wouldn't get anything. And complained he needed to get around, since he'd junked his car at his dad's insistence. But he couldn't Lyft or use their car because....he didn't want to. At every challenge, I could hear a note of triumph in his voice. He finally landed on the fact that I have to be there physically to rent another car I so I have to just keep renting a car until he's done. Before I could say anything else he preemptively refused to use his parent's credit card (even if I just sent them the money) or ask them for any kind of help. That was about my tipping point. Everything else aside, that's the kind of willfully helpless self-destruction that contributed to our break up in the first place. As a side note, the idea that he actively fought the idea of saving me money is not a great look. I told him if he didn't return the car I'd report it stolen and he'd be on his own to get here.