Stalking, Harrassment & Other Assorted Abuse

So much for the hope of being left alone.  I am a bit shaken.

I wasn’t raised by my biological father.  My mother ran away from him while I was still a baby.  She says this is because she thought he would kill her.  He found us when I was four-years-old. I didn’t know my step-father was my step-father.  While my mother and step-father were abusive in their own right, I didn’t like this scary guy showing up all of a sudden and the stories my mother told me about him terrified me. 

I went on to have visitations as a kid.  I hated them.  My biological parents fought over me in the courts.  My mother encouraged me to lie about my father so that the court would stop visitations.  The lies caused me no amount of guilt.  At the same time, my father intimidated me.  He had a temper.  He was unfair and abusive to my step-brother.  He even sometimes used me as the “favorite” child as a way to abuse my step-brother.  I hated it.  One time my step-brother got beat for something I did.  My father even KNEW he didn’t do it, but blamed him anyway.  I don’t even remember what it was.  All I remember was going in the bedroom and seeing my step-brother crying face down on the bed and in so much pain.  Seeing that inspired me to lie even more just to make the madness stop. 

Finally, when I was a pre-teen, my biologal father decided I was more trouble than I was worth.  My lies had embarrassed him and my step-brother had been questioned about abuse.  The lies I told, were more like exaggerations.  I said that my step-brother was hit harder and more often than was true.  I said that my father tried to scare me, when I had only seen him try to intimidate others.  Not only did I want to no longer have to go on these stupid visitations, but I was tired of the court battles and the court mandated therapist.  I was tired of my mother having panic attacks.  I was tired of my step-father becoming angry whenever he remembered I wasn’t biologically his.  I was tired of spending the whole morning I was to be driven to or from visiation vomitting and otherwise ill.  I was so sick of crying and being scared. 

I realized in my teen years that my mother was actually a pathological liar and pretty viscious.  I knew remembered my biological father wasn’t a perfect man, but I wanted to know what of what she said was truth and what was lie.  When I was 18, I started up contact with him.  I was bitter about the realization that my mother was so dysfunctional and the black and white thinking that if she is a liar, then he must be some kind of good guy became tempting to me.  I also still carried the guilt about the lies I told to lawyers, judges and court appointed therapists, so I had hoped I could somehow make up for it by being a “good” daughter. 

It took him a few years to become abusive to me as well, but he got there.  He gained my trust with lots of gifts and compliments.  He invited me to come live near him, so he could help me finish school.  After I was dependent on him, the abuse started.  He raged at me.  He shamed me in front of others.  He was controlling to the point that I was scared.  If I didn’t pick up his calls quickly enough, he’d show up at my door demanding I speak to him.  It was like I was a hostage to whatever he wanted.  I felt like his prisoner. 

When he found out I had an eating disorder, he became especially cruel.  He did things that were very triggering to me and that were totally unnecessary (like constantly calling me a “sneak eater” and telling me that I was greedy about food and that I was no fun for not wanting to binge with him… he is some kind of exercise bulimic, I’m guessing).  When I asked him to stop, he would scream at me.  The screaming scared the shit out of me.  I grew up with a rageaholic step-father and when a man screams at me, I become very certain that he is going to kill me.  I spent a lot of time triggered and slept most nights with anything heavy I had propped against my bedroom door so that it would make it harder for him to break the door down, if he so tried.  He had hinted before that he might, if I didn’t answer my phone enough or whatever. 

I tried everything to make it work.  I tried asking my step-mother to encourage him to back off.  I tried taking him to therapy sessions.  I even had sessions with his therapist.  I started taking more and more space for myself.  Instead of getting the message and letting me be, he only escalated his behavior to the point of stalking.  I eventually came to the point that I told his therapist (as I was no longer speaking to him) that if he came near to me that I would call the police and get a restraining order that would smudge his “good” name in the community.  I was just that frightened of his attempts to tighten his grip on me.  I changed my phone numbers.  I moved.  I told my bosses and the receptionists at my company that he may try to come for me – as he had often threatened to do so. 

When he could no longer find me, he started contacting the people who he thought might still speak to me.  He started calling my mother, who is still deathly terrified of him.  When he saw an ex of mine on the street, he questioned him.  But mostly, he called and wrote my therapist.  He told her he would go to my office and look for me… and that he would go to the train I took to work and find me.  He told her whatever hardship he was having in his life, as if it was my responsibility to stand next to him and take abuse simply because he is having one life difficulty or another.  His pattern has been to have a rash of  calls and letters and then he quiets down for a while. 

It has been maybe six months since his last cycle of obsessing on me and harrassing my therapist, so I had hoped he had given up.  Silly me.  He called my therapist several times.  He left messages and even got her on the phone once.  In the messages or the call (I cannot remember which), he told her that he would start cruising by her office to see if he could catch me or her.  On the day he knows I used to go to therapy, he took up residence in her waiting room.  She would not tell him if I was even still her client, let alone where I am or how I am doing.  This caused a mini-tantrum (my description, not hers) and she said she got the sense that it was an intimidation ploy.  

Man…. oh man…. 😦

While I am dealing with this way better than I have in some of his past outbursts, I am concerned.  I can’t think of any normal person who wouldn’t be.  In fact, I’m far angrier than I have ever been before about this.  HOW DARE HE TRY TO INTIMIDATE AN INNOCENT PERSON BECAUSE THEY MAY IN SOME WAY BE IN CONTACT WITH ME???!!!!!  It was bad enough when he just harrassed me, but playing games with my therapist enough to concern her!!!!!  I could just rip his head off.  Lucky for him, I’m mostly pacifist.

I am a believer in every cloud having a silver lining, so hopefully some good will come of this.  I have realized now that I have been typing this that I am willing to take whatever legal recourse necessary to keep this man away from me, my therapist and anyone else connected to me who doesn’t want to deal with him.  Now that he is also going after someone other than me, I feel much more motivated to do so.  Maybe that is the good that is meant to come from this… time will tell.

Why am I posting this?  To vent.  I feel alone with this and hurt and angry and scared and posting gives me a sense that I am heard. 

But, also, I hope to reinforce the idea that abuse can simply be intimidation, shaming and screaming.  This man never laid a hand on me, but it is still abuse.  He has not threatened my life, but as far as I’m concerned, he is still a stalker.  Sometimes bullying, abuse and stalking are far more subtle than portrayals on TV and movies, but that doesn’t mean that anyone has any less right to protect themselves. 

For more information about bullying, I’ve found KickBully helpful.  As for abuse and stalking, my main resources have been my friends and my therapist, so please do not hesitate to get the support you need. 

In the meantime, I am laying low today.  I have no work, so I am going to try to do some fun things to lighten my mood.  My boyfriend will be escorting me around town for the forseeable future, now that we know I am back on this jerk’s radar. 

It just makes me so mad and it also confuses me so much that this man did not raise me and spent probably less than a year with me if you add up all the visitations together from the ages 4 – 14.  When I finally gave him a chance to know me as an adult, he was scary and abusive… and yet he behaves as if he owns me… as if he has some right to me and that he has the right to follow me around and/or harrass people I know to get what he wants.  Wow.  What an ego. 

–AngryGrayRainbows