The self-referential irony of self-referential irony

True, I'm a fan of self-referentiality, but that doesn't mean it's not possible for self-referentiality of the ironic variety to be annoying.

The common theme behind most of these is this: people telling me what I feel. For example, someone will decide that I'm angry, probably because they would be angry in the same situation. They insist at me that I'm angry; I deny it, because I'm not, but they don't buy that, and keep pushing on it. Soon I am angry. But how do I explain that the only thing I'm angry about is the fact that they insist I am when I'm not? Even I get confused by saying that. There's no way to get the point across.

Yesterday and today, I got another dose. Can't be every day you see someone's mother shred them on their blog. There, I ran into a similar problem. She came at me with a flurry of incoherent illogic, which isn't surprising; and she refused to address any of the issues I raised or answer any questions, also unsurprising.

But she also felt it necessary to decide for me what my emotional and mental state was. She started the whole thing telling me how I was "a cold unfeeling person", with "so much hate in your heart" and concluded "it must suck to be you". This all coming out of the blue; I hadn't said a word. We hadn't exchanged any words literally in years. And based on that complete lack of any information she came to a complete and unshakeable conclusion.

Well, it's patently obvious that she did so because she needs to demonize me, and she's projecting her own feelings onto me to avoid having to see them in herself. Anyone (other than her) could see that plain as day, as I wrote previously. But the unifying theme that ran through the entire subsequent exchange was blame. Everything she did was really about pinning blame on me for what's happened between us. It's in every single sentence. It's all she really cares about now, finding a reason to make me the one who is at fault, to appease her guilt.

To do that she had to make up some hokum about how she's already apologized (she hasn't) and I rejected it (I probably would have if she had, because it'd've probably been insincere, and even if it hadn't, it would have made simply sought to ignore what happened, not address it). And her blame-playing game becomes self-referential. She insists that I'm the one that hates, that I'm the one that cut things off -- and she keeps at it, as hurtful and vicious as she can, until at last, I do find myself disgusted by her, embarassed by her, and finally have to, indeed, cut things off. And then guess what? She gets to walk away with what she came for: a reason to say it's all my fault.

Well, if she needs to get that at my expense, that's all right; I can afford it, and apparently she needs it more than I do, so let her steal it. It's just a pity she had to erase the last vestiges of respect I had for her to do it.

Maybe for her it's about closure -- though since she still knows what she did on some level, I doubt this will really give that to her. But for me, now, it definitely is. It's time to put this to rest and get back to the good things in my life. I think I'll start by having a vacation next week, and working more on Bloodweavers. It's nice to have something good to look forward to.