Venting in Obscurity

This may be the only place I can vent.

I roleplay on Twitter. At this point, I have four roles:

Jean Pierce - basically an extension of me, from February on, who has joined the crew of the NX-01 Enterprise as their ship's counselor. She is telepathically tied to the Twitter network, and has a few other tricks up her sleeve as well.

Lucio - Jean's bioluminescent centipede. He has been created twice (I'll explain why in a minute), and is used for interactions with Jean, and any other people she may have in her quarters, especially if she's having concerts.

Hoshi Sato from the Mirror Universe - A little self-explanatory, if you know the "In a Mirror, Darkly" episodes. So far, since this is set before IAMD, she hasn't done much except monitor the com a few time, and seducing Captain Forrest.

Naomi Wildman - The little human-Ktarian hybrid from Voyager. She is fun to play, because I can be imaginative and think of things from a child's perspective.


Now, the problem: there was a person that I befriended when I was just starting out with Jean. He was the original player of Lucio, as well as the time agent, Daniels. He also uses his RL account as a sort of RL/RP hybrid, the way I did at the beginning before making Jean fully RP. Now, I'm going to be honest here... he was a good friend for a good while. I shared bits and pieces of my life with him, without worrying about it. I suppose he did the same, to an extent. I also helped him with editing his tweets, both in RL and in RP, in order for him to express things properly, in the right context, without spoilers, etc.

During the course of our friendship, he has gotten into fights with other RPers, mainly in the Doctor Who RP group (which I used to follow more closely myself). I tried to keep him calm throughout that, tried to help him control what he would say to people, if only to keep the situation from getting more volatile. He thanked me profusely for that, and even called me an angel once in conversation. I was glad to keep the situation from escalating too far.

However... as plotlines and such started showing up, he began making big fusses over little details. He would often chat with me in AIM, jumping in with something that somebody I wasn't following had said, and would expect me to give him advice on the situation. Most of the time, I would advise him not to say anything, not to start drama. I suppose that got tiring for me for a while, since it seemed like half our conversations were about that sort of thing. So I was blunt at one point, and suggested that maybe he liked getting into those kinds of situations. He was immediately offended that I even suggested such a thing.
Then came the plot point, almost insignificant in terms of moving the plot along, that just ruined everything. I could explain it out again, but it would be a waste of words... basically, it was a misunderstanding that he felt the need to comment on, both in-character and in DMs. I was overwhelmed and somewhat upset by his reaction, and so shared it with the woman who leads the Enterprise RP.
Later there came a flood of e-mails... e-mails which basically put all the blame on me, asking me to look from his perspective, demanding that I apologize or stop talking to him. I shared some of the content of these e-mails with some RP friends, because it upset me, made me furious. They, of course, sympathized (after all, they wouldn't have wanted any friend of theirs treated like that). I decided, since I was getting so upset, and that any attempt at response would only end up with more vitriol... so I stopped talking to him.

All of this started back in late April. The fuss, the e-mails... they haven't stopped. They don't come in every day, but they are STILL coming. I've set up a filter so they go straight to the Trash... but I end up checking the Trash a lot anyway, just for that purpose. I guess it keeps me from feeling too bad when I don't see his name in my inbox.
He has left the Enterprise RP, deleted both Daniels and Lucio. I brought Lucio back in a new account (he had some commentary on THAT, too), and Daniels was negotiated to go to the player who does T'Pol.
He's now angry at the friends that I vented to, saying that what I had been doing was talking behind his back. They don't see it like that - they see that I was upset, that he had been saying these things to me, and I needed someone to talk to about it. And I did do more than talk... I guess, to really push the point home, I copy-pasted, so they could actually *see* what he was saying to me. They saw why I was upset, and sympathized. Because they sympathized, he says that I turned them against him, that he really liked them and wanted to keep talking to them. My friends tell me that he rarely talked to them at all, and since he had left the RP, they unfollowed him on their RP accounts because he wasn't really there anymore. One of my friends - I met with her lately - got a lot of nasty e-mails from him because she was honest, telling him that it was because of the RP, not for any personal reasons... but he didn't believe her. I feel so bad that she was brought into this so deep - I didn't want her to go through the same shit I did.

Now, here's really why I'm venting, and this time I did *NOTHING* wrong. Nothing at all.

The Voyager RP group has been barely started up these past couple of weeks, and they needed more members. So I created Naomi. Today was her first day out. I tried to follow everyone from Voyager, and had a great time playing a little girl, playing kadis-kot with Shara (a non-canon Orion). Then I got called into work, so I left, for about two or three hours.
Later I came back, RPed some more with Shara and B'Elanna, then sent Naomi to bed. It wasn't until I checked my Trash more closely that I realized that the guy (who also followed Voyager RP) had followed Naomi, said hi to her while I was gone (and since he wasn't really a Voyager RPer, I hadn't followed him), and I hadn't seen it in my Replies feed. So basically he thought I was ignoring him on purpose, and now has sent a nice vitriolic e-mail to me and the leader of the Enterprise RP (why, I don't really know, she has nothing to do with this). Finding this new e-mail in my Trash, I started the shakes - when I get to a certain point of emotional upset, I start trembling like mad. There was a bad time when he had threatened to bring back Daniels to kick my friend's RP character off the ship because she had stayed too long... that time, I made the whole desk shake.
So... I sent an OOC out from Naomi, apologizing to *anyone* who might be replying to me that I didn't see, saying I was getting used to the character, and really only following Voyager crew members. Tomorrow, I've decided I'll RP her finding his message and apologizing because she had been so busy cleaning her room - I think that he's taking offense way too easily, and I don't want to cause troubles in this RP. The least I can do is to try to ease the drama away with in-character dialogue.

But... the leader of the Enterprise RP is well aware of this guy and his problems. I told her what was going on... told her how it started... she's talked with him, reprimanded him for bringing his own agenda into his RP characters (he hated being told that, too)... she's trying to ask him exactly what he wants, and that's stymying him a bit... I've apologized to her, too, for bringing her into this, and she's reassured me that it's okay, that she's dealt with people like this before. However, she's also warned me that this will probably carry over to the Voyager RP... and it has. Goddamn it.

I'm just so frustrated with all this! If I respond to him, I'll only get more shit thrown at me. If I keep my silence, I'll still get shit thrown at me. I can't win. I... I think some of the worst of it is that he says ALL THIS SHIT in huge waves, and then expects me to take it in stride and talk it out. That's not how it works! When I get e-mails like that, I get upset. I get mad. I look at them, and I say to myself - "I would never say stuff like this to someone that I used to consider as a friend, even if things *were* really bad..."

Stuff like this:

"See, no matter what I do, I'm wrong. I bring it up in several ways, I'm wrong. I try to talk it over with Grety, I'm wrong (hell I'm /always/ wrong when I bring /anything/ up with her, what else is new? This seems to be an ongoing thing and it's totally wrecked our friendship)"

"Our so-called friendship (if ever it could be called that) is pretty much fucked. It's over. it's /been/ over for a while. It's not the same and it never could be. There's no going back there, as much as I'd like it."

"Now you tell me what the hell I'm supposed to do /but/ leave because /clearly/ that would solve everything. Since you got me into this, how about you get me out of it? That's only fair. I have all night because obviously I'm not going anywhere. You created this problem, now YOU
solve it."

"Now you know why I don't have female friends. i haven't found any who I've deemed trustworthy. All of them have used or manipulated me in some way and you're certainly no different, are you? I thought I could talk to you (and trust you), but you went from "You can talk to me about anything" to "no you're wrong" almost every time I bring something up. If it's not something you're conscious of doing (as you claim) then it's clearly something in life you're taking out on me. (Why should I feel shocked, because everyone else does it, why not you too?)"

"You have /no reason/ to be mad at me, or upset with me, or anything because YOU CREATED THIS PROBLEM ALL BY YOURSELF. Not me. I've already admitted wrongdoing and corrected it. If simply pointing out /your/ (& EntAllat's) wrongdoing makes you both hate me so much, then there's a question you have to ask yourselves: Why do you take such offence at being corrected? Why can you not simply admit your fault in this and MOVE ON?"


The latter two paragraphs were ones after I had responded to him in an e-mail saying, "Yes, it's fucked, you say you didn't want it to be yet you're the one still yelling at me, solve your own problems, I'm done, I'm shutting the fucking door". And I left it at that. I've been trying to move on for almost a month now, but he still keeps yelling at me. He just doesn't. Fucking. Stop. He's in his thirties, in another country, and he's still yelling at me... it just doesn't seem like it should be happening. It's like teenage drama.

I joined this RPing to have fun. I made friends in Enterprise, Voyager, and a few other universes as well. I met one of those friends in real life last Thursday, and we had a blast in Hollywood. Yet there is this one person who is ruining my fun. Case keeps telling me to not let it get to me... but it's so hard.
I'm not perfect. I have my flaws. I don't have the best social skills all the time. But I try to be nice to people as much as I can. When I make friends, I want to keep them. And if I get angry... I try not to lash out immediately, I try to have self-control. I think about how what I say will affect the other person, and try to get my point across without hurting anyone. However, I also try to be honest to my friends... if I think that they're doing something stupid, I will tell them that. I try not to sugar-coat, because that would be like lying to keep them happy.

I've stopped shaking now. I've vented a bit, and although I'm still upset, I feel more in control. If this is talking behind his back, then his back is huge - I'm announcing all this to strangers, whoever might be stumbling across my journal in their journey to find some good reading material. But it's not like I can just ignore what he's saying to me - I don't work like that. I need to express my frustrations somehow... Case has heard it all before, so he's telling me not to get so worked up. It seems like venting to friends won't work either. So now I'm just venting to a computer screen, and whatever aliens might be out there monitoring my madness.

I never have hated him. He abused me verbally, abused my friends verbally... but I haven't hated him. I feel sorry for him, that he feels that this way is the only way for him to act. He has troubles of his own, but it seems that the only way he can deal with them is taking them out on us.
And now... he's sent one last e-mail. The guy he's been in love with for a while has now cut him out of his life, too. He's decided to abandon the whole vendetta thing, tells me I can vent all I want. He still doesn't think he's said anything wrong, but he's done caring what I think.
Can I help but feel relieved? When it all comes down to it... having him not care anymore means that he won't be yelling at me anymore. For now, at least.

I will try my best to patch things a little with Naomi - that was all a misunderstanding. I don't want to fight. I never have. It's just been emotionally exhausting, all the time.
I'm looking over all that I've written and pasted here... seeing my frustration go up, peak, and then go back down... that's really how it works for me. I don't feel so angry anymore. Just tired. And just a little hopeful, maybe I can fix a few small things after all.