My history with David spans roughly a couple decades (I met him in high school), and it has never been a clean story. But the last decade it’s more like a glitching video—the same chapter starting over and over, never quite finishing, never resolving into something real, just stubbornly refusing to end.
When we reconnected about ten years ago, he set the stage entirely on his terms. It was heavy on the texting, highly sexualized, and aggressively intimate. It made my skin crawl a bit; I was entirely uncomfortable with that frame. To keep the peace and manage the imbalance, I let the connection become transactional. It was a compromise to keep talking, sure, but it felt awful. It left me feeling small, uneasy, and reduced to a function, rather than a person who was chosen or respected.
