2025.11.02

What does it mean to "become interesting?" Well, if you like, you can see for yourself what I was going for. This is when when my CSS obsession began. My first (functional) site is still online, as is the sequel it would shortly grow into. Pretty art, nonsense titles, and poetic turns of phrase... Whimsicality sustained my life in a world where dying was no longer an option. Of course, I continued to believe then, and still sort of believe now, that I have no right to my own life. I should die or just not exist at all. But if I can't do the one thing I have to do... then I need to apologise for my existence.

Being "interesting" is an apology, as is being "useful," "skinny," "smart," or "good." I enrolled in university, desperate to get my life back on track. Part of me wanted to completely submit to others because that's what I was used to. Numb myself. Hide my feelings, needs, and opinions. Become a tool for others to use, a mirror that reflected their desires and nothing else. Another part of me wanted to be an anime villain. See, it would be more "interesting" to only feign submission, while actually pulling all the strings behind the scenes! I read some of The 48 Laws of Power and The Art of War, excited to transform into a chessmaster manipulator who could never be hurt by anyone again. Mwahahaha!

It did not work. Not even a little bit. Not only did I never finish the books, the second I'm in a conversation, manipulation from either party is the last thing on my mind. I have too much empathy. I'm too gullible. Don't forget, my abysmally low self-esteem is entertwined with a literal death wish, so it's probably "better" for me to suffer, too. Five years have passed and I'm still learning how to close my heart to people who hurt me. Somehow, despite where this story is going, I don't regret the times I stubbornly kept it open, no matter the damage done to me in turn.

Getting away from my brother's basement miasma made it easier to evaluate our relationship. Now that thoughts of him weren't interrupted by danger signals ("he could come upstairs and hurt you!"), I wondered, was it really that bad? Did I actually misunderstand him? Was it my fault? I remembered that I'd already forgiven him for sexual advances he made when I was a child. It was him calling me a liar, snubbing me, and dividing our family that still hurt. I decided to forgive him for that, too.

Why? Because forgiveness is good for the soul. It's forgetting that gets you in trouble— ignoring, denying, minimising. He's the one who introduced me to those survival mechanisms. For concision's sake, I've skipped over a lot of events and relationships on the periphery of my brother's abuse and its consequences. Just know that, at virtually every point on my timeline, someone has been exploiting and mistreating me, the most notable being my first and only serious, adult relationship. We met on an anorexia forum. Enter: Twelve.

At the time, I thought it romantic when Twelve promised that if we ever broke up, she would "stalk me until she found someone new." She also enjoyed discussing past relationships with her current partner. She would start by demonising the last girl for "suddenly leaving for no discernible reason." With time, she'd switch to bragging about abusing her, expecting your pity, forgiveness, and admiration because Twelve is just sooooo much better now, she's really matured! So, if she's not dead, she'll be reading this with her latest victim. For everyone's sake, including her own, I hope she's fucking dead LOL.

But it's not fear that's kept me quiet about her for so long. As with my brother, it's shame! With a dash of guilt, too. In a self-described "serious adult relationship," I have ten times more culpability than a family dynamic I was born into. So, up front, I'm taking responsibility for being desperate and naive, for alienating the people who actually love me, and spending a couple years convinced that my soulmate was a dog-kicking smack addict.

I liked Twelve because she was tall, butch, and serious about suicide. Though it was no longer an option for me personally, I was something of a "suicide elitist." I respected people who carefully considered their plans, possessed extensive knowledge about various methods, and held strong convictions about antinatalism or euthanasia. This is the worst possible benchmark for a person's character or conversational value. But just like any other abuser, she hit me with the "OMG, you're just like me!" We'd be together forever because nobody else was on our wavelength! We did have some normal interests in common, too, I guess, like anime and Tumblr. I thought she was funny, charismatic, and smart.

Most importantly, I pitied her. In one of our first conversations, she confessed she planned to die soon. The elitist in me approved and understood. We were never meant to date for two years— I was only there to keep her company for three months. But Twelve's bucket list consisted entirely of trying hard drugs and, the summer she was meant to die, she fell so in love with heroin that it became her main reason for living.

It's hard to say where I, her girlfriend, soulmate, and (ringless!) fiancée, fit on that hierarchy. Second to drugs when she needed drug money, for sure. Probably not on the list at all otherwise. Sometimes she would sweet talk me before asking for money. Other times she would just demand I give it to her, maybe with an empty promise to pay me back. I gave her whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it, because that's what she trained me to do. Really, I only needed to learn her individual quirks and triggers. The rest I'd already mastered in other toxic relationships. The way she laughed at my expense, dismissed my feelings, obsessed over my smallest mistakes... That was just business as usual.

I liked Twelve because she promised the opposite— they always do. She said she loved me. She was sure that fate had brought us together. She would always, always be on my side. The lovebombing and lies are so obvious to me now, but I believed her back then. No one had ever doused me in so many compliments so quickly, or threaded them between mental health crises, sudden threats to leave, and other volatile events that left me completely destabilised.

Shortly after meeting, Twelve told me to get away from her. "I'm a bad person. I'll only drag you down."

And you know what? She was right! Every time I repeat the advice, "when people tell on themselves, listen," I have this conversation in mind. If only I'd taken her at face value— maybe I could have shacked up with a different abuser, someone with a less expensive "hobby." (Or maybe stumbled into a good relationship? Haha, fat chance.)

Instead, I fell for the guilt trip. "No way, you're not bad! I'm not going anywhere."

In her position, it's exactly what I would have wanted to hear. Is it so unreasonable to give out the attention we hope to receive? With Twelve— with everyone!— my love has been warm, effusive, unconditional. When in return she controlled, tormented, and neglected me, I figured... she just needed more love! More gifts. More forgiveness. More acquiesence. More time to herself, fewer requests from me. After all, she had a hard life: difficult parents, no friends, no hobbies, her plug went to jail for cross-border cocaine smuggling.... Of course she was angry and stressed! Why not take it out on me?

The sentiment twisted into, "even if you're bad, I love you, I understand you, so I don't care."

My empathy is not the problem— in fact, it's the most precious part of me. So precious that I endanger myself by giving it away too freely. There are people in this world who shun gratitude and reciprocity. To them, my generosity, my deep emotions, my very life force— they're just resources to deplete. It doesn't matter how much I do. It doesn't matter how hard I try. Nothing is ever enough, and instead of relenting when they've sucked me dry, they'll punish me for being drained. They promise that they're helping me. They insist that, in this cruel world, we only have each other, so I'm definitely, definitely not allowed to leave. For the longest I mistook this for love, but it was only ever codepedency.

What's codependency? Besides "the story of my life," we might define it as "a dysfunctional relationship dynamic where one person sacrifices their own needs and well-being for the sake of the other." The keyword here is sacrifice. I define that as an irrecoverable loss. Giving away so much of yourself that you become unrecognisable. Compromising your morals. Abandoning your hobbies and healthy habits. Taking on labels just because they're assigned to you.

With Twelve, I was ready to throw away my life. Her put-downs, outbursts, lies, and mixed messages eroded my will to live. She complained about dying alone until I agreed to a suicide pact, which she then called off and reinstated as her commitment to getting high waxed and waned. Back then, I didn't see a crazy, unreasonable person dragging me into her misery. I only saw her loneliness, her sorrow, and wanted to help. She called me useless, anyways, and stupid, and cunt, and convinced me no one else would ever put up with me. If I'm nothing without her, why stick around after she's gone? And once we're dead, the insults, the threats, the nights spent begging for mercy from someone who's supposed to love me... finally, we'd both find peace.

Nobody knew about our plans. Hell, nobody knew about the abuse. Codependency thrives in secrecy because every sane person tells you to leave. People are horrified when you reveal how things actually are, and I couldn't stand to ruin the pretty picture I'd painted of our "romance." I wanted to spare my real supporters, yes, and protect my abuser, too, but the most important person to shield from reality was myself. When we met, she promised to protect me, to treat me gently. I never stopped wanting that. Prolonged mistreatment both distorted my judgement and skyrocketed my desperation for care.

I thought that offering my life would open her eyes to my deep devotion. I remained blind to the truth that nobody who loves you will ask you to die.

With my heart torn between my obedience to Twelve, my poor opinion of myself, and my self-preservation instincts, I started researching factual argumemts for and against suicide. Is life worth it when there's, uh, y'know— climate change? Economic "reseshun?" When the antinatalists say there's no positive equivalent to trauma?

I admit, my research didn't go very far. I admit I didn't actually want to die. Why should I, when my life was finally changing for the better? My studies were going well. I'd just started a new job. My coworkers and classmates all liked me, and I loved walking to and from the train station, even when my commute started before dawn. I loved feeling for the first time in my life like an adult, a human being, a person who goes places with purpose.

Looking back, I'm sure the reinstatement of the suicide pact was a response to my growing independence. The longer I lived in the real world, the more I pushed her to live there, too. To get her shit together. To marry me. To become the person she introduced herself as. I longed for the spirited and kindhearted version of her, the one who appeared in glimpses and vanished again, like a dream you forget when you wake up.

In the waking world, she abused her pets. She cheated on me (WITH A MAN!) and bragged about the affair. As I laid in bed beside her, she said that she would love to stab me if only there was something sharp enough. She confessed fantasies of bashing my head with a cinderblock. She ripped up gifts before she ever gave them to me. And when I begged her to stop hurting me, to stop lying to me, to please, please care about our relationship, she said, "y'know what? Let's just die."

And I said, "okay." I knew what would happen if I said anything else.

At this pivotal moment in my life, I just so happened to reconnect with my brother. For his birthday, I sent him a card wherein I apologised for "my schizo handwriting," promised that I "wasn't a leftist anymore," and said we could be friends again, if he wanted. Yes, really. I signalled to my walking 4Chan-stereotype failbrother that I was, in fact, a cool girl now. It is so pathetic that I have to laugh, but hey... it worked!

Mom and I had Thanksgiving at her place. My brother refused to eat with us, but after dinner I ventured down into his basement to chat. I couldn't stop smiling as I settled into a rickety old chair across from his seat on the couch. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands loosely held, and said HE forgave ME for, y'know... all that.

"You were just a kid," he said. "You didn't know what you were doing. It's not a big deal."

My brother had not spoken to me, looked at me, or acknowledged my existence in four years. My relief steamrolled over my confusion. Did it matter that I had no idea what he was talking about? I was glad to be talking at all! In retrospect, I see him taking advantage of the most insidious and most addictive phase in the abuse cycle: reconciliation. Backwards as his apology may have been, it marked the end of his destructive behaviour and promised a new era of peace. If he truly believed I was at fault, well, I knew I wasn't doing anything to jeapordise our relationship. Everything should be fine now!

Right on time, too, because I needed advice about my dumbass suicide pact and evil junkie GF, but I was too ashamed to confide in the people I actually respected. To everyone else, Twelve was a normal young woman who loved me unconditionally and aspired to be a nurse. We'd get married, live together, be real adults, really in love! Because he'd been snubbing me, my brother had been spared these lies. He was the first person to hear the truth.

He said something like, "first of all, climate change isn't real. Secondly, this person is abusing you."

He asked me to consider what I had sacrificed for Twelve and what it had gotten me. I already knew that she was mistreating me— it was practically an inside joke. She'd send me online checklists that ask, "are you being abused?" And we'd laughed at the way our relationship ticked every box. But now I was wondering, is it worth it? To trade my one and only life for, I dunno... maybe a compliment, depending on Twelve's (highly volatile) mood?

So I told her I didn't want to die. Predictably, she exploded. She said I never loved her. She called me a liar, a sped, worthless, a waste of time. She said she hated me and would never forgive me. She promised to make me suffer until death would be a mercy. Then she texted me a bunch of gore. So... yeah.

That was the last time we spoke. I'm lucky to have lived so far away from her. Otherwise I'm certain the physical abuse would have escalated beyond threats and destroyed property to stalking and assault, maybe even drug-crazed murder. I'm lucky to have people in my life who really do love and protect me. I'm lucky to live in a world where survivors speak out against abuse, and explain its patterns and effects in detail. I'm lucky to have had this experience at all. Don't get me wrong: it was miserable! But life lessons are learned the hard way. I needed to suffer so when I say, "never again," I actually mean it.

After this, I added my brother to my list of "protective" people, though maybe not loving. I was put off by his backwards apology and other bizzare, offensive things he said hopefully in jest, and I'd never come to truly respect or trust him, but he'd saved my life, hadn't he? I was indebted to him, wasn't I? Despite everything, I'm grateful he was there for me when I needed someone. We texted. We joked. Over the course of a year, our relationship improved enough that I was willing to live in the same house again, where I quickly ended up as his live-in therapist.

I am weak to pathetic people. When he came to my room, despondent about life, ashamed of himself, I took a deep breath. "We just have to talk about it. We have to talk about the incest."

What followed was probably the most exhilerating conversation of my life! My brother came clean about everything: unfairly expecting sex from me, calling me a liar to avoid punishment, making me unwelcome in our home, treating me like a ghost, pretending to be the victim graciously extending his forgiveness. He said that what he'd done to me, on a list of his top ten regrets in life, was "number zero." Every single day, he felt like the most despicable person on the planet. He had plenty of reasons to feel suicidal, but this was the unforgivable kind of sin. Only in death could he atone.

"But I've always loved you," I said. "I tried to stop, but I couldn't. I'm, like, biologically wired to love you just because you're my brother. There's nothing you can do to change that."

And so we both cried. I'd already forgiven him all those years ago. Remember that plate of oatmeal cookies? Apparently the sight of it made him viscerally angry and ashamed. He threw them away without eating them. That night, he decided to double-down on the stupid-annoying-making-it-up sister narrative that destroyed my life. He repeated again and again that it had destroyed his life as well, that he'd take it all back if he could. I forgave him every time.

We talked for hours and hours, meandering through different topics. For a few precious moments, I had the chance to explain what my psychosis is like. I told him the sexual abuse started it all. He said, "I'm really sorry. I had no idea," or something like that. I wanted to tell him more. I wanted him to know I lived in constant fear of his attacks. I wanted him to tell me the truth— that I was not paranoid, that if he thought he could get away with it, he would have done it. I wanted to ask, "why me?" forcing him to admit that it was never my fault, that he was just a loser addicted to incest porn.

I was going to tell him that growing up criticised and exploited by him had primed me for a lifetime of abuse. I wanted him to know that Twelve yelled at me like he did, insulted me with the same words he used. Because of him, I was always trusting bad people, prioritising bad relationships, letting people hurt me if I thought it was helping them. Because of him, I have walked through the world as if I am stupid, ugly, worthless, totally undeserving of anything good. Because he hated me, objectified me, and delighted in my misery, I have suffered and suffered and suffered and I wanted him to know.

I never got to tell him. Talking about the incest quickly turned into talking about my poor, misunderstood brother who had been forced to lie, to make me the liar, because the truth reflected poorly on him. Oh, woe is he at the whims of his natural sexuality! He wanted sex from me because all men are paedophiles, actually! When I said that did not make it acceptable to abuse any child ever, he changed the subject... and I let him. He whinged about his regrets and I forgave him. He joked that it was my fault— just remember what I was wearing!— and I laughed. We said we loved each other and always would.

Eventually mom came home and found us chumming it up. She was disturbed by the sudden change in our relationship. She said we should stay away from each other. I insisted everything was fine. How could it not be fine?! He'd finally told me the truth, he'd finally apologised the right way around, I'd finally laid the blame for my mental illness where it belonged! So what if there was more to say that he was constantly talking over... I'd just tell him tomorrow.

The "tomorrow where I tell him" never came. Just a few more "trying and failing to rape your sister makes life suck" tomorrows before we moved on entirely. I pretended it didn't matter. I congratulated myself for confronting him at all. Now that we'd cleared the air, I let him in on my life, my relationships, my stories, my obsession with Sans Undertale. I wasn't a therapist-friend anymore. We were just friends. We started hugging again, the kind where he'd pick me up and carry me around just for the laughs. We hadn't done that since I was a kid, when he was first propositioning me. I chose to see it as innocently as I had seen it back then.

I chose wrong.

CONTINUE