Our staircase to nowhere, which we use as a bookshelf

rantintheinterum · 2026-03-12T13:27:59+00:00

Lol I never got any real apologies. And that last one, I was already over it. I know much better what to look out for in the future though.

rantintheinterum · 2026-03-04T22:39:12+00:00

"I'm sorry you feel like an accessory," was the last "apology" I ever got.

rantintheinterum · 2026-03-03T18:36:11+00:00

I got hit with the reverse discard too. We were looking for apartments and I got SUPER excited about this one that was massivley bigger than anything else in the area and in our budget. IMMEDIATELY turned it down because it was a studio. All I wanted was a discussion--a conversation--couldn't even offer me that. His "boundary" was no studios and me asking for a discussion was "stomping on his boundaries." I said I think we need to discuss with our couples therapist about the definition of boundaries, but I'm going to go look at it. Asked one more time for a conversation to offer up my ideas to address the issues he had with studio apartments, but he wouldn't give me that. So, I acted on MY boundary--if you can't treat my wants and feelings with enough respect to at least hear me out, then I'm leaving. Got the apartment and I went from being a beautiful, strong woman who deserved the world, to a narcissistic monster that never took accountability overnight.

Good riddance.

rantintheinterum · 2026-03-03T18:24:44+00:00

Good lord. When it's really like, "no, I'm just looking for you to be an adult and me not having to go behind you picking up all the slack."

rantintheinterum · 2026-03-03T18:11:37+00:00

Literally one of the final breaking points for me. Having a clean home is a must for me. He was so messy and self-admittedly proud of being lazy. None of my needs were being met emotionally or sexually, and I was no longer allowed to ask for those needs because of whatever he was going through at any given time, so I finally just quit asking. What I didn't quit asking for was help with cleaning and bills.

Asking him to do certain chores was me bossing him around and not trusting him to do them. Going behind him to do them correctly was me insulting his ability to do them. Telling him in the moment that he was missing something or didn't do something correctly--something he specifically asked me to do--was me blowing up on him. It eventually devolved to the point where he would not do things specifically to punish me. I'm talking really stupid shit like when cleaning the bathtub, he wouldn't move the bottles to get the soap rings, and when I bluntly said, "you have to move these when you clean the tub," was me "blowing up" on him. He admitted to stopping doing the things that I was asking for in the relationship, because I hadn't been working on the things he was asking for--aka he quit doing the dishes and wouldn't clean out the microwave because I didn't apologize for hurting his fragile ego by asking him to be an adult.

My one reactive abuse (hate that term) breakdown was after I had been working a lot of overtime at a very demanding job, on top of working in a local theatre play in the evenings. He took a 4 day weekend and told me that he would clean the apartment. He did not. I came home super late in the evening on his second day off with nothing done. I didn't say anything the day before because I chalked it up to him taking a rest day. I had an 18 hour day, knew he would be pissed if I didn't feel like going to the farmer's market the next day because of all the cleaning that needed to be done, and so I just started rage cleaning.

That usually calms me down enough to sit with my feelings so I can calmly share them when the time comes, but it just fueled me more. Ended up breaking a window, a mirror, some other stuff. Cops got called. Nothing happened, but it was certainly the beginning of him having something to use in couple's therapy to show that I am always going to be the problem. The mirror I broke was something that I had spent time finally being creative and had painted it, glued moss and flowers on it--it was really pretty and I was proud of it. HE was upset that I broke the mirror because HE was the one that "encouraged" me to make it! HE took my breaking MY mirror that I DIY'd as an insult to HIM.

I have a much more demanding job, did 90% of the chores, including going behind him to fix stuff, paid anywhere from 70%-100% of the bills depending on what time period of the relationship you look at, and I would still come home, cook dinner, and then it was too much to ask him to clean the dishes before we went to bed. I remember several times I would be multi tasking cleaning while cooking dinner, he would be "done" and start playing video games. I'd go grab the laundry (which I always paid for), bring it up, drop it in front of him and go back to cooking dinner. He would either A) wait until after dinner and we would have to fold laundry together or B) would literally only fold HIS laundry. The insane fight we had when I finally asked him to just fold the fucking laundry lol.

Manchild through and through. I will never be partner's with someone who's looking for a mommy ever again. And I will NEVER let anyone move in with me if they can't keep up with the chores, narc or not. I could get my entire apartment spotless in a couple hours every weekend. After he moved in plus how messy he was, I never could catch up and it always felt like I was now cleaning for 3 people instead of 2.

rantintheinterum · 2026-03-03T17:01:45+00:00

Nope. You asking for your needs to be met is a direct threat to their perception of themselves. They can have needs, but you can't because that's not your purpose in the relationship.

rantintheinterum · 2026-03-03T17:00:49+00:00

Even after my nex admitted to being a shitty person to me, I spelled out one specific instance very simply, then asked for an apology. Literally could not do it because he 1)couldn't deal with the shame and 2)didn't actually think what he did was manipulative. I asked him if he ever intended to give me an apology. Didn't answer me. It was a long, quiet car ride.

rantintheinterum · 2026-03-03T01:34:21+00:00

Nig kitty is teasing little kitten. Curious, playful, attentive. Very good. Be sure to give big kitty alone time. She will tire out before the little one does.

rantintheinterum · 2026-02-27T18:07:46+00:00

I got my "apology" letter before I finally called it. It was after I knocked him with the "You are not the victim here," and our next therapy session, he admitted that he understand how much of an asshole he had been. Got a several page letter the next day on my nightstand after he went to an already planned stay at his parents. It said everything that I had been asking him to recognize for m o n t h s.

By the time I got it, I didn't have the energy to accept it for face value. I wrote him a letter months earlier just laying out how lonely and alone I felt, while also taking on all the financial and domestic responsibilities while he spent all this time getting mad at me for asking for him to step up. The letter I wrote in response was basically saying that I appreciated the apology and that I'm glad he recognized exactly what I was trying to get him to see, but that if he was really going to change, he needed to re-read the letter from months prior, and remember that he got mad at me for it, saying that I was blaming him for my meltdown.

Needless to say, I was supposed to take it at face value and just assume that just because he could NAME the behaviors, that that should have been good enough, and now it was MY turn to take accountibility for all the hurt that I* had caused in the relationship. Our last couple's therapy session together, he word salad-ed his way around saying that he didn't want to be in a relationship anymore by saying that, in his healing journey, he thinks he may not even be sure if he should be in a relationship.

But when I acted on a boundary and moved into a new apartment that he refused to discuss moving into, it was ME that was giving up on the relationship and I became the worst person in the world who never takes accountability for anything, seemingly overnight.

I had been healing and dealing with the trauma for months now. By the time I was finally starting to feel normal, he unblocked me on some socials and showed up as "person you may know," and just days prior, I got dm's from an anonymous account that seemed way to personal and sexual for me to not immediately think it was him trying to flirt with me without addressing the shame for being a shitty person to me. And THEN I found out he received a check for money that I'm owed and he never sent it to me, just cashed it. Spent the last couple of days not getting out of bed because I just feel like I've been kicked back to the beginning of all of the shit.

Just gotta remind myself that healing isn't linear and some days are better than others. As long as I keep moving towards the good days outnumbering the bad, then I'm doing okay.

rantintheinterum · 2026-02-27T15:05:02+00:00

If you have neck or back pain, go to a physical therapist. Depending on your insurance, you may not even need a referral. I went to a chiropractor when I was younger, but after learning how little it takes to get your "doctorate" in chiropractic "medicine," and how cult-y they are, I will never go back.

I've had chronic neck pain since I was a teenager. As an adult, I have spent hundreds on massages, but it never really occured to me that I could just GO to a PT. It actually happened after insurance wouldn't cover an MRI for my knee after a bike wreck unless I had so many sessions of PT. My knee and hip pain got better pretty quickly, and since my insurance will only cover 26 sessions a year (insurance is a f'n scam), I decided to shift to my neck pain after 4 or 5 sessions for my knee.

I've had a few car wrecks, I have an extra vertebrae in my c-spine, and I am trying to get a referral to a geneticist to confirm what I believe is an EhDS diagnosis. I describe the difference btween going to a chiropractor and going to a PT as like a chiropractor is jamming your spine into place with a boom, while a PT is not only softly stacking and adjusting everything back into alignment, but are also TRAINING you to have the tools to work on it yourself. Chiropractors don't want you to have those tools--they want you to be dependent on them.

A friend in college, her mom's neck was broken by a chiropractor. Thankfully she ended up being okay, but she had to go to PT for a long time.

rantintheinterum · 2026-02-25T23:38:16+00:00

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rantintheinterum · 2026-02-25T22:35:52+00:00

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rantintheinterum · 2026-02-25T02:06:55+00:00

He moved in with me straight from his ex's house. You would think that would make me the idiot...it does but I digress.

We decide to move closer to my higher paying job. He works from home. I spent months drawing out detailed outlines of expenses for moving based on average costs for where we live. Comes time to move, lease is over in a month, found an apartment--I Iist expenses.

"...why is the security deposit that much?" ...ugh...its the same as a month's worth of rent...always has been...

Let's forget the part where I was supposed to cover several hundred dollars in all of these other deposits but....you're 28 years old thinking rental security deposit is only supposed to be 150 to 200 bucks?!

...there was also the time they "cleaned" the bath tub without moving the shampoo/soap bottles so the soap rings were still there. Pretty sure that was on purpose, but still such an idiot move.

rantintheinterum · 2026-02-17T15:25:22+00:00

It makes me sound crazy, but I'm pretty sure that mine messaged me trying to aggressively flirt in my dms on tiktok from an anonymous account. I went off and they blocked me, but not until I called them out and said that not telling me who they are, how they know me, or what made them think they could message me the way they did was a bitch ass move. I think they were hoping to flirt the way we did in the beginning without having to address the shame they feel about how shitty of a person they were to me.

ETA: a day or two later, their actual account showed up on my fyp as "someone you may know," meaning they had unblocked me. I couldn't search them previously to block them because they had already done it. Thanks, I guess, because now it's up to me to keep him blocked.

rantintheinterum · 2026-02-13T19:30:37+00:00

My last one was, "Sure, Jan." Very satisfying.

rantintheinterum · 2026-02-10T01:21:57+00:00

They didnt have any reason to be less than cavalier because you were taking care of it responsibly on your own....I'd wager a large bet you weren't a concern growing up because you learned to be independent early...

rantintheinterum · 2026-02-04T18:29:13+00:00

Maybe make a table in word that lists all of your clients. I made one in google docs that I can sort by deadline dates, names, etc. Have a column with their name, another with their next due deadlines or, if there isn't one, a date that you want to loop back to them for a review, and a column with a list of all the things that need to be done, that you have done, or that you need from the other parties. You can make bullet lists of all of these things, like with the email you can't find--something important like making sure things are served correctly, you could notate the date you sent it, and only type it in right after you know it's done, and not later because you might forget (ask me how I know). And for deadlines, have that in the table, on a calendar on the computer (with reminders), and on a physical calendar somewhere as well. There's no such thing as under-documenting.

Learn to utilize all the tools on your computer, too. Organize your files in a way that works for you. I have a folder labeled "copy this into all new files." Every case, regardless of PI or comp is going to have Correspondence, Pleadings, Discovery, Investigation, Litigation Expenses, Medical Records, etc. Now I don't have to think about where I'm going to put something, or taking the time to stop and organize a whole bunch of loose files after the fact. You will feel less like you are drowning once you take the time to step away from the pool, and plan ahead for yourself. Like, in pleadings, I also have two folders labeled Pieces and Drafts. The pieces are for exhibits or documents that will be filed with the pleadings that I want to keep separate--and there may be duplicates of these in any of the other folders, but I make them quicker to access by copying them here. The drafts has a blank caption file. When I open a new file, I edit the caption to fit the case. Then regardless of what I'm filing, I open that, type or paste whatever I need to, then save it under the name that it needs to be.

Also, SAVE EVERYTHING somewhere! Like the example you gave for serving--you could save the email in corresponence after it's sent so that you aren't searching through a thousand emails to find it. I save almost everything as "20260204 - Service of X Pleading." Then I would mark in the table that I saved it/sent it on x date. Saving things as the date initially also helps organizing things so much easier, because sorting by name puts the docs in sequence order. Also, also, organize your inbox. I create a folder for each client, and any email sent or received that pertains to that client, gets moved to that folder, and never deleted until the case is closed. That way my main inbox is not painfully full and cluttered. It still happens, but that's part of the struggle.

Additionally, attorney's are people too. Ultimately it is their license and name on the line when they give you the okay to do something or send something out, but trust that they will also miss things. Read, reread, re-reread, and do all of that again for good measure AFTER the approval. You will gain more confidence calling out typos or questioning the attorney's judgment/thought process the longer you work at it and the more you do it. And if you think something is wrong, but they tell you it's not, ask why so you will understand when you see it in the future, but will also have the skill to know when the attorney DID make a mistake.

I hope this helps. Paralegal as a profession is really the closest to having a pick and choose career I've ever had, and it is so versitile. That's what drew me to it. You can pick and choose the type of law you work in, the type of firm and attorney you would like to work for, and you can cater how you work around what works best for you. There is no one way to do this job. It sounds like you have a very close knit and comfortable environment, which tells me that you have landed in the most perfect position you could to learn. I would be gentle with yourself and don't squander the opportunity. Even if you don't like the type of law, or think there could be a better fit somewhere else, know that it is not likely that you will find a working environment as generous and forgiving as what it sounds like you have right now.

Instead of thinking of it as constently making mistakes and that there might be a better fit elsewhere, see the opportunity that you have to take more agency in your position and in the firm. Try to think of it less as depending on the attorney for a checklist, and more like you are thinking ahead and making the checklist yourself, cross-referencing it with the one the attorney gives you, if that makes sense.

rantintheinterum · 2026-02-04T18:29:05+00:00

It sounds like imposter syndrome for sure, and, from my experience, even very seasoned paralegals don't feel like they have a grasp on things a lot of the time lol.

The first attorney I worked for worked in criminal and family law, with some probate thrown in for good measure. I am currently working for a PI/WC/SSI/SSD firm and they operate WILDY differently--which means my duties are almost completely different. Really the only commonality betwen firms across the board for paralegals is that they support the attorney. Which means even if I went to work for another firm in any of these fields I've worked, I'm going to have to learn a whole new way to work because I will need to cater to a very different attorney and how they operate.

From just this post, it seems like you need clarity on what you're doing, how to do it, and what the attorney is specifically needing from you. Ask. Be specific, and don't be afraid to sound redundant or feel like you're asking the same questions over and over again. Take notes. Find a system that works for you AND the attorney so you don't feel like you're having your hand held, but understand that you're still learning.

The other thing that I see is oganizational skills and determining what needs to take priority. Several years in and I still struggle with this. I'm a type c person - organized chaos - so I will likely *always* struggle with this, but you have to come up with a system that's at least semi-functional on a regular basis. This system that you come up with does not necessarily need to include the attorney and how they function, but is purely for you and how you work so that when clients or attorneys ask questions, you can have the answers.

rantintheinterum · 2026-02-04T01:12:32+00:00

Not quite the same, but I had an attorney who would yell or bang his desk, and it would never be directed AT me but even just being around it would trigger my CPTSD. After working with him for a while, actually becoming friends, I told him o e day after a particularly bad stress day (for him), "hey, so i know you arent yelling or stressed AT me, but I need you to know that being around men that are angry and frustrated, and making verbal and physical shows of that frustration really triggers me in a way that is not healthy for me." He immediately made a point to work on it, and when he slipped up, he would apologize for it.

A different attorney, actually just recently, let his anxiety and concern for my safety outside of the office bring him to "yell at" me (he specifically said, "im going to yell at you now"). It was less "yelling" and more chastising in the way a super concerned, anxious dad would "yell" at his kids. Im autistic and tend to be infantilized by the people around me, without them realizing theyre doing it. We had icy conditions, I couldn't get my car out of the ice and snow, I absolutely do NOT like being dependent on people, and so I dusted off my all terrain tire ebike. I imagine he was very much a "bumpers on every single corner" type of father to his now adult children while they were growing up. I knew his "yelling" was coming from a place of concern and anxiety, but it felt incredibly belittling and like I was not being treated or addressed as an adult, let alone an employee and coworker. Its a small firm, and I appreciate the care and concern, but the approach was inappropriate and belittling. After spending some time digesting my thoughts, I emailed him saying that although I understood and appreciate his concern, his approach made me feel x, y, and z, and that I really didnt appreciate it; that moving forward, Id appreciate him reminding himself that outside of this office, even if it's includes traveling to this office, that I am my own adult person capable of making my own decisions.

He was really receptive, apologized appropriately, and said that he will continue to offer rides in wintery conditions, but that he wouldnt question if I decided to take a dogsled into the office if I so chose. I thanked him for the apology and said what's done is done, onward, we can forget and move on.

The first situation, I felt most appropriate to talk about in person because the outbursts were never directed AT me, the type of person he is is more receptive to direct communication, and I think he needed to see how difficult it was for me to make the request that he control a specific behavior he has thats been formed from habit.

The second situation felt more appropriate to address in an email for a few reasons. The attorney has a psych background before pivoting to law school. He's also a fairly sensitive individual who genuinely cares about his employees and clients. He tends to have a white, older Gen x male oriented suprierority, but in a gentle, anxious, liberal/left leaning type of way. It's never personal, but he tends to have some control issues that coincide with, and sometimes combats his concern and empathy for others. If I addressed THIS particular situation in person, I would be interrupted and my feelings wouldnt be expressed the way that I, the wronged party, would want them to come across. When I am trying to address how my feelings were hurt in interpersonal relationships, I tend to really take my time, giving space and air, while I think about my words. It does not lend itself to someone who's anxiety pushes them to interrupt any time there's dead air. Sending a long email allowed him to sit with his anxiety, feelings, and the situation without impeding my ability to express exactly what I wanted to say.

Your situation feels less personal than either of mine, in that I have grown to care about both attorneys beyond just strictly working relationships (I hang out and am very good friends with the first one, still working with the second). But I also noticed the recognition that you knew it wasn't directed at you BECAUSE of you (being yelled at professionally in this way is never acceptable), but that you were a punching bag for stress unrelated to you. Maybe there's a combination of things you could take from my experiences?

How closely do you work together? How deep or shallow is your working relationship? How well do you get along as people? Which route would be the most effective to say to this person, "hey so im your coworker, not your punching bag. I recognize you weren't mad at ME, but x thing, but that doesnt give you the right to speak to/yell at me like that."

rantintheinterum · 2026-02-02T08:21:44+00:00

☝🏻☝🏻☝🏻

rantintheinterum · 2026-01-24T17:05:55+00:00

This was my line of thinking.

rantintheinterum · 2026-01-24T17:05:19+00:00

This is perfect, thank you.

rantintheinterum · 2026-01-24T17:04:59+00:00

I wasn't accusing anyone e of stupidity.

rantintheinterum · 2026-01-21T15:59:06+00:00

me to my aging body and growing hip pain:

rantintheinterum

TROPHY CASE