Aaron,
If you want to stay friends with me, you have to figure your temper out. You say all the time you'd rather be asked for help than have me break something, but it's always a coin toss every time if I'm going to get chill Aaron or randomly!angry!Aaron, and I'm discovering that eight months is about the limit on this for me, even for someone I otherwise like.
Do not mistake my chill and patient vibes for someone who will never bite if pushed for long enough. I have had more than enough angry assholes in my life. I'm done. Do better, or I'll know that being buddies with me is worth absolutely fuck-all to you, and I will absolutely act accordingly.
You may be asking yourself right now, "What the hell is this about?"
This is about a lot of incidents, each stacked on top of the last, and yesterday was just the latest bullshit. I didn't notice something you deemed obvious? I said thanks and went to get the right tool. That could have been the whole story, we asked you for help, you helped. Go away. You didn't have to stand there and berate me and try to turn it into a fight for you to "win". I am not stupid.
"Wait, other incidents?"
So, while I'm at it, I never want your fucking opinion on my health again. No "well I guess you should just kill yourself" to try to "win" a conversation because there isn't a job in all existence that won't cause me pain. No "my 70 year old retired neighbor who doesn't have an incurable cocktail of fibromyalgia and lupus, and isn't riddled with old injuries from a lifetime of being ground under the heels of angry assholes shoveled his whole driveway just fine!"
Again, I am not stupid. Do you think this shit flies over my fucking head? I am a goddamned writer, Aaron. I may stumble over words when I have to form them with my fucking clumsy flesh mouth and push past all the PTSD brain fog in real-time, but I fully understand how words work. For fuck's sake.
Here's a bit of wisdom that everyone with a temper really needs to learn:
The axe forgets, but the tree remembers.
You can be shitty to me, walk away, and go on with your life, and even be cheerful and act like nothing happened 10 minutes later. Because hey, to you maybe nothing did! That's great, good for you!
But I remember.
It still affects me.
Stop fucking chopping.
No answer to this required. If you stop, great. If you don't, that will be my answer. I'm not interested in anything else.
Also, side note time! Because this is a big reason I left at 4pm today!
Threatening to make me listen to hate speech at work "to make a point" the other day? You do not know enough about transgender issues to go there. It's not the same as someone briefly putting on music you don't like. I would have to stand there and listen to a bunch of loud, ignorant assholes talk about how I am wrong and terrible for existing, that my kind are dangerous to children, that I'm sick in the head and shouldn't be allowed to do whatever I want to my own body, or to exist at all, which has zero impact on any of them or their lives -- and look around, and wonder how many of the proud Republicans I work with agree with all of that. If you can't see how that's different than a taste in music...
It's not beyond the scope of my pitiful comprehension that you only started switching talk radio shit on after you threatened to make me listen to conservative talk radio.
"This isn't conservative talk radio!"
I know. That's the only reason I haven't done anything about it yet. But being centrist doesn't make it safe, you never know when someone is going to go off on a tangent, and I never even know if it's the centrist station (which again, isn't even safe) or if something else has been put on. So, I'm the one who has to be on guard waiting for them to start spewing hate speech about people like me for daring to exist. You get to be comfortable and safe when you listen to this shit, I don't get that luxury. All of us rolling our eyes and groaning at the same ten songs on the radio all day is such small potatoes, it's like griping about weather and traffic. Who the fuck actually cares.
At least the pickle man isn't going to go HOOO! MEN WHO THINK THEY'RE WOMEN ARE CRAZY AND I REFUSE TO EDUCATE MYSELF ON ANYTHING THAT DOESN'T IMPACT ME DIRECTLY WHICH IS THE VERY DEFINITION OF PRIVILEGE, HOOOOOO! I THINK TRANS PEOPLE WANT TO SNEAK INTO BATHROOMS AND DO TERRIBLE THINGS TO WOMEN AND CHILDREN, AS IF CIS-GENDERED STRAIGHT MEN AREN'T WAY MORE DANGEROUS PER CAPITA THAN ANYONE ELSE! HOOOOO!
Do you see the difference?
Just like the stuff above the divider, just knock it off and it's fine, we can go back to being chill. Don't, and I'll get the message loud and clear.
By the way, I 100% would not have bothered to write this out if I didn't generally like you. If you were always an asshole, you wouldn't hear a peep from me and you'd just look up one day and go "Where's Aro?" but I wouldn't work there anymore and wouldn't have shit to say to you after the fact. Try to keep that in mind, alright? This isn't effort I expend on everyone. Jim's certainly never getting a custom HTML page from me. Someday, after he has another tantrum on me, he's just going to be down yet another worker and I'm sure it'll just be business as usual with absolutely nothing learned. I don't expend energy on people who I don't think might care about it, I honestly just don't have much to spare.
Thanks for reading, I guess. See you Monday if I'm not fired by then.
-Aro