Articles from March 2015

The Goddess of Pleasure and Salt–College Memoirs: Life At Roanoke–March 1995, Part 9

Catherine and I wrote dream visions for Chaucer class, based on Romance of the Rose, which Chaucer translated.

Mine was “Romance of the Rosebud,” including a character named Lord Cugan.  Catherine loved being the “goddess of pleasure and salt” in my story, especially the following:

“Goddess of Pleasure and Salt?” I said.  “Do those two things go together?”

[Catherine said,] “They do if you throw salt all over your body and have your man lick it off.  Of course, you’d better keep plenty of water on hand for him.”

She often proudly told people that I made up that title myself.  It was based on her always telling people at lunch that she was the goddess of salt so they must ask her permission to use it, or at other times that she was Venus.

Her character’s humor was raunchy, just like the real Catherine.  Then it cut off right in the middle of the Reeve’s perverted Canterbury Tale, which Catherine began to tell, and said, “And here the manuscript breaks off, the rest of it lost to history.”  Read The Romance of the Rosebud here.

Catherine’s dream vision included both Sir Stimp-a-lot and Lord Cugan.  Sir Stimp-a-lot (based on my casual boyfriend Stimpy) was a bungler vying with Lord Cugan for the attentions of a fair maiden, and Cugan won.

She also included a wall, such as in Romance of the Rose.  She used real teachers, putting virtuous ones inside the wall and “bad” ones outside or on the wall.

I forget where she put Counselor Dude, but he was included.  Our Chaucer teacher Christina was probably included, and put inside.

Christina apparently read my story first, because she wrote on Catherine’s paper, “I’ve seen this name ‘Lord Cugan’ before; it seems to be a popular name.”

****

Brad wrote on Monday, March 20,

You said you are perverted at times [when joking].  That is a great trait.  It confused the ones around you.  Make people wonder what you mean.  Add a little of vagueness [sic] so people wonder if you are perverted or just misunderstood.

On probably that same day, Cugan and I saw Pulp Fiction.  I was surprised to find it still playing, since it came out months before, when I read a bad review of it.

Cugan and I and another young couple were the only ones in the theater, so Cugan and I lounged in the seats with our feet on the backs of the seats in front of us.  I thought the movie had bombed.  I couldn’t figure out why as it played.

I sat there laughing and enjoying the whole movie (though parts were gross and I didn’t like what happened to John Travolta’s character).

Despite my laughter, with the cussing and references to sex, Cugan kept saying, “I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!  I didn’t know it would be this way.”  And I kept saying to him, “Don’t worry about it!”

We both loved it, and thought it, not Forrest Gump, should have won the Oscar the two contended for that year.  Cugan figured Forrest Gump won because it was about values and such and not a bunch of people cussing and shooting, but Pulp Fiction was more fun.

Index 
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

September 1991:

October 1991:

November 1991:

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year 

Summer 1992:

September 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

November 1992:

December 1992:

January 1993:

February 1993:

March 1993:

April 1993:

May 1993:

Junior Year 

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

September 1993:

October 1993:

November 1993:

December 1993:

January 1994:

February 1994:

March 1994:

April 1994:

May 1994:

Senior Year 

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

July & August 1994:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

October 1994:

November 1994:

December 1994:

January 1995:

February 1995:

March 1995:

April 1995:

May 1995:

 

 

Scott Walker is looking more and more corrupt…..

See Secret $1.5 million donation from Wisconsin billionaire uncovered in Scott Walker dark-money probe by Michael Isikoff.

Quotes:

And in his five years in office, Walker’s appointees have sharply scaled back enforcement actions by the state Department of Natural Resources — a top Menard priority.

The agency had repeatedly clashed with Menard and his company under previous governors over citations for violating state environmental laws and had levied a $1.7 million fine against Menard personally, as well as his company, for illegally dumping hazardous wastes.

“This, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with the dark-money world we live in,” said Bill Allison, senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based based nonprofit group that tracks the influence of money in politics.

“Here’s somebody who obviously has issues before the state, and he’s able to make a backdoor contribution that nobody ever sees. My sense is [political] insiders know about these contributions. It’s only the public that has no idea.”

When he later learned about the secret donations by Gogebic Taconite and other contributors to the Wisconsin Club for Growth, Schultz said in an interview,

“I was heart-broken. I was crushed. All of a sudden, I saw something that had never happened before in Wisconsin. You had to go back to when the railroad barons bought the entire legislature during the Gilded Age.”

Meanwhile, the Republican Legislature wants to make investigations like these into Walker’s campaign, illegal.  Which means corruption becomes impossible to dig out and remove.

Dang, it goes all the way to the core.  Has Wisconsin turned into Illinois?

Yet when we protest, we’re called “libtards.”  It’s absolutely ridiculous–a public shaming of those who object to the corruption.

Basically, a sociopathic-style smear campaign to silence the ones who try to root out dark money in politics, and return to rule by the people–

NOT RULE BY BIG MONEY.

The payoff of sharing my abusers’ sociopathic e-mail: Part 2 of my “Stalked” series has been pinned

Statcounter constantly reveals interest in various sections of my “Now I’m Being Stalked” series from 2012.

In this series, which was originally one long post, now split into 7 parts starting here, I described how Richard and Tracy had begun stalking me, and posted the sociopathic e-mail they sent me.

Then in 2014, I re-visited the e-mail with Running my abusers’ e-mail through the narc decoder.

The latest numbers, gathered about a month ago, showed that this series had received 528 views.

In Part 2 and “Running,” I tore apart the sociopathic e-mail by showing the truth behind my stalkers’ ludicrous, lying words.

And these posts are being read.  “Running” has received 33 hits just in the last month.  The various parts of “Stalked” have received 43 total in the last month.

Recently, Part 2 and “Running” have been getting more attention.  Someone in Canada has read “Running” 13 times over the past few days.  And now Part 2 has been pinned:

Gratitude Girl has pinned my post, just before 6am this morning her time, onto the Psych/Narcissism/Sociopathy/Abuse/Codependency board on Pinterest.  (She also pinned Breaking the Power of Narcissists.)

She runs the board; it has 407 followers.  Here’s hoping this pin helps the post go viral, just as a post to a Facebook group last spring made this post go viral: Wasted Years Mourning a Narcissist: Reclaiming Our Lost Selves and Thriving

[Update 4/4/15: And now somebody read “Stalked” (whole page) and “Running,” and subscribed to my blog.  🙂  )

My blog just contains diary posts, not the “expert” advice of life coaches or psychiatrists.  These detail my struggles and the lessons I learn from them.

Yet so many people are connecting with various posts, whether on narcissism or abuse, that I continually see yet another Facebook share in Statcounter, or a reblog.

It felt so risky to post on these subjects–especially when my two recent abusers discovered them and began stalking me for it.  It felt risky to continue posting even as they watched my blog every week–sometimes more often–to intimidate me into silence.

I didn’t know if they were laughing, if they were looking for a reason to sue, or what they wanted.

It was risky, intimidating, frightening, foolhardy.

But I did it anyway, to prove to myself that I wasn’t just some weak-willed, easily-dominated target of bullies.

And over time, my blog has grown.  My site currently averages 148 views a day and is maybe two months away from 100,000 views.  Others have found comfort and lessons in my posts.  Comments are often turned off, but I see it in repeat visitors, likes, printing my posts, subscriptions, and online shares.

It is particularly comforting to see this in the past week, right after I revised the formatting for the “Stalked” posts and sticky-posted a few of them on my front page for a bit.  Part 2 includes the sociopathic e-mail.

It is comforting to see others read Part 2 or “Running,” because they, too, see this e-mail for themselves.  They then read my response, and find something of value in it for their own struggles with abusers.  I see people click on the link that prints the post.

Just as it was comforting to share that e-mail with the members of the Forum, and know they understand and believe me.  And now, in the past month, new members of the Forum have gone through the 3-year-old threads, read the e-mail and empathized with me, then asked me if things were resolved, and if Richard was properly punished, because child abuse is disgusting.

Just writing these blog posts, and including the sociopathic e-mail from my abusers, was emotionally taxing, because the e-mail meant to rip me apart.

It made me practically catatonic when it first came in.  I was appalled and devastated to discover just how evil both Richard and Tracy truly are, to send such an e-mail and to even plan to stalk me at church!  To call themselves Christians, and then behave in such a manner–!!!!

The e-mail is so horrid (and proves me correct even while objecting to making Tracy out to be a “horrible person”) that I could not even open the original “Stalked” post again for two years.

The same as other e-mails sent by Tracy back in July and August 2010, which I kept as evidence, but have not even peeked at in five years.

Tracy’s style of writing would be familiar to many of you: the kind that tears you apart and makes you afraid to even open an e-mail from your abuser.

(Obviously, Tracy does not feel this way when reading my blog, since she reads here so often.)

When I read Oscar Wilde’s account of Bosie’s telegrams and letters in De Profundis, I realized that Bosie and his father were male Tracys.

Bosie and his father both had a raging dysfunction which Wilde said ran in the family, so it must have been some sort of Cluster B personality disorder.

From what I know of Tracy, abuse, narcissism, borderline personality disorder, and Bosie’s family, writing such horrid letters appears to be a common trait among abusers.

There is absolutely no concern for nor respect for the recipient, but rather a desire to make him or her feel smaller than a dust mite, to make her feel like the slime on the wall of a sewer pipe.

And it makes no difference whether the recipient did anything to deserve this: No, all that matters to the abuser is that the abuser THINKS he did.  Wilde would get such letters and telegrams from Bosie without rhyme nor reason to it.

So it was emotionally risky to open those posts again in order to revise them.  But I did it anyway.

It is wonderful and healing to see that my pain in doing this, is helping others to heal.

It was worthwhile not only to share those blog posts and the e-mail, but to keep them up.  Sometimes it takes a while, but others find them and use them to glean their own lessons.  They find validation for their own struggles.  They find a way to no longer care when their own abusers send them e-mails like mine sent me.

Then, sometimes, they share with others.

It’s all part of raising awareness and helping to heal abuse victims.

[Update 4/5/15:]  Also, the more I see people subscribing to my blog and connecting with the posts that skewer my abusers’ sociopathic e-mail to me, the less and less power that sociopathic e-mail retains over me.  I realize that my abusers have not been back at my church for two and a half years.

I realize that I feel mostly content these days, because I’m busy at church and Writer’s Club, and people in both places call me Friend.  This helps remove any residual emotional attachment to Richard.

My abusers do not have the ability to sue, no legal leg to stand on, so their e-mail had only an emotional power to hurt me.  Once I remove the emotional power, all their power to hurt me is gone.

BLOG HARD!

Loony Roommies and Flying Gargoyles–College Memoirs: Life At Roanoke–March 1995, Part 8

On probably Friday, March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, Cugan came to the apartment for a date.  He tossed two cute, stuffed baby gargoyles on the chair, and handed me a St. Patrick’s Day card that he originally planned to mail.

I soon found out that one of the gargoyles was for me.  I didn’t know what kind of name a gargoyle would have, but he suggested Dido, and named his own Liko.  We decided mine was a boy and his was a girl.

Cugan said dust bunnies were Dido’s food.  Well, then, he had plenty of food at the apartment and, especially, under the beds.

My roommates called Cugan into the office.  I listened from outside as Pearl said with a laugh, “We want to know, what are your intentions toward our roommate?”

Their little “interrogation” didn’t last long, and may have embarrassed Cugan a bit, but it also made us laugh.

This was probably when we saw Forrest Gump, which we liked.  Of course, we had no idea that one day, a new variety show called Mad TV would mix together Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction in a sketch, and have Forrest say, “We’re going to get medieval on your butt-ocks.”

(I don’t know how long this Mad TV lasted.  We only saw the first episode, because the Forrest Gump sketch was the only good one, so we figured it wouldn’t be around for long.)

I came home that night to find my “stash”–my own cupboards, which held snacks and chocolate–taped shut.  My roommates did this as a joke.  I just pulled off the tape and opened up the cupboards.

My roommates were so strange that night, making weird noises on the couch and laughing to high heaven, that I could only attribute it to the full moon.

I don’t remember what Tara thought of Dido, but Pearl thought he was cute.  I kept him on the back of the couch during the day and evening.  That’s how stricken I was with Cugan and his gift.

Sharon, however, whenever she saw it, would say, “Eww!  It’s ugly!”  She or Pearl said, “If it flies, it’s outta here!”

So, naturally, one night he fell off the back of the couch onto the cushions, and Pearl or Sharon cried, “He flew, so he’s outta here!”  He wasn’t, of course.

Unfortunately, after all the years of hanging around our various dwellings and sitting on the beds with other stuffed animals, Dido and Liko got lost in our latest move in 2003.  One bag or box held them and others of our most precious stuffed animals; one bag held rags.  Naturally, the rag bag made it just fine.

We searched everywhere and even called people who helped in the move, but the bag was nowhere.  Also lost were Cugan’s Animaniac dolls and my Halloween witch cat, which looked just like a Halloween decoration I named “Pirate Samantha” back when I was around nine years old.  I used to write and act out all sorts of stories about this Pirate Samantha.  But now she was gone, too.  🙁

****

The first time I went to Cugan’s tiny apartment in M–, its contents impressed me, though the mess did not.

The outside walls of the two-story apartment building were typically German: white with brown half-timbers.

The living room, with a big picture window, was small and crammed with stuff, which lay all over the floor and on plastic shelving units, though I think he had made some attempt at cleaning up before I came over.

A chess set was laid out on the coffee table, which was off to one side.  Two big, square pillows, which also went on the big, round, papasan wicker chair, formed the “couch” because, as Cugan said, a couch was often a luxury.

On top of one of the shelving units lay stuffed versions of all three of the Animaniac siblings.  That’s when I discovered his love for Animaniacs.  I think other stuffed animals were here and there.

A Celtic harp stood in one corner, books on the Celts (including the same one by Nora Chadwick which we read in Celtic class) were in a bookcase, a Bible or two sat near the “couch,” and Luther’s Small Catechism lay on the floor by the “couch.”  Had I found the kind of man I didn’t dare dream of finding–one with interests similar to mine, one who actually liked the Celts and the Bible?

Not only that, but based on his name, he believed himself to be Irish, and had a plaque with What Shall I Say About the Irish?  He fit the traits quite well.

(I’m not Irish, rather Scottish, but took an Irish Writers class which got me interested in the country.)

Though many years later his family discovered that, through his father, they were most likely Scottish, it has not been confirmed one way or the other about him being Irish, Scottish, or perhaps both.

In any case, I can’t help noticing that all my lovers (Shawn, Phil and Cugan) have been Irish….

And the best thing: Unlike Phil, he bathed AND brushed his teeth every day! not just once every several weeks after lots of nagging!

Index 
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

September 1991:

October 1991:

November 1991:

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year 

Summer 1992:

September 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

November 1992:

December 1992:

January 1993:

February 1993:

March 1993:

April 1993:

May 1993:

Junior Year 

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

September 1993:

October 1993:

November 1993:

December 1993:

January 1994:

February 1994:

March 1994:

April 1994:

May 1994:

Senior Year 

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

July & August 1994:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

October 1994:

November 1994:

December 1994:

January 1995:

February 1995:

March 1995:

April 1995:

May 1995:

 

Another site giving the dangers of slapping kids upside the head

On the Home Treatment page of “Shaken Baby Syndrome” by HealthLinkBC (British Columbia, which is reviewed by a whole team of medical professionals):

Help prevent shaken baby syndrome

  • Never shake a baby. Also, do not slap or hit a child of any age on the face or head. A child’s brain is very delicate. Shaking, slapping, or hitting a child can cause serious harm, even though it may not leave any obvious sign of injury.

Also from that site:

Shaking or hitting a child’s head or face is always dangerous. Young children cannot control the movement of their head as well as adults can.

Shaken baby syndrome (shaken baby–impact syndrome) is brain damage caused when a baby is shaken, slammed, or thrown against an object. —Physical Abuse: Common Injuries in Children

I was appalled to witness, in real life, my ex-friends Richard and Tracy defending and joking about smacking kids upside the head, after I saw Tracy do it to her toddler.

Tracy even accused me of defaming her when she discovered I called her a child abuser.  But this is just plain not true: This and her other practices, as I have explained in various chapters in this web-book, ARE INDEED CHILD ABUSE.

And the above quote, along with various others I have given in the links at the bottom of the page, is proof of this.

Rather than threatening me and breathing fire, she needs to review her own practices and CHANGE THEM before her children are irreparably damaged–and either become child abusers as adults, or become victims of abusive husbands.

I was appalled to see another woman smack her toddler in the mouth for using the f– word, which she herself uses on a regular basis.  This practice is condemned here by four dental professionals, whose credentials you can see under “Author Information”:

Oral injuries may be inflicted with instruments such us eating utensils or a bottle during forced feedings. The abuse may result in contusions, burns, or lacerations of the tongue, lips, buccal mucosa, palate, gingival alveolar mucosa or frenum; fractured, displaced, or avulsed teeth; or facial bone and jaw fractures. In older children, gags used to silence or punish a child can leave bruises at the corners of the mouth. A slap or a blow to the child’s mouth to silence the child may injure the labial frenum. –C Stavrianos, I Stavrianou, P Kafas, D Mastagas. The Responsibility of Dentists in Identifying and Reporting Child Abuse. The Internet Journal of Law, Healthcare and Ethics. 2006 Volume 5 Number 1.

I was appalled to see this woman post on Facebook, “Parents, beat your children.”  Then to hear her say at a party that grabbing a kid’s ear is not abuse.  She is the sister of a friend, but I have nothing to do with her anymore.  I write about this here.

I am appalled to come across comments on the Web saying that it’s perfectly fine to smack kids upside the head, or slap them in the face, that it’s not abuse and doesn’t cause harm.  Above is yet more evidence that this is just not true.

A website (HealthLinkBC) which is reviewed by hundreds of medical specialists, surely must influence parents into giving up this destructive practice.

At least, you would hope.  You would wish.

I am heartened, at least, by the thousands of visitors who have already seen my posts and pages on this subject.  Their search terms, Facebook shares, and number of return visits tell me that many others are looking for the truth on this, do care about children.

I just added this quote to my other pages/posts on child abuse.

While supposedly we’re not to say bad things about people during Lent, I just don’t see how keeping quiet about child abuse is the moral and right thing to do just because it’s Lent.

I am fighting to stop abuse through raising awareness via my website.  Also, Tracy reads this blog regularly, so I hope to influence her into changing her destructive practices before she causes more harm to those four beautiful children.

I call on her to REPENT during this period of Lent.  Apologize to those girls and turn away from abusing them, and they will forgive you and love you forever.  Continue in this destructive path, and they will run from you as soon as they have the chance.

For my other research on this, see Don’t smack your kids: Research into teenage football concussions, Child Abuse, Examples of Child Abuse, Hitting Kids Upside the Head is ABUSE, Slapping Kids Upside the Head Causes Traumatic Brain Injury, and  …Because slapping kids on the head is ABUSE!  STOP THE VIOLENCE!.

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