- Joined
- Jul 22, 2015
Yes, but that also comes with a lot of background. The short version is that I'm neurologically impaired and she utterly refused to acknowledge, understand, co-operate etc either before or during the visit the things I needed to do to make the whole thing work. Despite being proud of her own 'neurodiversity' she absolutely refused to engage with me in any way that could have helped me or even merely allowed me to basically function and therefore make a nice experience for her. When we argued about it later, she wiped the months and months before the trip I'd spent trying to plan ahead and desperately trying to get her to cooperate and understand what I needed so I could work around my impairments completely from her mind. It Was All My Fault Because I Can't Communicate.In what way? Was she a different person IRL?
I partially expected an ego problem. I had a slight inkling that she might have trouble making decisions. I wasn't expecting full blown Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I mean, I've lived with people who had extreme fixations on order and cleanliness and making sure that random objects were in perfect colour order and right angle alignment, but she blew them out of the water. I've never seen anything like it before or since and it was horrifying. She couldn't make basic decisions, literally, because 'she might make the wrong one'. Getting her to chose between two fucking cafes for lunch was a chore. She'd spend fifteen fucking minutes walking back and forth between the two, back and forth, reading and rereading the menus until she could finally pick one and then she was a wreck until the food came. She had to stack books in perfect order, couldn't decide what animals next to visit at the zoo... a nightmare.
And that NPD I mentioned? It gets really fucking aggravating being treated like some 90 point IQ loser by a self diagnosed genius who needs her hand held to cross the fucking road. She had a Master's in English lit and was convinced that she was the smartest person to ever walk the earth. I couldn't tell her anything, because she was so smart that if she didn't already know it, it wasn't worth knowing. She was more cultured, had travelled more, read more, seen the most movies, eaten all the food... you get the drift. But if you asked her what the difference was between a spectrophotomer and chromotograph she'd rip into for talking to her that way, in such cold and clinical terms and with such disrespect, how dare you?
She was INTENSE. And whenever there was a quiet moment she'd whip out her Terrible Childhood and beat me with it. It was dreadful. The timing of her visit was not her fault, but she'd arrived after some pretty horrible things had happened to me, and not to put too fine a point on it, I was a wreck. Mentally, emotionally... financially, professionally... FUBAR. Hell, even my mother had just been hospitalised the day before she arrived. My mother was released halfway through my friend's visit. My friend waited a day, and that's when the Terrible Childhood started. I finally thought that I could drag myself out of a seriously deep depression and start enjoying my friend's company...oh hell no. Because now it was my duty to provide 'support'. She'd wait until I relaxed, cracked a smile, and then she'd say things utterly out of the blue like, "My parents used to slam drawers on my fingers," and then give me this creepy, open mouthed, bug eyed stare. I had no idea what she wanted from me. Of course, in retrospect, I was supposed to throw my arms around her and tell her how amazing she was. At the time, in my severely depressed state, I was only able to cringe into myself and slink away to cry.
This was about fifteen, twenty years ago.
She was a graduate from Berkley, and was basically a full blown 2022 Twitter SJW, right down to being, "gender queer". Apparently she saw a therapist every week and had done for years. I have never seen anyone with her degree of malfunction since and I sincerely hope to never do so again.