Spent Gladiator

I'm on the train and a woman is chewing her dad out. The essence of the argument is that he is too set in his ways and shouts when he doesn't get his way. She, guarded, but unemotional in her speech, laying out her greivances and he is...unresponsive and proud. Underneath her measured tone is a lot of hurt and frustration, of someone desperately wanting to be heard.

I got my 5% raise! This is a nice, actually above inflation (though it's a bit of a wonky one because it doesn't track for overall price change (mutter, mutter, life is hard)) so that is cool. My rent is also going up 5% so all things are perfectly balanced lmao.

I was going to submit to this literary critique that had a deadline today and my friend who works as a writer in a tabletop company offered to critique a week ago ahead of the deadline. But I've heard nothing so I decided to submit since it's at 5pm and I don't have any time to check ahead of MCR since we'll be going to the concert around then.

It was Father's Day yesterday and it's the first time in forever that I hadn't sent him a message. I did think late in the day but it eventually slipped my mind. Because, over time, he has shown less and less of an interest with me and my brother. Interestingly, my sister, the eldest, also has not been in contact with him for a while too. See, my brother and I had got it into our heads that she was the chosen one in the sense that she got preferential treatment and attention as that's how Dad spoke but she revealed to my brother that she hadn't spoken to him in years either.

So the friend who made her hatred of my GF my own decided to stop being friends with me. I was devastated initially because 1.) my GF wasn't really involved in the initial conversation or disagreement and 2.) despite my best efforts of explaining very clearly that the way they were handling it was upsetting me, she never relented. And so, what had started as a tirade about her hating my GF and saying my GF hates my friends too (unsubstantiated, ultimately false).

I'm getting rinsed for having such a Spartan flat but I am a permanent member of the Guild of Low Funds. There are so many cool prints and artists I want to support but I have to eke out buying things over a number of months. I need frames too.

It's irrational but sometimes when random bits of drama like all this nonsense surfaces I do think that I must be some awful person. I move cities and the friendship group sunders. I got a girlfriend and my friend dislikes—no, hates*— her and so it must be me. But that's how I've conditioned myself to think. My happiness is conditional. Everyone has to come to the table. But the truth is my life and happiness fundamentally must be my own for it to actually mean anything. Even if it means losing people. But if people can't get on board with that, then that's their problem. No one else gets a say in what my happiness looks like.