#its horrible to feel like i have to either defend myself or fucking grovel before Proper Ukrainians if i get caught

[mothmvn]

i need to get my shit together and adopt a cool and aloof persona where i just speak russian as a ukrainian online and don't feel bad about it. like bad bitch vitaliy kim who keeps running an official ukrainian government telegram channel without avoiding/deleting russian texts he sends

it's really something to need a validation figure for something as stupid as this but here we are i guess. last week had to console my mum because a grown-ass woman was mean to her about it online, only to get sad about it myself today.

it's such an easy target to have on your forehead - today I didn't even speak russian, the exchange was in english, but my transliteration had 1 mistake in it (because of some frankly stupid choices ukraine implemented in 2007-2010 that result in VERY ugly -"ий" transliterations). and the other user decided this meant i was a filthy russophile traitor who did it on purpose to spite ukraine. there are ways to correct people that are in good faith, theirs was not.

physically it caused a, like, panic response, heart pounding feeling like i needed to "absolve" myself in their eyes, defend my worth, prove that i'm still ukrainian - specifically, prove that I speak ukrainian good enough to be ukrainian (i am decently fluent, but it's just not my #1 native language, that's not something I can change). i couldn't even think of anything to say, i just told them that it's hurtful for me that they assumed I was being malicious.

this is a recurring interaction forum so I'm pretty sure they'll just treat me with suspicion forever. what do they want, my birth certificate? my lack of any ties to russia? a manifesto? i said nothing to them to start this, this is all based JUST on the fact that ukrainian is not my #1 first language and it shows sometimes.

if it were just this one user, it'd be whatever, but it's not - i've seen this sentiment in so many places, even down to mocking русский language when that language is not just a российский language but the language of, idk, your neighbours downstairs? your friend's family (even if that friend speaks ukrainian with you)? a huge percentage of people who live east of the dnieper/dnipro river? i dont know. it hurts to see it over and over again and it hurts even more to see my mum get hopelessly sad about this thing she also cannot change in herself.

[notmushroom4urshiitake-blog]

No one has to read this, but I need to say it.

Okay, so, this woman and I dated for almost two years total between 2012 and the start of 2015. We were about 20/21 when it began. She made me happier than I had ever been, but also sadder than I had ever been.

I’ve always had a problem with the word ‘love’. My family just doesn’t say it to each other, and I’ve never really understood what it means to feel it; I still don’t. But when we dated I was sure that was it. We were so, so into each other. After about a year, our relationship began it's decline. We fought a lot, and when we did, we always butted heads. She had to be right, and so did I, and we struggled to see each other’s perspective. During moments of passion, I get flustered and am not good at expressing myself, so she always won. No matter what the issue was, I was the one who had to change. Even when she had done something that upset me, she had this way of making me feel like I was in the wrong. On top of this, my troubles with expression also meant that I was neglecting her. I wasn't saying and doing the little things to make her feel good, even though she would try to do a lot of that for me.

Anyway, after like 9 months of this nasty bickering, we were basically fighting all the time. Post-fight, rather than trying to bring up the problem again, I would actively not do anything to change, thinking that I was right and shouldn't have to. But this just caused more problems and it all started again. It eventually got to a point where we were either fighting or trying not to fight, rather than being happy together. We were both terrible for each other, and we were completely blind to it, but we were convinced that we could make it work. No one else saw this side of our relationship.

After a while, she started to hit me when we argued. Now, I would say that it was never okay to hit someone, and she would say that it was okay because she’s a girl, and it’s not like she was hitting me in the face, and also that I should man up and take it. At the time, I bought it. The problem was that she is not a weak person. She grew up in a farming family, doing a lot of manual labour and as a result, she could hit really hard. She would mostly punch me in the chest and arms and I felt like I could handle it, even though I did sometimes get bruises or feel sore afterwards. One day though, we were both drunk and carrying on. She was punching me, and then my shoulder slipped, so I shoved her off of me with my other arm (I have bad shoulders and they often slip out of joint if they’re knocked in certain places). She fell and hit the end of my bed and the look she gave me, it was horrible. She started crying and said she couldn’t believe that I did it. I kept saying what else was I meant to do and she said I was meant to hold her like a bear hug and restrain her so she would stop; not shove her back.

Just quietly, that is total bullshit, if someone hits me I’m allowed to defend myself and it’s not fair that I have to take that shit from anyone for any reason. But domestic violence is such a huge problem for women that a lot of people don’t realise that sometimes it does happen to men. I don’t know about now, but back then there wasn’t even an option for a man being abused, there was only a number for men to call if they were the perpetrator, not the victim. So of course I never told anyone. I would have surely been laughed at, or prosecuted myself if she had said anything about my shoving her back. And after that we were never the same, not that the old us was any good anyway. I tried to break up with her but something kept stopping me, I still don’t know what it was.

Then, one day, she borrowed my laptop and found these emails to a female friend of mine. This friend once kissed me just before she went to Germany for a year and I was so dumbfounded that I really just did nothing to deal with it - we never even spoke about it. But we stayed in touch and became close friends. We used to send long emails to each other, even after she came back and again when she returned to Germany to study. They never included anything suggestive, but my girlfriend knew about the kiss and believed that there was an ulterior motive behind them. She believed I was cheating on her because I had never told her about these emails that dated back to a couple years before we met. I didn’t think it was a problem, but I see now that it was wrong of me to not say something. It was a dishonest thing to do, but I never mentioned them and it ended up being what ultimately broke us up. She couldn’t get past that and I can see how it is cheating. Not physical cheating, but cheating nonetheless.

After about 3 months of not dating, we kind of came back together, and both admitted that we still had feelings for each other. But because my actions had broken us up, I was the one who had to do all the grovelling, and I wanted to do it. I would have done anything to stay with her. So I did whatever she asked. Any time I was even messaging another woman, she would say I was cheating, even if it was a friend we both knew. Any woman I came in contact with I was watched like a hawk. And I always felt so guilty whenever she would have a go at me, which felt like every day. But regardless of this, she let me keep seeing her. We did everything a couple would do, except that she wouldn’t allow me to call her my girlfriend, because of the constant issue she had with my interactions with other women. I hadn’t proven myself to be trustworthy and so she wasn’t ready to commit again. She checked my phone every day just about and my emails all the time.

One day, I asked her if she had been messaging any other guys herself, since she wouldn’t let me be her boyfriend. She said no, but she hesitated. So, after some serious pressing, she admitted that she had been messaging a guy she hooked up with during our break, and the brother of a good friend of mine, who was a friend himself. She told me it was nothing, and of course I fucking believed her.

It was around the time of our breakup that I started getting the first real feelings that I couldn’t handle what was going on inside my head. I didn’t deal with my problems and as a result, I have depression and its best friend, anxiety. When we broke up, it got really bad and she was the only person who I felt I could trust to help me when I was going through my lowest points. I still felt that I loved her. She was truly very helpful and wonderful. But it didn’t take long for that to stop. She thought depression was just people being weak. Which she actually mentioned before we ever dated, but I was smitten already and so I didn’t see the flag.

Anyway, after 3 months of this relationship limbo, she finally dumped me on my birthday. Yep, my fucking birthday. She said that we just weren’t working, but she seemed so fine about it. She told me that in the time that we were dating but not officially dating she had gotten over me. That I had hurt her so many times that she had already moved on and that she thought it was the right decision. She was right, but not about why.

I didn’t find out until much later, but less than a week after she had broken up with me, she hooked up with that friend of ours she had been messaging. It was during a night out in town, which I was absent from because I was obviously devastated about losing her. She’s still the only person in my whole life I have felt what I thought was genuine love. They went on to date for some time and I put the pieces together. She never let me be her boyfriend because she was stringing me along until she knew he was keen to go for it. That piece of shit was messaging her while I was blindly begging her to take me back. I confronted her about it and she made more bullshit excuses and said we weren’t dating so it was okay. I left it, what could I have said? Nothing, as usual. And after all of this, the worst part is still yet to come.

I tried not to spread a bad word about her, because I knew we were both awful for each other in the end and because no one will ever know how truly fucking terrible we were together, it wouldn’t be fair to give information out of a context anyone could understand. Especially when we were both doing such questionable things throughout the latter half of our relationship. But she went and told everyone that I cheated on her multiple times and that those emails were TO GUYS!! She said I was sending pictures of myself and that I was trying to meet up and have sex with these older men. She stooped to this level of total and complete disgrace and I will never. ever. forgive her for that. She still has the nerve to call me a fuckhead AND she STOLE MY IDEA OF MOVING TO VANCOUVER. So after that relationship, I was back to where I began: totally confused about what it means to love someone. I’ve had two girlfriends since her but I broke up with both of them because emotionally I haven’t felt like I could give anyone what it takes to have a healthy relationship. People say ‘I love you’ to me and I reciprocate, but every time I just know I have no idea what that means.

But you know, I’ve been going to this cafe with my Dad pretty regularly for like 2-3 years. And there’s this waitress who works there. She’s always lovely to us and says hello and will chat to me when I order and settle the bill etc. It’s weird because I know very little about her and she knows very little about me. We chat about our lives for like 30 seconds and then I leave. But I’ve been getting these strange feelings when I speak to her. It’s probably just a dumb crush, but what I take from it is that I am starting to feel like someone who can maybe be in a relationship again one day. I don’t think I could ask her out, I’ve never done that before. Besides, if she said no I could never go back to that cafe again and Dad likes it, so no thanks. But it’s nice you know! I dunno.

Also, in the last 9 months or so, I’ve really been appreciating what my family do and that maybe I do love them. My Mum and Dad have done heaps for me, and my brother. And they seem to only care that we are getting a good start in life, and that’s love I think; at least one type. And I think if I did date again, I might be able to say it and not feel like I was just saying it because they said it to me! So I suppose this last ramble is just a little piece of positivity because fuck me that story is depressing.

Finally, my Dad has a saying about shitty people in our lives. Because spending so much energy ruminating can be far more hurtful than it ever could be helpful. Instead, we just wish that one day, they have 10 kids, just like themselves.

And when I think about that, and everything I know about my ex,

I feel better.