revenge on Lepht

right now, ladies and gents, i am one sick-ass motherfucker. my stomach's roiling like the North Atlantic, i'm only sitting on the floor because to get up is guaranteed to make me hurl and i personally just want to jack in to my beautiful cluster and not ever look at meatspace again.

why, you ask? well, competition.

i don't like competition. and it's nothing to do with not liking to lose - in fact, i'd prefer to have the competition be in a subject where i know i'll lose, like sports or chemistry. (you're listening to the virtual voice of Dr. Rubber-Legs Can't-Catch What's-A-Reagent itself, here.) what's sparked off all this sickness is, once again, my last ex.

w3dyt, in his wisdom, has decided that he is going to take revenge on my dain bramaged ass. i'd thought that a relationship during which: i got jealous and got between him and his new flame; he punched me, a guy literally half his size, in the damaged kidney; i seemed like a total binary-flipping psycho because i don't even know my own mind when it comes to proper relationships; he posed my unconscious body in 'funny' positions and took pictures without my consent; i told him i loved him when i couldn't possibly know that; he ratted me out to the legal authorities for doing implants as soon as he wasn't the only one i was doing them for and coldly told me in Starbucks that he did it for moral reasons; etc., etc. - i woulda thought that a relationship like that, which i should never even have started with him, would be revenge enough for both of us.

apparently not. whilst i take a lot of the responsibility on myself - for not ending the relationship as soon as i realised i was in over my head, for allowing myself to play at having emotions i'm just not really capable of, for getting jealous, a million things like that - not all of it belongs to me. we both did awful things. in w3dyt's mind, though, it seems that it was just me.

so he's decided that he's going to try and - i quote, from a twenty-year-old man - "work my ass off to beat [Lepht, academically]". he says competitiveness will give him "the edge". i break no sweat over this happening - i've been selected for a dozen things over him, including the research job i'm working right now (he didn't even get shortlisted) and founder President of the CompSci society at the University, plus i'm pretty well known at the Department and my grades are generally a lot higher than his - but it's this i'm-gonna-getchoo attitude that makes my blood freeze.

you wanna know why? because it fosters a hostile attitude towards me in general that's not gonna go away. i am indeed a med-popping, drug-addicted, virtually friendless self-implanting machinehead nutjob, and having w3dyt in all my classes, trying to find out what my grades are so he can crow if they're lower than his and hate me if they're not, telling people he's going to beat me because i'm an asshole who "prides [itself] on being top of the class" (i'm not top of the class, ever, i hover around the middle) - this is not going to make it any easier for me or indeed him to get over what happened.

in addition, i can see it engendering a common practice of grade competitiveness, and from that stems that culture that makes undergrads value themselves on their grades alone. getting a 12 when i get a 9, or vice versa, does not make the higher graded guy the better person. whether he "beats" me or not, we're still both going to be fucked up humans with serious problems to get over.

so far the best practice i can think of is what i usually do, which is to avoid revealing my scores to anyone who isn't in my immediate tribe. i'm still sick as a dog, though. to be honest the fact that he's reduced the whole situation, in his mind, to one where he is the good guy, i am the bad guy, and he will work hard and beat me like some Hollywood high school movie, just hurts. even though i vehemently dislike w3dyt, i'd hoped to see him do something more mature than that.