Some Things That Have Happened That I Need To Talk About
Reflecting on a Few Recent Events and Having At Least One Revelation
Hello, hello Fellow Musers. I hope that everyone who reads this and/or comes across this at a later point in their Substack timeline is having a good/chillaxing/warm/reasonable day!
I am writing this essay to mainly let you know about some things that have happened in my life recently, and honestly a few of them have kept me from writing here on Substack. You may be expecting another post concerning the Nazi writer situation that’s been talked about consistently since December-I tell you now, this will not be that article.
Let’s get into it…
Some of you may have seen on previous posts, in Notes, and on some post comments, that I haven’t been on here as much because I have been in the process of packing, moving, unpacking, and school starting back up. As of this writing, I’m about 95% unpacked-mainly thanks to the big donation pile I’ve accumulated due to needing to downsize, and also just throwing out alot of things that are not donatable and not really reusable either.
On top of that, I had to be assigned a new unit because one of the people that I was going to be rooming with had a severe allergy to cats. My new unit that I’m currently in also brought with it some drama. I’ll get to that part shortly.
I also finally realized that someone whom I thought was a friend was not in fact a friend. This person will not be named and I will be using the pronoun “they/them” as their identity. The only reason that I’m writing about the experience that I had with this person on Substack is because I feel safe enough to do so, but I don’t feel safe enough to outright give a name. I’m also not the only person on here who is having a strained relationship with this person, but I will not intentionally name names.
I could make this post flowery and sunshiny, while weaving in a tale of deceit and tragedy. However, this will be a rare post where you will see me be raw with possibly biting sarcasm, and be very, very human. There may be some unicorns included, but that’ll be closer to the end of this article.
Trigger warning: I will be talking about gaslighting, love-bombing, being gaslit, and being ghosted.
*Takes a deep breath*
Let’s dive deeper…
We’ll start with the move and then slide into the other thing.
So knowing my rent would be going up at my old place, but not sure how much it was going to go up, I contact this other place back around August because I saw that they were advertising mainly as student housing (although they allow non-students to rent as well). I take a tour, I talk price (compared to what I was paying, this seemed like a great deal!), and I decide to wait a bit and see how much my (then) current place was going to go up.
Beautiful, lovely October rolls around, I get that renewal notice, and the rent price is indeed out of my price range. They did offer to 1/2 my first month’s rent and do some upgrades, and I jokingly haggled with property manager to keep the price at half for the full 12 months (I felt comfortable joking with the property manager about this because I am a renter who tries to be on friendly terms with the property managers, and this one I had developed a bit of a friendly back-and-forth with), but in the end I made the decision to sign on with where I’m at currently. So I sign in November, crawl through the last month of school (neither of my semesters in 2023 were particularly great), and tried to get my butt moving on packing.
Now, mind you, I’m struggling with depression during all this, and it was a pretty bad episode (and I had at least one even worse episode waaaay back in December 2011). But the prospect of moving, and of getting my first Deep Dive post out (it’s currently in Limbo, sorry y’all) kept me going…going…up until the day that I was suppose to get my key, meet the roommates and get my sweet ass booty moved in.
Why was I moving into a place with other humans when I already have my cats to keep me company? Simple-I was tired of living by myself, and as an introvert trying to become an ambiavert, I know that for my own sanity I needed to interact with other people, particularly college students who maybe were closer to my age, although I’m really okay with any age group, even though it can get awkward when an early 20’s person says something that reminds you of something you did or even said in your 20’s that makes you cringe. But also, then you get to tell them that they ain’t alone in that experience (if they want to hear it) so it can also work out.
Don’t get me wrong-I get plenty of human interaction at work. I talk to my coworkers, but I don’t have a work-friend relationship with them where we go hang out after work. We do talk about our lives outside of work, we just don’t hang out after work. But the conversations that I have with a few of them are great! One of these days I’ll let y’all in on a few of the topics…I just need to remember to make a note of them, haha!
Could I also go out in public and get that interaction? Sure, however, where I’m at, it’s hard to connect with other people in who are also in school (and not many are undergrads are in their 30’s). I have made a few friends, but two of them have graduated and left and the one that’s still here has her friends whom I have not met, sooooo yeah, that’s where I be on the whole interact thing. I actually met her at work, and we’ve hung out a few times, but that started after she stopped working at the same place as me.
Why do I mention this? What is the fucking relevance to the topic at hand?
Welp, let’s get back to the move situation!
Did I know anything about the people who I would be rooming with? Nope, not until the day I moved in! I had asked my new property managers after signing the lease if I could contact my roommates before moving in…and all I got was silence. Soooo I didn’t find out that ONE of my future roommates was severely allergic to cats…until the day that I was suppose to move in. Fan-fucking-tastic y’all! Don’t worry, I contacted the property managers, told them, and got moved to a new unit-the one I’m in now.
So now I’m moved in and living with people…oh wait, no I’m not. I mean, I am moved in…but nooooo roomies! Why, you might be asking? Welp, the roommates were fresh-outta-high-school year old girls, and their parents were not okay with having a 30-something lady live with said girls. Actually, none of us found out about the age difference until I got my key and went to meet them. All I knew is that one of the girls had a cat. That’s what I was told by the property managers. I meet the girls and the cat. There was some brief back and forth about them staying, especially after meeting one of the parents, but in the end, all the girls (who were all besties), decided to move out because their parents still insisted. This is the relevance of the previous few paragraphs. Makes sense now, hopefully?
Now, am I upset about that decision made by the girls and their parents? Absolutely not! The parents gotta protect their kids, even though they’re legal adults. Two were freshmen college students. I still remember being 19 and fresh outta high school (I was held back a grade). You think you know Everything and are ready to take on The Whole Fucking World! Yeeeaaaah, nooooooooooooooo.
Now why wasn’t I told the girls’ ages before moving in? A little thang here in the U.S.of A called The Fair Housing and Discrimination Act. Almost every U.S. American knows about this act in some passing or another. You may not know all the deets, but you’ve probably heard about it a few times in a la news. I honestly don’t know too much about it, but I skimmed it-after finally receiving a response from the property managers about why none of us were told-and nowhere did it say that ages could not be disclosed after signing a lease that involves living with strangers whom you hope might be in your age range. My response to this revelation-my property managers have my explicit permission to give my number to future roommates (only preference I was allowed to make was to choose all female-for safety reasons for all involved parties) who sign a lease to rent a room in the place I’m currently living. Their response-we’ll ask future tenants, but no guarantee that you’ll have contact or meet them before they move in. Fine-I didn’t push any further. Sometimes you gotta know when to back down, and this was not a hill nor a mountain that I’m willing to die on. I will learn from this clusterfuck of a fuckstorm, and my furbaby landlords will continue to live in bliss as best as I can provide them!
Now onto the other topic: this one hurts way more than the first situation.
Let’s take a brief break, stretch our legs, stream a tv show, put some heavy rock music on in the background-maybe grunge? Death metal? Normal rock? Idk, but I feel that’s what this whole article calls for, haha…hahaaaa…
Or maybe some angry Kelly Clarkson? Carrie Underwood? Dare I say T-Swift? Sassy LeAnn Rimes? Halestorm? Evanescence? Soooo many choices!
Also, there will not be a voice-recording to go along with any of this piece.
*Sigh* Let’s get this over with…
So when I started writing on Substack, I made a friend. This friend was quite supportive of my fledgling writing-so supportive that I admit that I subliminally chose to ignore a few red flags.
For me, the red flags included not acknowledging that I had a partner until I mentioned said partner a few times, being complimented more on my looks rather than my writing (although the compliments eventually became more about my writing so I stopped thinking about the looks-part), feeling love-bombed, and also getting ghosted for a few months before communication was resumed for a while, getting a tingling of feeling gaslighted, and now we’re currently back to no email communication.
The ghosting happened when something I said via email got misinterpreted…continuously for a few emails, despite my best efforts. When we started talking again, a few months later, I felt that I had to apologize for the miscommunication that was not my fault but made to feel that it was my fault. Perhaps I’m too damn nice to actively call people out on their bullshit via email. The best part of this? <that’s totally sarcasm> I was still active on the Substack app and still very supportive of them. Guess I’m the fool? Now we’re apparently not talking again because of another miscommunication-that I’ve already set straight on my end. I don’t know if they’ll contact me again. I don’t know if I care enough to even care.
I’m fucking tired of it.
Period.
There is a good thing to come out of this clusterfuckmess. I gained a friend who was also hurt by this person and whose story is similar to mine, with possibly a few minor differences. We’d been emailing for a bit before all this drama went down. But we compared notes, and we both feel the same about the situation. That’s all I’m going to say about that.
For myself and the mutual friend, it’s quite clear that this person has toxicity attached to them. Which is sad. Toxicity can be so lonely and isolating. No one should be lonely-people should have at least one or two people (at minimum) that they can talk to and share things with, in my opinion. I truly wish this person the best in life, and that they stop playing the mind games and become friends with someone who can show them what true friendship looks like. Eventually people don’t have time for socio/psychopathic behavior, and they move on with their lives. However, the empath in me truly wishes this person happier times moving forward. However, I know that however they seek said happier times/moments will be up to them.
So, to recap:
A.) I moved and it elicited unnecessary drama that could have been avoided with much better communication.
B.) I may have lost a friend on this site, but I’ve gained a friend through that friend. Mutual friend and I even independently have made other mutual Substack friends.
I’m cautious about making goals, but I’m personally hoping to reach out to some writers to whom I am subscribed to and who also subscribe to my page, and hopefully build up more writer friendships. I just have to gently pat my shyness and reassure it that everything will be okay.
Writing this article has been very cathartic for me, and I honestly hope this-specifically the second part-will help others recognize when they are experiencing gaslighting and love-bombing, and give them the strength to speak out-either directly to the person doing it to them, or via their own post; or if someone reads this and realizes that they are the ones doing the gaslighting and love-bombing without realizing it, that it’ll help them recognize what they’re doing and will help them change their behavior. I admit, I was going to hold the second part in and just leave it at the first part…until I read a few posts from people whom I subscribe to who also wrote about feeling betrayed by someone.
In case you’re wondering if I’m going to still be writing, the answer is a big, fat Fuck Yes! I’m currently writing still, but not about the human aspect of anthropology. To be honest, these two events have worn me out, and I don’t have the mental energy that I need to dedicate to writing out my last two Intro posts+finishing up my Deep Dive in a timely manner, along with focusing on school. You’ll get more info on that in my upcoming Shout Out post later this week! It’ll be a much happier post, I promise <3 I feel that it’ll be good to take a break and write something fun.
Anywhoooo, if you have made it this far, I truly thank you! Thank you to the Fellow Musers who have subscribed and have not yet gotten their Shoutout post-look for it to drop anytime this week! Thank you to the Fellow Musers who have continued to stay with me even though I don’t always release posts when I say I will-y’all are Awesomesauce! I also appreciate everyone who follows and reads me, even if you aren’t yet subscribed. See y’all soon with that Shout Out!
Carpe Diem and Huzzah,
~Kimber
I’m sorry to hear that happened to you. Friendships on the internet can be tricky. I’m glad that you were able to talk through it with someone and get over it, though. My thoughts go out to you!
Thank you sweetheart,
Mom