Stalked

In reading One Smarmy Mama yesterday, I realized my own sense of the value of words. The weight of words, the power of words - how they can destroy and build. How many times have words destroyed my own world? How many times have I used words to build that world anew? This constant recycling of reality is normal, and although I should take measure of my own self-worth from within, it is often the words of others I use as supporting evidence in the on-going trial against myself. And once in a while, I lose the trial, then words have nearly become my executioner.

It was words that started this mess, in Moving On I was asked to troll the internet in search of a woman for my boyfriend and me to share. I did this obediently, but often I would come across other men in my search, Most of these men I ignored, but after a while I began to crave conversation with others. I wasn't speaking with my family, my boyfriend and I had no conversations other than those relating to sex. I was lonely. I wonder how many tragedies start from loneliness?

On the internet I met a man who seemed to be ideal. We talked about baseball, his divorce, his children. It was refreshing to talk to someone about their life; someone who seemed to care about what was going on with me. He lived far away, and for me, that was great, because the temptation to cheat was minimalized by the distance. As the months went on, the more disillusioned I became with the person I lived with. All of the love I had inside that I wanted to give, was slowly being shifted, like weights on a scale. My affection was being shot out through electricity traversing wires composing the internet. This man on the internet was responsible; he had children, he was a contractor for the DOD, he owned a home. I was impressed; but relationship-wise I was a child. The man I lived with was only my second boyfriend, and I had no clue what it took to maintain a healthy relationship. I only knew that I wanted affection and attention, and at the time, I didn't feel like I was getting it at home.

Eventually, my internet friend and I started calling each other. We would talk for hours while my boyfriend was at work. I would tell him of the growing pains my relationship was going through, and he would tell me about the struggles he was having with his ex-wife. It was comforting. Eventually, he would let me speak to his children, and girl and one boy. It felt as though we were building some type of virtual family, and it made me feel warm inside. Then a day came when my boyfriend decided to thoroughly review the phone bill. He found my new friend's phone number and asked me who it was. I lied. I was too weak to tell him that this was a man I talked to to feel normal, and not like some janitor or sex slave. If I had to do it again, I would have told him the truth, but this is a lesson I only learned through the rough hands of experience.

He dialed the number. The voice on the other end was a recording repeating a message that included a name. I stood there terrified, wondering what my boyfriend would do. He asked me once again who the voice belonged to. I said an uncle. Then the conversation was over.

My virtual friend and I talked for years. When I moved out, I decided that it was time for us to meet in person. He came by train. It was awkward, us seeing each other for the first time. I quickly acclimated to the new sensory information he presented, but he was clearly nervous. As we made our way back to my place, I was talking up a storm, but he struggled to make conversation. I was worried, I wanted my friend, the person I had known for years, to be comfortable with me. I didn't understand what the problem was. Was I ugly, fat, tall, short. I had no clue why he clammed up.

When we arrived at my home, we slept on a blow-up mattress together (I didn't have a bed then). There was no touching, no kissing, no nothing. This increased my worry. In the morning, I began preparing for a party I was throwing at my house while he watched baseball. Then, suddenly, he came into the kitchen and started telling me he didn't expect me to be as tall and big as him. I felt hurt to the core, but also, I thought it was strange. The wording. . ."as tall or as big as me". . .not, I didn't expect you to be so fat, or ugly, it was just strange. As my friends started arriving for the party, I confided in one of them what my internet friend had said to me. She was a young, beautiful, French woman. She told me that I should march into the living room and kick him out, but I refused, standing there in the kitchen crying on her shoulder.

People came and went all day. My last guest arrived at 3am. It was an epic party with 70's music, a disco ball, a strobe light, alcohol and food. By sunrise, my internet friend was ready to leave. I never expected to hear from him again.

A few days later, when I was coming home from work, I saw him. . . but it wasn't exactly him. I had happened to glance in his direction, and when my eyes happened upon him, fear pierced my heart. He was in disguise! He was wearing a wig, something on his skin to make him appear darker, and ice blue contacts. But his nose, his very unique looking nose was the same. I stared and stared, and although I was afraid, I didn't quite know why. I wondered why he would be here when he lived so far away. I wondered why he would be wearing a disguise. I wondered why he didn't talk to me. When I got home, I examined these thoughts over and over again, until it finally hit me, he was stalking me! I was too afraid to move. I knew what he did for a living, the weapons he had, I immediately thought of his words, about me being as big and tall as him. Those are the words of someone who is planning to attack, the words of someone who has decided the direct approach wouldn't be best. Beads of sweat ran down the back of my neck and my hands began to shake. I knew that I didn't have anything to go to the police with, so I waited.

Every day, I had visions of him attacking me from behind, or breaking into my apartment and assaulting me. Every day there were things missing from my apartment, underwear, household items, things were moved. . . Finally, one weekend, I went away, when I returned a lock on my door was broken. I called the police and asked them to write a report, but there was no solid evidence and they did not dust the door for prints as I hoped they would.

I lived in fear for my life every day. I prayed to God that this man would not take my life. Although he never touched me, there was something inside me letting me know that he wanted to hurt me. Instinct, that nervous twitch I get when something is about to go horribly wrong. I felt like an animal in a hunter's crosshairs.

I had my locks changed, I changed my route home frequently, and I slept with a weapon. After a year, that feeling of being watched went away. I was able to sleep again.

Tomorrow, The Other Men. . .

Moving On

Normal to EatPB, it's normal. It's normal to eat peanut butter, it's normal to experience love, it's normal to live through tragedy, it's normal to look for others like you. People who you can bond with through the mundane, illuminating, and horrifying. Speaking with my husband yesterday, I wondered if exposing my life stories were helping anyone but me. I pray they do, but I wish I could know for sure. My intention is not only to heal my own wounds through cauterization via this blog, but I also want to reach out a hand to those who feel as though they're drowning in an ocean of their own emotions. I want to scream, "Look at me! I don't know how to swim, but I was able to float to shore, you can too." I want to be a catalyst for introspection; I want to be a warrior for the scared, a joy to the sad, a companion for the lonely. I know lonely well, it's how I felt when I left my second home.

Anyone who has read Leaving Home knows the circumstances of my departure from my mother's house. I moved in with a man 16 years older than me, someone I knew little about, to escape the pressure I felt at home. The first four months of my union to this man consisted of three states of existence for me. I was the home-maker, the sex-toy, and the crying child. Mostly I was the latter. I cried and cried for weeks on end, I had only been separated from my mother once before under extremely traumatic circumstances. I cried so bad at night that he couldn't even sleep with me for the first 2 weeks after I moved in, he slept on the couch with his dogs. I didn't speak to my mother for the first four months of this union either.

Things were idyllic our first year together, at least in my head. I didn't know what it was supposed to be like and my young impressionable mind was open to any kind of treatment. The only thing I wouldn't tolerate was being beat. Fists And Blood was an in-my-face lesson against such treatment. Don't get me wrong, I had standards, I had morals, I had ideas in my head of specific things I would never do. But as the saying goes, never say never.

Looking back through the lens of experience and the filter of wisdom, I know that the behaviors he exhibited were not behaviors conducive to a healthy relationship. The things he asked me to do would never be asked by someone who truly loved me. I was an object to be maneuvered and placed and worked. Some examples of this are: although I received mail there, I was never given a mailbox key, I was not allowed to answer the phone, I wasn't allowed to answer the door, I wasn't allowed to go through any of his personal things. I felt like a figure in a glass menagerie. Not allowed to touch, and only allowed to be moved by the owner.

He would get me drunk and then ask me to do things with him sexually that I didn't have the mental or emotional capacity to refuse, I don't know, perhaps it isn't rape if you're passed out. Perhaps it's less degrading to be violated in every possible place imaginable if you're feeling like you're floating on a light wine cloud. As with most vignettes of life that swim into the foreground as I travel down the road of time, I had a sense of whether it was right or wrong, that innate internal switch with no gray area. Just 'Right' and 'Wrong'. Immediately, as I was walking out of my mother's door, I felt queasy, but I didn't know why. Every day after I woke up questioning, and finally I came to the conclusion that he was morally corrupt, and corrupting my morals.

All of his spare time was spent on the internet watching porn until the wee hours of the morning, and then he would come to me with all sorts of debauchery in mind. At the height of his sexual frenzy, he asked me to find a woman for us to share. I loved him so much; I trolled the internet for weeks trying to find the exact right person. While he was away on a business trip I found the one I was looking for. I had her come over for an interview of sorts. She seemed nice, she was married with a daughter, she didn't live too far away, and she was gorgeous. When he came home, I called her over to introduce the two of them. He was impressed and wanted to hook up that night. When she came back, she and I went to get started while he went online to get primed. When he came in she had no interest in him, she was focused on me and didn't want to change focus. When she left, he was pissed. He blamed me for her dis-interest and he wanted to try again with someone else. Although I told him yes, in my heart I knew I wouldn't do it again. Meanwhile, my new 'friend' wouldn't stop calling for me or unexpectedly dropping by, she became a stalker.

Things continued this way, he would ask me to something humiliating, and I would tell him yes, but never do them. The encounter with my now stalker ended the sexual trust between us. After two years, things had deteriorated greatly. On one of his business trips a woman called and left a message I could hear about how she couldn't wait to see him. When he got home, I confronted him. He said she was trying to break us up and that he would never cheat on me. I accepted what he said, but I had adventures on my own to be discussed in another blog. After some months of me letting off a little steam, I took some time for introspection; I decided to go back to church. I felt my heart filling with an untarnished love, I felt my soul being repaired, I felt my mind being renewed.

I invited my boyfriend to church with me, but he never came. I wanted to be cleansed, I wanted us to start fresh, but it couldn't happen if I were doing it alone. I decided to move. When I told him, he had a similar reaction as my mother when I told her I was leaving home. He had no reaction; either he didn’t believe me or he didn't hear, so when my friends came to help pack my things he was shocked. My 3 year hiatus from my own moral base had come to an end.

In my new apartment I had felt lonelier than I had ever been. There was no mother, no brothers, no lover. And I cried. . .

Tomorrow, Taken. . .