On Boundaries, Forest Trolls and Self-Imposed Sobriety- S.B.B., M.M. & B.G.

Tuesday, December 6th, 2022:

Oh my god why is this so hard??

Estrella says a creative outlet helps. That, and the determination to be sharp as a knife until a ripe old age. She asked me if my muse might pay me a visit and help survive the cravings. So that’s why I sat down to write just now.

Is this a craving? It doesn’t feel the way cravings are supposed to feel.

I suppose that’s for a reason. Mommy says they used to laugh at the pothead “addicts” in Narcotics Anonymous. Kind of like the anorexic girl attending the Weight Watchers group in This is Us, one skinny sore thumb in a sea of fat people.

Anyway, I don’t think it’s a craving. It’s more a sense of persistent disappointment mixed with debilitating boredom and the extreme desire to light up a joint.

It hasn’t even been 24 hours. I was actually planning on smoking today; I was holding off for a break until tomorrow. But then I woke up, didn’t smoke, got a bunch of work done and by the time I was done, I thought, why not try to go Wednesday AND Tuesday without weed?

It’s always the decision that’s the problem. If I’m just distracted and motivated by other things, I can easily go a day or even two.

But once I decide I’m not going to, my brain gets outraged.

“I’m a free person! I can smoke if I want to!” it loudly protests.

I’ve basically spent the last two hours on the couch, trying and failing to get interested in books, magazines, tik-tok, anything.

After a while, I messaged Estrella, and that’s when she told me about the creative outlet. She also said that it helps to remember how nice it will be later, after taking the break.

Gah gah.

I’m meeting Etienne later for cocktails. The cocktails were my idea; well really, they were Gale’s idea. I was like, We’ve hit this weird patch where our oddball relationship trajectory has landed us in the outfield. He comes over to chat for a second and then crash. We’re not old-couply enough to just hang out and sleep, only now sex is weird, and…

She suggested I take the initiative and I was like, oh. yeah. I am capable of that.

“I’m scared of Etienne,” I said to Mommy yesterday, and she sounded a bit alarmed when she asked why, I guess ‘cuz usually if I’m scared of men it’s because they’ve done something terrible.

“I don’t know how to talk to him,” I explained.

“Yes you do,” she replied firmly. “You guys just think you don’t know how to talk to each other, but you do. You had a wonderful conversation the other day. I know because you told me all the wonderfuls. You DO know how to talk to each other.”

“But that was just the one time, and now there are a thousand more conversations to have and I don’t know…”

I don’t know how to be myself around him.

I’ve spent my life trying to get the boys to like me. What a terrible way to focus my energy.

When my mom was visiting, we found this show called Gilmore Girls. It’s been around for a while but neither of us had ever watched it before, and we were hooked; clever storyline, good actors, the whole nine yards.

After she left, I kept watching.

It’s starting to annoy me now, though.

It’s about a mom and a daughter. The mom had the daughter really young, so she’s still a 30-something bombshell even though her daughter is 16. They live a humble life despite the fact that the grandparents are ridiculously wealthy; apparently it was a shock when their young daughter got pregnant, and she basically moved out and raised her daughter on her own.

The 16 yearl old girl has a crush now, and she’s so worried she’ll do or say something dumb. Meanwhile, the mother has a crush too, who’s so fricking pushy and doesn’t respect her boundaries at all! Except the show…okay yeah, I just checked. It’s 22 years old. You can tell things have come a long way in the last two decades, because I don’t think this is as common now, but basically the women just go along with the thousand micro-agressions heaped their way.

It was actually evolved for the times.

Anyway, the point is, they spend all this time trying to look good/act right for men who ultimately criticize them as a way of showing their love.

I’m annoyed that the producers didn’t give a better lesson here.

But I can definitely relate to the obsession with trying to be the right girl.

Oh and guess what?? The mom and the daughter are BOTH named…

Wait for it…

Lorelai!

Hmmm. Maybe this is helping. I haven’t thought about weed since I wrote about it a couple minutes ago.

I just want to get to the point where I don’t constantly feel like I need it. Or where it feels like it’s impossible to be happy without it.

Panama should be interesting. I’m purposely going somewhere I can’t access it with the hopes that the waves and the acrobatics will distract me. It mostly worked when I went last year. Kind of. I mean, by the end I needed a joint so bad I’d’ve been willing to bargain a loved one for it, but I also had a series of misadventures which I’m going to do my best to avoid this time.

I also won’t have just told Richard to stop mistreating my friend.

That knocked the wind out of me, writing that letter.

Ha! I took a beginner guitar lesson on Youtube to distract myself from my addiction, and it worked. Take that, weed!

Wednesday, December 7th, 2022:

I’m on day two of my self-imposed sobriety. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow at 5pm.

Today was a bit easier though. I woke up entwined with Etienne, and he nibbled on my ear until I moaned. It felt amazing to just feel him without the pressure to do things, or to sort through the logistics of the more mundane aspects of sex that they don’t show you in the movies.

I asked him last night how he’d feel if we kept our Whatsapp thread as a sort of back-channel check-in, where we could talk about more serious questions at our own pace.

He said yes!

I’m really not used to having a boyfriend who both

a) Wants to engage and
b) Is capable of engaging.

I called him that today when I was talking on the phone with Gale.

“Is that the word you’re using? Boyfriend?” she asked.

“I always feel tongue-in-cheek when I say it,” I admitted. “Which is fine, as I’ve never had an actual boyfriend work out that well.”

The problem is, there are no good alternatives. Lover sounds pretentious. Partner sounds more like we’re together all the time.

“I guess the real word is nomad. He’s my nomad. My cute little six-foot-tall handsome blue eyed nomad.”

He’s headed back to Europe tomorrow. He’ll be spending the holidays there, and then who knows where. I just know he’ll send me photos from some brilliantly beautiful place with mountains sometimes soon.

I wonder where our next adventure will be. It’s already been a year and a half since Greece.

Friday, December 9th, 2022:

Shabbos, again. Time just goes, doesn’t it?

I’ve spent most of today rearranging my chakras. I don’t really believe in them, and yet…

I ran into the Forest Troll yesterday. (That’s what Mistress says I should call him: Forest Troll. It’s such helpful imagery. Suddenly I’d reclaimed the narrative. Instead of a scared little Rapunzel with an Evil Villian Landlord, I’m a fairy princess with a dumb Forest Troll outside my palace.)

He asked how I was, all innocent-like, as though it hasn’t been 4 months since he started ignoring my email.

I returned the greeting, kept walking and then all of a sudden I was like, Well, why the fuck not…

“Did you ever get my email?” I asked.

It was terrible timing. The whole reason I was out for the walk was to clear my head from my encounter with the woman at Marché Newon, who refused to accept my refund.

“Please, I’m a good customer,” I said, thinking that maybe, just maybe, a baby girl smile could get through to her.

“I spend a lot of money here. I just need your help returning this. I have the original receipt, see? The problem is the cooker doesn’t work right. It spits water everywhere and leaves a burnt crust of rice at the bottom.”

Her reply? Her brilliant, compassionate, enlightened retort?

“That’s because you buy the cheap one. If you pay more money, hundred dollars, then it would work right.”

So you are actually ADMITTING your product doesn’t work? And it’s my fault for falling for it, so you won’t give me my money?

I wanted to scream and cry.

I immediately went home and wrote an angry review, which I’ve just deleted because the problem is, I like Marché Newon. I don’t WANT to write them a bad review, and telling others not to shop there is hypocritical since I know I’m gonna have to go skulking back.

Where else can I find the Japanese rice wine and Chinese vinegar I need to cook the new recipe my downstairs neighbor taught me??

We finally had our long-awaited trip to the grocery store together. It was really fun. She pointed out all the snacks from her childhood, advising me on tofu, frozen food, and noodles.

I’ve been trying something new each day. Last night I tried the meat-and-chestnut dumplings, wrapped like Tamales, with rice so chewy it stuck to the plate. They were good but the cooking time was way off. The insides were still frozen, even after I doubled the boiling time.

I bought oyster mushrooms. She said they were for soup but I sautéd them in lemon pepper and garlic. They were divine.

I tried the shrimp chips — decent! Wouldn’t do them again though.

The radish-cabbage pancakes were super crispy and good.

The thing I’m most excited about though, is the noodle salad. It’s “super simple” except that I don’t own any of the base ingredients.

I’m about to, though!

Well, I was about to. Japanese rice wine, Chinese vinegar, and a special Chinese pickle. I was going to buy them at Marché Newon.

Gah gah. :(

“Mistress, what do I dooooooo?” I wailed into the phone. Mistress was on the treadmill, walking along and doing that listening thing she does so well.

“It sounds like you go back to that place and you own it like the bad boss you are!” she said.

But then I’ll have to see that woman…Baby Girl shivered, curled up on the couch.

“That evil bitch! Yes! You walk past her with your head held high because you don’t give a damn.”

“Gah gah evil bitch,” I giggled, tasting the words vulgarly making their way from my mouth.

“But isn’t that a bit…mean?” I wondered timidly, thinking, she may have been very impolite, but was she really that bad?

“Ah, but it feels good, doesn’t it? Sometimes it’s okay to say bad words, Baby Girl.”

(Mommy says the same thing. She says it matters what you say and to whom, that’s all. But you are in charge of what you say inside your own head.)

So now, every time I feel worm squigglies in my belly, I can just remember I’m the Princess of my Happiness Palace, that woman from the store doesn’t matter, and my Forest Troll is an ugly unhappy man.

Somehow my anger at the woman was immediately and almost completely replaced by my frustration with my landlord.

I felt like the princess with Scrooge McDuck, although he faked more feelings. He looked squirrelly the whole time, like he was hoping he could flee the premises. It was so obvious he just wanted to escape from the conversation.

“But please sir, the refrigerator company hurt both of us, and I’m the one who had to pay the price. I’m just asking for some help, sir.” (Because now I’m Oliver Twist.)

“But…NO, if I helped you NOW, then I would…no, I helped at the beginning, out of good faith, but it wasn’t my fault…”

Too late, after I’d let him squirrel away with a forced “I’m sorry, Lorelai” (no you’re fucking not), I realized that we were arguing two different things.

He was trying to tell me it wasn’t his fault.

I was like, I know it’s not your fault. But it’s not MY fault either, so the fair thing to do would be for us to split the costs of the fallout.

But he didn’t want to listen. He just wanted to say it wasn’t his fault, and leave, as quickly as possible.

I was SO angry. Hurt. Upset. I walked in the door and it was already 12:15. I had to dump my bags and go straight to my laptop, because I was due on Zoom at 12:15.

I checked in briefly and then told the team I’d be back in five. I muted my sound, turned off my video, and RANTED into the phone to Mommy (she had gone poof so I used our video-message chat).

“I’m so angry! I want to scream, or cry, but I can’t do either and also I can’t cry because I’m about to give a presentation for 25 people and…” A tear popped out anyway, and I decided to allow it to happen, to get out as much as I could.

With two minutes on the clock, I washed my face and threw on some purple eyeshadow.

“Why aren’t you here, Mommy?” I asked a future version of Mommy who would see this after it was all over and didn’t really matter anymore. “Then you would make everything better…”

Think. What would Mommy do if she were here?

“You would validate my feeling, make me laugh, and then change the subject.”

At 12:30pm exactly, with purple eyeshadow and a face that somehow fooled the whole group, I started my presentation.

I killed it. :)

The meeting lasted for four hours. I gave everyone breaks though, and the time passed pretty quickly.

Then, finally, it was over.

And I could get high!

SEVENTY-TWO HOURS I had survived without marijuana!

“That’s great,” said Mistress, impressed.

“And now…I’m getting HIGH!” I announced.

“Oh…” She said, clearly less impressed.

“Mistress, seventy-two hours is an ACCOMPLISHMENT! Plus, it’s already too late. The edible is in my bellllly.”

“Okay Baby Girl, good job for lasting that long!” she acquiesced with a laugh.

Mistress says she’s coming next week. I will believe THAT when I see it! We have now had to cancel a trillion gazillion times…our original date was SIX months ago.

But I am, as I informed her on the phone, cautiously optimistic.

She still has some of my things, from back when I was a fairy princess nomad with a backpack, leaving butterflies and little princess nests everywhere I went.

At my brother’s, I left a shoebox with all the toiletries, notebooks and books I’d somehow acquired while traveling…even some of my favorite weed gummies.

At Mistress’s, I left my butterfly platform heels. I cannot WAIT to get them back. I hope the butterflies didn’t all die. They were squashed a little bit as I recall.

There’s also an art book Mistress Me bought me last year (it was so fun! I send chanukah gifts to myself ahead of time, and I had a billion boxes waiting for me when I arrived in New England to the “winter palace” last year. That was a nice visit, and it was also when I told Mistress that next time, it was her turn. Well, it’s taken a gazillion years, but she’s finally coming to visit me.)

She’s bringing other stuff too…birthday presents for Felix that I could only buy in the states. Pearl olives, which they don’t sell here, and which are the best canned olives I’ve ever had (Canadian brands, no offense, aren’t even edible. Like, don’t even bother). Act Mouthwash. Random shit.

And some stuff I don’t even remember. This will be fun! Early Chanu-cristmas with Mistress!

She threw a party last weekend.

Apparently Chad left a used condom on the floor of her finished basement.

“I’m soooooo done,” she said, sounding helpless, because he is Elise’s husband, and she wants to be able to invite Elise, but Chad, urgh.

I get it. I’ve been done with Chad for a while.

When I finally started seeing people again after the pandemic, I started reuniting with friends I had only seen with Gavin.

That’s when I realized how terrible they all are with consent.

I guess it makes sense that that’s who we would have been hanging out with.

It started with my friends in Rhode Island, Caleb and Maggie. I saw them right after Greece, and it was fun to get together without Gavin. I could do whatever I wanted! (I had enjoyed being couples friends with Caleb and Maggie. I felt safe with them, and attracted to both of them. So obviously Gavin had never wanted us to play.)

The first night we had loads of fun together. The problem was, Caleb thought that gave him free rein to just randomly touch my boobs or my butt whenever he wanted for the rest of the week.

I am a bit soft on Caleb because I think the culprit is actually his brain wiring. Still though, you need to learn basic shit!!

He and I had this whole conversation, on the last day of our visit, when I told him that if he kept on disregarding my boundaries I wouldn’t be able to come back.

Caleb: “Oh my god, Lorelai, you were serious? I thought you were joking when you said I shouldn’t grope you.”

I was like, “What part of me saying, Please don’t grope me, didn’t you understand?”

“But you were so nice about it!”

“So I should have been…meaner to get my point across?! I don’t want to be mean to you! I just want you to respect my body.”

“Look, I can put you in my friends category,” he insisted. “I know not to touch my friends’ butts. But you’re my swinger friend, and swinger friends get mad if you don’t touch their butts!”

“Some. Not all.” I could see his brain twitch.

“Caleb, you can’t just put your friends into boxes and then act exactly the same way with every one of them! You have to treat them individually!”

“Individdddually?” and I could feel his confusion, those poor neurons anxiously whirring to make sense of this strange proposition. He looked so innocent I almost laughed.

“Of course,” I said. “Different people have different needs, and different boundaries. And sometimes, those boundaries change even with the same person, like, if they’ve been raped, for example. Or even for reasons that aren’t that serious.”

“Ohhhhhhhh.” He said, and asked if I still liked him.

I did still like him, but it will be a long time before I spend a week at his house again.

The whole time we were talking, his wife Maggie just lay there giggling. “I love you guys! I love you guys so much!”

She texted me the other day. She was my daily checkin person when I realized I was being abused and needed help.

I really do like both of them. Maybe I’ll give Caleb one more chance one of these days. But not as a guest in his home. It will have to be on neutral territory.

Later in the fall there was an awful incident with a former coworker. That’ll be trauma-processed on another day.

After that, the thing with Jessie happened.

By the time December hit and I’d arrived at Mistress’s Winter Palace, I wasn’t taking any chances.

I texted Chad in advance.

Hey Chad! I hear you’ll be at the party next week. Me too! It’ll be nice to see you after two-odd years of pandemic and world craziness.

I need to touch base with you about something kind of sensitive before that, so here goes: I had about five different people approach me after my and Gavin’s wedding to tell me that Chad had come onto them (or their girlfriends) while inebriated. They all said that when asked to stop, the scene would simply repeat itself a few minutes later, in some cases multiple times.

I wasn’t there for any of those incidents, so I can’t know what happened for sure and from knowing you, I would imagine your intentions were pure. However, I think you should know about it; even if it wasn’t your intention, clearly several different people experienced an issue with boundaries and consent and you might want to reflect on how to handle similar situations in the future.

This is especially important for me because I’ve just been through some debilitating trauma related to having boundaries violated. Because of that, I will be very careful about when I play and when I allow people to touch me. Elise said you would both be there for me, which I really appreciate. The best way to do that is to help me feel safe by respecting my boundaries and those of the people around me. Of course, you’ll only know what my boundaries are if I tell you so here they are: I am requesting not to be touched or come onto unless invited to do so, no matter what we may have done in the past.

And…that’s all. Awkward as shit of a message, I know, but better now than next week after the party has already started. See you Saturday!

I knew I needed to message him, because he was also one of those likely to claim that because once three years ago I had allowed him to touch me, that gives him the right to my body for eternity.

At first I played with him because I liked him and enjoyed the attention. Plus Gavin was starving me for sex so I took it anywhere I could get it.

I slowly stopped being attracted to Chad because of his tool-ishness, but I played with him anyway because otherwise Gavin would have gotten angry at me for cock-blocking him with Elise.

God what fucked-up situations I ended up in.

Chad’s reaction to my text was complete shock and alligator tears. (This appears to be a common theme, by the way. Somebody breaks a boundary, they are told they’ve broken a boundary, and rather than actually care about the person who’s been hurt, they are outraged that they might be thought of as a person who breaks boundaries!)

He first swore up and down that the incidents at the wedding hadn’t happened. Then, literally in the same message, he informed me that he had apologized to the women in question! (I’ve since verified. He apologized to some of them. You know, because there were five. And maybe not all of them felt comfortable calling him on his behavior.)

I woke up the next morning to two more messages from him. One had been sent late the night before. I don’t remember it word for word but it was something along the lines of…

I thought you knew me better than that…
I can’t believe you would think I’m a fucking asshole…
I know I’m not welcome so I won’t come…

The second message was an apology for the first one, telling me that he had been drunk, he meant no harm and really did want to come to the party and hoped everything would be fine.

Everything was fine. He was frightened of me by then, and I was like, fine. If that’s what it takes to protect his fragile little ego and my boundaries at the same time, great.

Mistress also had a talk with him before the party and I’m sure that helped as well; I wasn’t the only one she was worried about him making uncomfortable.

It’s so crazy, the length we go in our friends groups to make all the narcissists feel included while trying not to break ourselves.

And now fucking Chad has left a used condom on Mistress’s floor!!!

If I were her, I’d be like, “This will be your only warning. You violated this home once. Do something this frat-boy-like again, and the cult will shun you!”

Otherwise, what’s the point of being a Mistress??

Mistress is lucky she has a Baby Girl like me, full to brimming with advice she should follow…

The weed definitely helped my mood yesterday, but that damn forest troll, man.

Over and over I recognized I was having a conversation with him in my head. I then held the feeling close while throwing the conversation to the moon. Over and over.

Because there is no point wasting another ounce of my energy or second of my time on someone who won’t be kind and reasonable. Having hypothetical conversations with him just gives him more power.

Today is a chill day. That’s what I wrote on my Grownup Planner: Challah and Chill!

I’m going to a party tonight. It’s a work party that I really do want to go to. I’m going to decorate my mask so it’s part of my christmas outfit.

I’m baking challah to bring.

I have the address written down so I don’t have to turn on my phone, which has been off since I hung up with Mistress last night.

This is a busy weekend, which I guess makes sense, this close to The Holidays. Tomorrow I accepted work, but I charged a Shabbos Surcharge. (I didn’t call it that. I said it was my “weekend rate,” which isn’t a lie.)

Hopefully it will be worth it. I think it might be. Apparently more than one hundred people are coming!

Afterward I’m going to Gale’s. If she’s okay, anyway. She tested negative for Covid ages ago but she’s not feeling well still. She didn’t go to dance the other day, which is very unusual because she runs the whole thing. It takes earthquakes and tornados to get Gale to flake on any of her million volunteer obligations.

“Thanks for saying you’re proud of me,” she said, “But actually, my body just kind of…didn’t let me get up.”

If that’s what it takes, I thought.

I’m worried for her. Her body is screaming at her to take care of herself, and has been for more than a year. The ailments, tests, and treatments are adding up and still she gives and gives until she literally can’t get out of bed.

Sometimes I think Gale is the tree in The Giving Tree, giving and giving until she is all gone.

And fucking Richard comes home on Sunday.

When we talked the other day, I reminded her that February is much closer than she realizes.

For the second time.

I was trying not to remind her, because she’s the one who needs something from me, so discussing the details and logistics should be her initiative!

I’m trying not to be The Giving Tree with Gale, because that’s our own toxic pattern: She breaks herself for everyone else, and then I break myself for her.

And it’s all from a place of love. Toxic love, but love nonetheless.

But I finally reminded her again.

In typical Gale fashion, it’s been a month and she still doesn’t know the answers to any of the questions I’d asked back in October when she originally brought up the possibility.

I’m really trying to have good boundaries for the whole Mary Poppins thing.

Anyway, we talked, and we may discuss it more tomorrow. As long as I feel like it is fair, I’ll go be roommates with the munchkins at Plateau Place again. That should make February pretty interesting, right?

Anyway, I guess that’s all for now. Maybe I’ll get dolled up for this party before I finish out the challah.

Gah gah,

Baby Girl, Mistress Me, and Super Boss Bitch

PS I’m starting to remember my dreams more. Usually they’re hella weird, but for about two seconds one night a week ago, it happened: I closed my eyes, took a deep breath…and flew, high high high high into the air.