I feel it closing in, I feel it closing in

[j4]

This morning I looked from the screen to the sky and, for one frightening moment, I could no longer tell them apart. All I could see was flickering white in front of me and flickering white through the window. The only difference I could see was that the one which was fractured by trees was bright enough to hurt my eyes. Then everything was fractured by tears.

There is nothing poetic about tears running down one's cheeks when their fall ends in a prosaic splash on a wood-effect desk. There is nothing romantic about fishing for tissues in a drawer full of teabags. Energy tea, detox tea; a collection of warm, comforting lies. Change your life with tea. Happiness is a steaming cup of ginseng, ginger, echinacea, redbush, flowering fad, organic bandwagon.

I'm hedging my bets today: alternating between the quasi-spiritual cleansing properties of herbal teas and the cheap comfort of sweets, doughnuts, and fizzy drinks. My body is not so much a temple as a racetrack, or perhaps a market.

In between drinking and eating, I watch words scroll past on IRC. Sometimes I even type some of them. Having other people to "talk" to is about the only thing that's keeping me faintly sane on a day-to-day, minute-to-minute basis; but according to a recently published flamme à clef by a local would-be author it's all just a game of Ego Stroking.

Alt-4. Alt-4. Shutting down applications one by one. They disappear like the days, the weeks, the months, the years. Time to start the daily journey into the dark.

Comments

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

To be perfectly honest, given that you have a fairly obvious bias in this response and don't really know me at all, I don't think I'm going to pick up on it, other than to say this: I have no personal vendetta against Janet. I maintain a good relationship with all my recent exes and consider her in no different light to the rest of them, of whom there are a considerable number. However I am not prepared to be pushed around for anyone's sake; at the moment I have less than no reserves of charity and resilience with which to be magnanimous about this sort of thing, and frankly, I have to look after myself. As I've already expained to ewx, if Janet makes a post I feel is unreasonable as a response to something in my journal, then I will explain that to her in a comment on the entry and ask her, once, politely, to make it non-visible to me. If she refuses to be reasonable about that then I will report it as harassment. I cannot apologise for doing things which are necessary to my continued wellbeing.

[emperor]

I think that's a curious use of the word "harassment". I could understand you saying that Janet posting things you considered offensive as comments in your journal was harassment, but it seems to me that saying that her posting things in her journal about you is harassment is a difficult assertion to support; the defense "vicky doesn't have to read janet's LJ" appears quite convincing from here. If you considered it defamation then that would be a different ball-game entirely, but that doesn't seem to be the issue here.

Personally speaking, I'd rather people bitched about me in posts that I could read, but YMMV.

[daneel-olivaw.livejournal.com]

[For those at the back, lark_ascending is alluding to the fact that I am one of j4's partners.]

However I am not prepared to be pushed around for anyone's sake; at the moment I have less than no reserves of charity and resilience with which to be magnanimous about this sort of thing, and frankly, I have to look after myself.

This reads to me as if you are saying, "I'll barge through, trampling on other people's feelings as I see fit, and damn the consequences for my acquantances, friends and loved ones". Is that really what you mean?

As I've already expained to ewx, if Janet makes a post I feel is unreasonable as a response to something in my journal, then I will explain that to her in a comment on the entry and ask her, once, politely, to make it non-visible to me.

Hang on. You don't have the right of veto on someone else's journal! You have the ability to add comments if the other user invites them, but that is all. The other user has the right to completely ignore what you say. That's the way the system works!

If she refuses to be reasonable about that then I will report it as harassment. I cannot apologise for doing things which are necessary to my continued wellbeing.

There's that word again. [Reaches for dictionary]:

Harass - 1. trouble or annoy continually
2. make repeated attacks on (an enemy)

I don't see that either of these has occurred, or at least certainly not from Jan to you. It is for this reason that I suggest that your assumption of harassment is baseless, and your threat or reporting Jan for it hollow. However, your repeated threats to report Jan to The Powers That Be have other effects, which I can only presume are the ones you actually desire.

Interestingly, it is that last bit (the repeated threats) which is the behaviour closest to harassment that I have yet to observe...

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

I don't see that politely requesting not the removal, but the concealment of something I find offensive and hurtful can possibly count as harrassment. It's only in the case that Janet unreasonably refuses to conceal it that I intend to escalate it that far; the point I wished to make is that if I really did have to do that out of self-preservation, I would, and I don't want that to come as a surprise to people. I've already said that you don't know me particularly well; in particular neither you, j4 (I assume) nor emperor know one or two aspects of my current situation which go some way towards explaining the use of the word 'self-preservation' there. It's not something I wish to discuss in a rancorous public argument; suffice it to say that I'm not in the healthiest state of mind myself and I cannot - and I really do mean that I am not capable of it - let people ride rough-shod over me if I'm going to get any better any time soon. j4 of all people should be able to understand this.

The livejournal abuse team apparently refuse to arbitrate in flamewars, which is entirely understandable. If they didn't I'd have asked someone to step in here ages ago, for the sake of a quiet life: responding to j4's own extreme reactions with basic coherence and rationality has been difficult enough for me, without also fighting a constant rearguard action against all but one of her current partners. As it is, the strategy I have taken appears to be the only one available to me to prevent this kind of thing becoming a regular occurrence, which would be catastrophic for all concerned. Once more, I repeat that I am not doing this out of malice; I'm doing it because I have to. It is unfortunate that neither j4 nor I were in a fit state to handle the original dispute differently, but especially given that, I still believe that there is no blame to be apportioned here and no moral high ground to be taken.

I also think that both you and Emperor are not helping the situation by jumping into it now. I understand that you're motivated by caring about Janet; but please think very carefully about what it is that you're trying to do for her before you continue this.