to rants page.

There are a handful of names which cause me to wince when I hear them mentioned casually, if not throw a pall on my whole day. I've taken measures to reduce the likelihood of accidentally coming across their posts in my e-mail.

I've recently mentioned this in my livejournal. Past experience leads me to tense up, expecting to hear back from people (through a number of channels) how I'm being unreasonable, how they 'have no problem with me' and don't understand how I could possibly object to hearing from them. It's a very small world, and there are plenty of mutual acquaintences who may be repeatedly told that I'm being unreasonable, or paranoid.

A number of these mutual acquaintences have made it clear that they do not want too much information, that they are jealous of their right not to know. These are the very people who may well wish to believe that I'm being paranoid.

I tend not to say anything negative about someone that I have not had a chance to say to their face. Some of the following people have used this against me, by refusing to speak to me face to face, then spreading criticism they wouldn't voice to me, to mutual friends and, in some cases, to those near and dear to me.

*Plonk*

Randy

a.k.a. that bipolar bastard my M-I-L married. Bawled out Steve multiple times for spending time with my dying father rather than his mother. Threatened us. Is probably the person who called CPS.

Nestor

Blamed Steve, and later me, for all his wife's psychological problems. Very directly. What's curious is that, months before I had heard any mention of what was going on he let out with a fairly strong statement that he 'had to put up with that hypocritical shit in real life' and didn't find it fun to play with in a game. I had no idea what he was talking about until Steve told me what Melanie had been pulling. Yup. Steve and I caused it, fer sure. It's hard to wish ill at him, however. He's stuck with Melanie (the psychobitch from the land beyond hell).

Melanie

Started a series of conversations about her 'marital problems' with Steve, and had him promise not to tell me about them. He eventually told her he was not comfortable keeping that promise - that was the same conversation when he made it clear that he and she would not be having a sexual/psychosexual/sadomasochistic/whateverthehell relationship. (BTW: That was the conversation that started the rumor that he'd tried to 'force his attentions' on her.) She was apparently cool with that, but then she started making similar advances to me. As hard as it might be to believe, she was a *lot* more blatant about it than the accusations I've heard (second hand) that she leveled against Steve. Also, after she'd made it too damn uncomfortable for Steve to hang around in the gaming group, she asked me to promise (three times) that I wouldn't 'abandon' her the same way. Then she made it clear to other members of the gaming group that she really resented having me around, but that she was too nice to say anything about it. As far as I'm concerned, she spent about six months of putting effort into ruining my relationship with my husband, and with all our mutual friends. I wish I could forgive her, I'm really bored of all the anger and betrayal - but, even if I could, I wouldn't want anything to do with her.

Eh...

There are a number of other people from the old Saturday Night gaming group I don't particularly want anything to do with, mostly because, when it came down to it, they didn't stand up and say anything in my favor, and, either directly or indirectly, slammed me on those few occasions I got up the emotional energy to see what (if anything) could be salvaged of a friendship.

Ironically, Darren, who apparently gave a public apology for 'manipulating' everyone against me, is the one person from that group who made any effort to see that I came out of the chaos all right, or who made an effort to treat me with even a minimal standard of decency. He also came out and told me that he didn't like me, so I'm not about to waste any emotional energy on him, but, hey, at least he was honest.

2 June 2004- Removed one person from the killfile list, for the worst reason imaginable. Sie dropped dead. This is NOT the ideal solution, but, as with the others on the list, there was never any clue that any other resolution would be possible.

10 July 2003- Removed one person from the killfile list. An actual discussion was had, at least, a very strong start towards getting back to dealing with each other.

5 July 2003- added people who I still won't deal with, from an earlier psychodrama. Not on the first draft because I am far less likely to come across them unexpectedly.