It’s backstory time.

There’s a third person living in our house right now, and I think they’ve been here for a little over a year. I’m a little hazy on that, because I have a real issue with time and how much of it has passed…but we’ll go with ‘a little over a year’.

Let’s go back to that vague point. Not really, of course, since I don’t even really remember when it was, so I couldn’t even begin to guess where the hell everything was so we didn’t end up in the middle of space, but…oh, you know what I mean.

Part One: “Athiel might be moving in with us.”

If you know me, you know that this is a touchy thing for me to deal with. I don’t cope well with people being around at all, and I need my safe-spaces. After living here without anyone else for as long as I had, I’d gotten pretty used to, y’know, the entire house being a pretty safe space.

Also, it was kinda a weird thing to hear, since he had a place that we’d pretty much just helped him move into. Except that was part of the problem — it wasn’t just his. It was also his wife’s, and you can guess why he was moving out.

Divorce.

Yeah, okay. That’s all fine. Rent? Yeah, apparently there will be rent. Good. Fine. I survived that week or so that Swyndle was here. I think I can survive this. Besides, Gremlin was already constantly existing right behind me instead of using his office, so that wouldn’t change at all….

It was settled, then. If he couldn’t find another place, he could move in here. There was talk of bringing a cat along, then there wasn’t. Then there was talk about having found another place, then there wasn’t. Eventually, he moved.

Well, he started to. Then he kinda went back for a bit, because the room wasn’t fully cleared out. Once we got that done, he tried again. It worked a little better that time.

Part Two: Wait, what was that about divorce?

Have I mentioned that I’m incredibly self-involved? At least, I think I am. It may be a function of my anxiety issues, which might or might not be related to my depression issues. Add all that to my inability to do anything without the right conditions [nobody to interrupt me, something playing on the TV that helps me work, all that], and you’ve got part of the reason why I’ve been so inactive.

Anyway, yeah. Depressed, anxious, self-involved. Up until this point, I’d been able to keep myself slightly above a lot of it. I had friends — actual, real-life, here-in-town friends. And it was kinda awesome. Then, this happened.

No problem. I can deal with it. And, if I can’t, well, I should probably call my doctor and see if I can’t get something for the anxiety.

My [mental health] doctor, who, at that exact point in time, was for-reals retiring. She tells me this as she’s setting up the prescription.

Oh, shit.

This is where the spiral really begins. My safety net is going away. The person who’d be there for me to be absolutely crazy at. And shit was about to get crazier.

Because two people who’d been my friends — granted, somewhat distant friends — were divorcing. And one of them was moving in here. That’s taking sides, isn’t it?

And people who get divorces try to split up their friends in the settlement. Because you have to take a side and it’s always bitter and you can’t remain friends with both because they won’t let you.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Fuck.

I immediately dealt with the problem. By spending three days in bed.

Part 3: Exponentially Increasing Awkwardness.

The only date I actually remember for any of these events is New Years Eve. Or, possibly, January 2nd. Mostly, I remember there was a party. And that the awkwardness of absolutely everything, and the anxious self-involvement, increased by several orders of magnitude.

The roommate’s ex-wife was now sleeping with another of my friends.

At this point, I went from self-centered to self-singularity. I became a fucking black hole of ‘me’.

This wasn’t something I could deal with by staying in bed. Anywhere I hid, I brought all this shit with me, and more. Once I get to that point, it all starts getting sucked in and becoming way, way bigger than it really should be. Emotional physics breaks down.

Somehow, I managed to do something smart. I thought about it for a minute, understood that it was beyond my ability to deal with, completely outside of any experience I’ve ever had. So, I had to find someone to talk to. Someone who might know stuff.

I went through my mental list. Who do I know who has a lot of weird, complicated relationship experience — at least, who do I think might have weird, complicated relationship experience.

My ‘list of friends’ is pretty short, but also pretty weird and awesome. I narrowed it down to one person — the only person I didn’t ask permission of before posting this, so I won’t be naming her [or, I will, since she just told me I could: Hoyden]. But, given what I knew about her relationship preferences, and what I thought I knew about how social she is, I figured she was as close to an expert as I could get.

I unloaded on her.

“Hi. I’m not even going to bother to ask if you’re busy because I haven’t got the capacity to think about anyone else right now. Two of my friends are getting a divorce. Well, I say ‘friends’, but I really mean ‘people I know but didn’t often talk to until now’. Well, I say ‘people’, but they were really kinda one entity to me up until this point. That’s probably the best way to put it. They’re about to become two people, and one of them is moving in with me, and it looks like it’s about to get pretty bitter. And I don’t want to be seen as taking sides. Except I’m betting I probably am because one of them is going to be living in the only clean room in my house. Except I really don’t want to take sides.

And by the way, do I actually have to play along if they decide that I’m like a child and they need to award custody in the divorce? How do I deal with that? I wanna say I won’t play that game, and I won’t play that game, but I don’t want them to play that game with me. I wanna be like Switzerland before Twilight ruined that analogy.

And it gets worse, because she’s now with another of my friends and holy shit this is all so awkward and it’s all about me. Help.”

Great person that she is, she didn’t immediately delete and block me. She broke it down for me into manageable pieces [small LEGO bricks — 1×1, 1×2, and a lot of those studs from the LEGO games], explaining where I could and should draw lines, how to deal with drawing those lines, and a bunch of other stuff.

I think I managed to follow her instructions. Here I am, over a year later, and I think I’m still friends with all three individuals. I still suffer from [fairly frequent] bouts of anxiety over all three, but I haven’t become a black hole over them in a while.

I think that’s a lot like progress.

And yes, I said ‘think I’m still friends’. That’s an unrelated issue that I have with anyone who seems to be my friend. I tend to wonder why anyone would actually be my friend, because I’m a complete mess on top of being a rather terrible person. That whole issue could be a post of its own, which means I’ve reached the point where topical cohesion is breaking down. This is where tangents develop, and, if I don’t want to go on one [or twelve], I should probably find a way to end this.

That’s something else I have to work on. Ending these things. Because I really don’t know how. You can tell by the fact that this is how I’m ending it.