Niall’s virtual diary archives – Wednesday 22nd August 2007

Wednesday 22nd August 2007: 2.10pm. I've just upgraded the website's PHP to considerably improve the speed of accessing this website. Due to the web counter at the top of each page, hitherto each and every HTML page fetched from nedprod wasn't cacheable which meant it was being refetched each and every time, plus because the web browser didn't know how long the page was, it had to assume it was very long (and thus it can hold back on showing it to you early). This rather increased bandwidth usage, such that over two thirds of the bandwidth used is purely from HTML. This simple fix (which I should have done ages ago) also adds compression for pages of any reasonable size (eg; this front page) and it makes using nedprod via a dialup modem very significantly easier indeed. It also means various caching systems which ISP's etc use now work as they should.

Things moved rather quickly after the last entry, but well what else did you possibly expect given it's me? The following Monday I did indeed go for lunch at hers and we ate a fine hand-made lasagne she had prepared - which was the first time she's ever prepared anything for me alone. We sat outside her house on the grass in Fife Park afterwards for a dessert of grapes, and while there she was talking about how she kept wanting to just go out with me already, that she woke up some mornings and had decided to definitely go do it, and within a few hours fear & doubt would set in and her will would evaporate. She had been just as physically affected by my attempts to end things as I had, and I pointed out that surely given the ever-increasing mountains of evidence that she had to finally accept that she actually was in love with me, had been for well over a year, and furthermore was more in love with me than anyone she had ever been in love with. As loathe as she is to admit it, it was because she was so much in love with me that she has done all the fucked up things she has done - and she started those fucked up things exactly at the same time she fell in love with me. I had been trying to get her to accept this for oh about fourteen months now, but she has major difficulty in accepting that it is possible to so maltreat someone you are so in love with.

Indeed, she had hitherto just assumed that I had been trying to convince her that she really felt this way out of my own sense of ego, to create some sort of dependency and to use or take advantage of her in some kind of way. And I can see (and did see) her point, that sure I was making this all me-orientated and absolutely, I'm really not "all that" or some sort of God's gift to women. However, all that said, there is a definite correlation between relations between us and her reacting at a deep subconscious level by performing some horrendous self-destructive act upon herself. Even within seven days of me asking her out, she had gone off and done several pretty stupid things and she hadn't done any stupid things at all since Easter break when she and I had become reconciled after six months of ostracisation. As a gross over-simplification, when she and I were okay, she was nice to herself. When something that she perceived as bad happened between us, she harmed herself. And that had been a predictable constant for eighteen months now - indeed it was even a constant last October because I deliberately delayed cutting her off fully till the start of December because I knew she would go do something especially bad to herself in response (which indeed she did).

It also helped that her best friend had told her that of course she was obviously in love with me and had been for over a year. So, despite her disgust at the idea, she decided especially after her profound physical & mental reaction the previous weekend to stop denying reality. I joked at her "So go on then, you ask me out!" and to my very great surprise, that's exactly what she did.

That rather floored me, because she actually seemed genuine. I decided not to answer immediately, but told her that if she still asked the same question next time I saw her (which would be in a few days as she was going to Edinburgh), then I would say yes - but not to worry if she retracted, because there would be no point in us going out unless she really wanted to across many days - she had to commit.

Unbeknownst to me, she spent the next few days in Edinburgh meeting up with ex-boyfriends and prospective boyfriends and putting her house in order to go into a long-term relationship. I had no idea at the time and heard nothing from her. Thus came Thursday night when I had still heard nothing, so I figured fine she's going to retract the question, I was very horny, so arse to being celibate & waiting for her and so I shagged a close friend of mine. I sent her a text the following morning saying simply "So?" and was expecting the usual crap & excuses - not that I was proud of myself mind, but I had considered my weakness as merely preemptive.

Yeah ... well ... that didn't quite happen. We met up in Aikman's Friday night, and I firstly humbly told her about my bad behaviour the previous night and said that I fully understood if she told me to go fuck myself because as her friend I had to say that my behaviour was appalling and I recommended that she dump my ass before she even began. She then told me that she had shagged two people for not the right reasons within a week of me asking her out after a long period of celibacy (which I suggested was not helped by my nasty text on the Friday after asking her out), so she was no one to speak either. And so she asked me to go out with her again, to which I said "Yes please!". Yay!

Which means I can finally dispense with the M- and call her by her real name, which is Megan (yeah, she's American)! Now, I know that pretty much everyone I take advice from seriously has strongly advised me to never, ever, ever, go near Megan with a bargepole. This diary entry almost certainly will prompt vast numbers of concerned emails along the lines of "I told you to not do this, and when it goes tits up, I am going to say I told you so". Indeed, those I have already told have so far uniformly reacted from negatively to in the case of my dear sister, extremely negatively. I don't think one single person so far is on balance positive, and I'm not expecting one single mostly positive viewpoint to be truthful.

Yes, I know she pathologically lies to me and herself and indeed anyone else she cares about. Yes, she has hurt me more than anyone in this world except Ruth and yes just her and Ruth are in a league of their own far, far exceeding anyone else alive. Yes, only three months ago she with her compadres tried to destroy me and they came close to succeeding. Until very very recently, she has been consistently the worst friend I have ever had, to a fault she has continually failed to ever be there for me, to do anything for me, or even to defend me when others were spreading maliciousness about me - indeed, she herself has repeatedly unfairly painted me in the worst possible light to her friends and others - and I only caught her doing it again only last Friday. She has repeatedly gone out of her way to be as backstabbing & unsupportive to me as possible for at least eighteen months, ever since I confronted her outside Andrew Melville about how she was letting down her friends some two weeks before Easter break 2006 (in response to which I wrote this article for her on how I stopped being mad).

I do know all this! It is me after all who has taking all this shit for all this time. And yes, I know this looks like a case of Stockholm Syndrome, that both she and I are engaging in an unhealthy limerence not love, and that this is a classic case of Capture-Bonding where two people who have abused each other severely over an extended period develop an unhealthy & obsessive emotional bond which is just guaranteed to end in disaster. I am well aware that it could be that she has only been giving out "small kindnesses" during this summer solely through panic at the idea of losing her abuser/abusee (this is a really depressing article on the topic) because she was about to get cut off. I am more than fully aware that all of the bad things she still does to me are likely to continue, that especially once her friends start digging into her about her treachery that she'll probably go off and do all sorts of wicked things which will hurt me (and herself) severely, and that this (rationally speaking) is probably the single worst decision I have ever taken - even exceeding my decision to move to Spain to be with Ruth.

And maybe it will end in total disaster. In which case all of you can happily tell me that you told me so, though I'll probably be in too severe a mess to handle it. However I think it won't end in disaster, though I agree that it could end in disaster. I know I'm the only person I know to think so positively with the possible exception of Megan herself who has been unusually positive recently - I think it's genuine rather than repression or denial, I think she likes the feeling of having taken control of her life and done something positive for once - I am the first person she has ever asked out (who she hadn't just broken up with), and given her typical behaviour of running away from everything than means anything positive to her, that's a really big thing for her. I personally am very proud of her - even a month ago she reacted to me asking her out by trying to begin a relationship with someone else, but in as little as a month has undone that act of avoidance - so that's another major step forwards. As I have said ad nauseum in previous entries here, she keeps making an incremental improvement: each week, she is better than the previous week. Furthermore, her rate of self-improvement is clearly compound increasing, so her incremental improvement is speeding up exponentially. As she herself says, she's really not quite sure how or why this is happening, but she thinks she likes it. I know I can't live without her, so hell, let's try the opposite of cutting her off completely and see what happens!

For sure, it's fun & easy & comfortable until people start arriving back - and certainly things have gone vastly better last five days than I or she had been expecting, especially in the bed department - only a matter of weeks ago, me getting too physically close filled her with disgust. She heads home around the 6th September, so we basically have it easy until then. Once she comes back, then it gets rapidly more tricky as the semester progresses. How do I stay over at her house when it is filled with people who want me destroyed? How can I socialise around her friends without causing major upset and ruining the atmosphere? How will she cope with the unyielding wall of lies & misinformation that will be spread around to try and break us up, or at best to cause massive arguments and infidelity? How do I combine having no part to play in what is to come for that group with loving & supporting Megan? There are even simpler issues: I am uncomfortable with the idea of shagging Megan with Johanna next door. You might think that a bit stupid or something, but remember I am just as in love with Johanna as I've ever been and the same goes in return (in my opinion). I'm sure Johanna has absolutely no problem with it - I would have no issue with her shagging her boyfriend next door - but I do have an issue when it's me. So even these very simple issues are immensely complicated - so where does one even begin?

Well, I have no idea. It's going to be horrendously difficult with absolutely no clear answers to anything. It seems like a tremendous amount of hassle & pain - it will certainly make for lurid diary entries! But I'll tell you something - going out with Megan makes me very happy indeed - I've wanted it for well over a year, I've invested a tremendous amount of effort to get it, and now I've got it. And seeing her last few days, well she looks happier than I have seen her since first year - she's just ecstatically happy despite knowing all the problems I've just outlined (and many far more serious I can't mention here in public). Both of us are just tickled pink. And I have faith that things are going to pan out - it's totally, 100% irrational. There is no basis whatsoever to have even the remotest optimism at a rational level - the entire situation is completely & totally fubared.

So okay, if you'd like to send your emails telling me how terrible an idea this is, or sit & fume quietly at how I'm not listening to your advice, well I can certainly understand. If any of you ignored my advice like this, I'd go ballistic. Yes, this is me being totally & utterly hypocritical once again - yet again, it's all "do as I say not as I do". I am actually really sorry about that - I know how much I've upset certain people with this decision, I have obviously caused them pain. I do appreciate your advice, and I am listening - it's just I am following my instincts and doing the opposite this one time only. You've got to follow your heart in the end, even if it leads straight to hell. Hey, I've been there, done that with Ruth - I survived, so even if it goes completely tits up with Megan, I should hopefully survive it.

I'll get back to you - in the meantime, be happy!