R91 Goodnough should be talking to a therapist, not blogging. When first reading last night's posting, I seriously wondered if he was in danger of physical self-harm, until I got to the end where he is asking for people to buy subscriptions to his Substack, even though he's not been able to write regularly because of the chaos of his life/feelings.
He used to write short barbs against Trump on Twitter during his first term that were worth reading but haven't bothered reading any of his recent writings until now.
He got so caught up with the idea of dating a celebrity and how it elevated his life that my guess it was the loss of proximity to fame he's missing, more than Val herself. I think he had his/their life all planned out and now that dream has been destroyed.
I'm certain it is Val he is referring to here (about halfway down his lengthy chest beating confessional).
----------
"And a pummeling that had me already feeling battered by last August, I can’t even talk about it.
Not really.
Not in any real way.
I can’t even explain why I can’t talk about it.
I can’t even tell my own story.
All I can do is say something vague and leave it at that.
In February, I didn’t have a breakdown. I suffered the last blows of what had been a long beatdown. I had been getting the shit kicked out of me for a very long time. It had often taken place in public but in a way that the audience would not detect.
It had happened in plain sight... and nobody had seen a thing… and that had been entirely by design.
Over a span of months, someone treated me with such abject cruelty, it felt like torture. In February, they told me – flatly and without apology - that their battering treatment: 1) had been on purpose and meant to hurt me; 2) had given them satisfaction; 3) had been driven by something they had only imagined; and 4) had only stopped when they saw how entirely shattered I was and realized… I had just loved them the whole time… and they had been brutally horrible to me… for no reason at all.
I hadn’t done anything at all. I hadn’t deserved any of it.
A human being had gotten to a place where they: 1) developed an entirely imagined, false belief about someone; 2) maintained an active malice based on that false belief for months; 3) acted upon it over and over to hurt that person on purpose; and then 4) watched that person suffer, twist, stop writing, lose a quarter of their income - and tell them so…
and they still kept on treating them that way… for no reason. Over myth in their mind… which was driven by their own insecurities.
A week after this person told me all of that, they did something even worse but with the same formula. They imagined a nonexistent slight; acted to hurt me as badly as possible on purpose; and did it for no actual reason at all.
There are a number of reasons why I can’t say more – or won’t.
Very high among them: an empathy and compassion for someone who has none for me.
This person openly told me that caring about how they hurt me feels bad while hurting me more actually makes them feel better.
I have compassion for them anyway.
So much so, that I have kept the way they treated me and the things they did a secret.
They’ve demonstrated no remorse. They’ve displayed no conscience about their behavior. They’ve angled for sympathy from the very same audience they manipulated into unwittingly applauding things that were actually malicious public knifings intended to hurt someone in front of an audience. They’ve shown nothing resembling a stirring of regret.
I have compassion for them anyway.
I got the absolute shit beat out of me by someone who fully admitted to having treated me that way."
----------
(It goes on and on and on from there.)
