bullying stories

Oh Stalkers, Why Do You Creep? (To Creepy Blog Stalkers)

Oh stalkers, why do you creep?
Why do you come here
Read my innermost thoughts
Follow the chronicle of my pain
Watch the path of my healing?

Oh stalkers, why do you creep?
Is it penance for your sins?
Is it curiosity?
Is it arrogance, ego, your excessively swollen head?
Is it to feed off my angst like vultures on the dead?

Oh stalkers, why do you creep?
You have left my life yet keep watching
Are you watching for my resurrection from Hell?

You are gone
And you pass out of me like water
The negativity, the abuse, the soul murder

You are gone
I can breathe again
I excrete your words like waste

 

Reblog: Explaining how to tell true from fake victims

For outsiders, it can be hard to tell which is the narcissist and which the victim:

I bet my poor priest had this problem when Richard and Tracy went up to him a year and a half ago, before I had a chance to, and told him who knows what lies.

I heard Tracy’s indignant whispers, and thought I caught “self-righteous” as well.  I know they also persuaded some girl I didn’t know, “Chia,” that I was somehow falsely accusing them and being awful to them.

I also remember the smear campaign they conducted against Richard’s friend Todd, whose only crime was to try to help Tracy, and who then got mad at her when she continuously fought him and accused him for hours over it.

They got people–even me–thinking Todd was crazy.  But when I examined closely what really happened, I discovered that Tracy was lying to everyone.

I also remember two of my exes smearing me as well, telling their friends and anyone who would listen, lies about me.

But I found a blog post which sums up quite well in a series of bullet points, how to tell a true from a fake victim.  For example:

Let’s examine the traits of a well-trained pathological liar, a narcissist; with a history of duping others and manipulating to avoid responsibility vs a credible, honest, albeit “emotional” target of the narcissist.

….TRUE VICTIMS experience the grieving process. Shock. Denial. Anger. moving all the way through [to] acceptance.

Whereas a FALSE VICTIM will appear to get over the emotions of the experience rather quickly. They don’t appear to dwell, (ruminate / obsess) over the “abusive” experiences.

….Narcissists as FALSE VICTIMS don’t change a damn thing about their behavior. They don’t seek help. They don’t look over their shoulders. (Unless they’re paranoid about karma catching up with them) They don’t have trouble sleeping at night or difficulty breathing at times. They aren’t afraid of you in the ways they’ve claimed to be afraid.

They don’t hang out in support groups. They don’t share their stories with other survivors. They don’t endure the traumatic symptoms of PTSD.

TRUE VICTIMS can’t survive than by any other way than REACHING OUT for support. Seeking validation, seeking therapy, GOD, or other “SAVING” modalities is a revelation of our TRUE, inner state.

We’re shocked, scared and hurt. We give back and share our stories with others. We try to warn the next victim out of fear that the narcissist will victimize others.

We have the ability and show true empathy for other survivors because we KNOW what the abuse from a narcissist feels like. We KNOW how confusing it is. We don’t take the experience lightly, nor the feelings of those who’ve suffered this lightly.

TRUE VICTIMS become very involved in their own therapy. They are motivated by hurt, anger, fear and determination to never be made a victim again, and thus pour themselves into learning about their own behavior, vulnerabilities and areas in need of improvement. A narcissist believes it’s everyone ELSE that needs to change.

….The narcissist isn’t at home tending to their self-care and reading every tidbit of information regarding recovery they can get their hands on. They’re out meeting new dating partners, out selling themselves on websites for dating, flirting, laughing and gayly enjoying a life not fettered by consequences.

The article is here, from After Narcissistic Abuse: Will The REAL Victim of Narcissistic Abuse Please Stand Up

Some of my blog posts may seem disjointed at times; they also may seem quite sure of terms like “narcissist” and “abuse”….But keep in mind that:

–It took me several years to sort things out, starting in 2008.

–Initially, after we broke off the abusive friendship in 2010, my venting was done through vague Facebook posts and a private list of grievances.

–I knew there was abuse, but knew nothing about borderline or narcissistic personality disorders.  I think I came across this through Sam Vaknin’s website.

–It took me months to even begin to write a germ of a story on my website, which started as simply a few paragraphs on my page about abuse.  It wasn’t meant to be a novel-length account, but just a few paragraphs.  But it just kept building and building.

I wrote e-mails to friends and posts on Orthodox forums with basic descriptions, but to really sit down and write a narrative describing everything that happened?  I just couldn’t, not at first.  But once I began, it took many months after that to finish it.

–It took months of searching the Net for help, finding various blogs with other survivors, and writing down my experiences, before I could even figure out what the heck just happened, or stop blaming myself or feeling guilty.

My abusers yelled and screamed at my husband and me, online or off, while we tried to get them to calm down with my apologies.  I was the one left a puddle of emotional mush, while my abusers just went on with life and didn’t bother to even apologize.

Yet when they found my website and blog and I told them to leave me alone, they went to my priest and who knows how many friends (I found some interesting hits from various places on my blog), and cried “victim.”

They even wrote to me crying “victim,” poked fun at me for still being upset over what they did and not wanting to see them, treated me like what they did was nothing at all and I should just get over it.

Then they proceeded to force themselves in my face, coming to my church and shoving up behind me in the communion line, breathing and snarling down my neck, smearing me to my priest, then persisting in following my blog no matter how often I told them to go away or blocked them.

Do they sound like the victims to you?  Am I the one bullying them, as they claimed?

 

Proof my stalkers have backed off from trying to intimidate me

The fate of Richard and Tracy‘s church has concerned my church for some time now.  They sold their building, which had various problems including bad water, without having a new one lined up.  Their priests keep changing for one reason or another.

So the bishop suggested we merge, but nobody wanted to: Our churches are a couple counties apart, if they came to ours they’d have a long drive every Sunday, theirs was nonexistent, and if we found a midway point in the county between us, we’d have to sell our paid-for building and pay for a mortgage for a new one.

One of my friends wants to go there sometimes, because he lives around the midway point, but he keeps asking me if the church still exists because he can’t get information and the building is torn down.  Then he does get information, only to find they’re meeting in rented spots because they don’t have a building.

Earlier this summer, our archon (liaison between our church and the archdiocese) said R&T’s church had closed.  I have my own concerns, since if their church fails, will they become full-time members of mine?

So I check the website once in a while, but it hadn’t been updated for a year.  😛  (This is why I keep up my church website, because I know how frustrating that is.)  Last night, I finally found an update: They have not been meeting over the summer because they don’t even have a priest!

This amazed me because–Where have Richard and Tracy been going all summer, then (if they’re going anywhere)?  I haven’t been to every single service this summer because of stuff that happens, but I’ve been to most of them.  And I haven’t seen Richard and Tracy there for more than a year.

They also haven’t checked my blog for a month and a half.

I think they truly have backed down.  The threat is over.  I kept up my blog and didn’t back down, didn’t capitulate and call my truthful writings a lie, just to please them; now they’re gone.

Though I still wonder what will happen if their church does close, and dread the thought, that is a hypothetical worry, not one based in fact.  Maybe their church will find a way to keep surviving.  Or maybe R&T will move away.

So I must keep focusing on the here and now: Their church still exists, and even though they have not met all summer, R&T are not coming to mine.  Maybe the process of healing, and church continuing to be my oasis for a full year, will help me to deal with it better if they do show up again in the future.

Also, unlike last summer, when they specifically stated they were going to come to my church to intimidate me, this time I’ll know it has nothing to do with intimidating me.  It’s not their fault if their church does close.

So I can get to the point where I don’t care if I do see them, because their ability to hurt me will be gone.  Just like seeing Peter or Phil can no longer bother me, even though seeing them walk through the cafeteria doors set my teeth on edge back in college.

Heck, Peter and I have even kept in touch over the years, and are now Facebook friends.

I may still have to ask for mediation from the priest or a church member, to deal with the issue of sharing the Eucharist without eating and drinking condemnation unto ourselves.  But there is hope; the light is shining through; the end is in sight.

[Update 11/6/14: Shortly after, they resumed their blog stalking from different computers/IP addresses, but I have not seen them in person since.  Well, except once in a parking lot back in May.  And that’s despite the fact that their church is indeed closed, and there is no other Orthodox church in this county.]

[Update 3/14/16: See Now my church is officially merging with my abusers’ church.]

 

How and when I first realized Richard was a false friend

It wasn’t in the two years of pondering, researching and blogging about our supposed friendship.

It wasn’t when I wrote Realizing I was used and manipulated by my best friend.

It happened in the last half-year of our “friendship.”  For example:

But now, I began wondering how well I really knew him, as his violent nature began to swell up again, he complained about not cussing or showing certain movies when we were there (making me wonder what kind of movies he played when his own children were around), and just kept making remarks about bending over backwards for me.

I never asked him to, he kept complaining about it even when I told him he didn’t need to do it, and it made me wonder how much of the sweet guy I got close to, was real.  Or if maybe his wife was somehow influencing him toward the violence again.

He told me before that he felt cussing was unladylike, he wanted his wife to stop doing it, and he wanted to stop doing it himself as a Christian man–but now he complained that they had to cut the cussing when I was there (even though I never asked them to).  He was treating me like a china doll, which I resented.

But what do you expect from someone who hangs out with people from 4chan?  I have no idea if he himself liked to go over to 4chan, but I know some of his online friends either were or behaved like 4chan people, posting 4chan “goatsees” in IRC or on the game forums.

(4chan, as he and others have described it, is for people who like to be nasty for fun, posting anything they like.  What I’ve accidentally seen of goatsees are bizarre porno pictures.)

Once, I typed to Richard after someone did this in the IRC channel for his group of creepy friends, that of course I wouldn’t click on any links they posted in this channel, and he said that he clicked on them all!!??

He knew that these kids/overgrown kids were probably posting hardcore porn, yet clicked on the links anyway?  (And even gave them a picture of his wife’s breasts???)

I no longer knew what to believe.  His wife crowed during the “incident” (next chapter) that she no longer had to be “quiet and nice,” making me wonder when she was secretly seething in my presence when I thought things were fine, and over what?

Her passive-aggression drove me mad, especially since it never seemed to be based in anything I actually DID, but just imaginary crap that was only in her own head.

What was real?  What was fake?  I thought Richard was always honest with me; now I wondered if he had lied, when, and how often?

Was he anything like the great and spiritual and caring man of God I had thought he was?  How many of his stories were true?  How much of what he told me about himself, his dealings with his wife, and his past, was true?

Or could it be that it was true, before, but she had corroded him so much with her abusive acid, convincing him of things about me that were not true, just as abusers do with their victims in order to isolate them from their support network–that he had changed toward me and was not the same person he was before?

Two years before he had seemed a whipped and passive husband, who I wished would stand up for himself more.

But recently I saw him either fighting back or looking sick and tired of being scolded; could he be starting to give back what he was getting?

How many of his sweet words about me and our friendship, were true?

…..Richard acted like he knew better than I did what was going on in my head.  He became very short and cutting with me, when he used to be kind.

This was the weekend; I was going to go to a water park at the local fairgrounds with Jeff and my son, but Richard’s e-mails made me so upset that it affected me physically, and I couldn’t go.

They made me feel I had put my trust in the wrong person.  After all the private things I confided in him, all the trust and love and concern I had shown toward him over the years, I now regretted ever telling him anything about myself at all!  

I wondered if the many things I confided in him, hoping he would understand me better, had instead made him think I was a freak.

I lost my trust in him.  I no longer felt he had my best interests at heart.  I had no idea who else to turn to, but it sure didn’t seem like I could turn to him anymore.

So you see, the suspicions were in my head even before I ended the friendship.  Imagine the devastation of suspecting your five years of close friendship were a lie.  But then, if you’ve been in some sort of long relationship with a narcissist, you don’t have to imagine: You know what it’s like.

The red flags were already getting my conscious attention, so much so that I started e-mailing another close friend, Mike, for help.

Also, during this time Richard was making me feel insecure by criticizing everything I did or said, another way abusers catch you off-guard, gaslight you, and make you think you’re the one with the problem, so the focus is taken off them:

In fact, when I ponder these things, and see more evidence that Chris, while a nice guy, is clinically paranoid–I realize:

At first Richard idealized me, called me the most awesome person he knew, and made me feel like his BFF, and like he wanted to spend time with me more than with any of his other friends.

But now Chris seemed to have taken over that role, and I couldn’t help a twinge of jealousy that Richard never seemed to have time for me, but had plenty of time for Chris.

So he valued the guy with the crazy paranoid political rantings more than he did me, the sane one who helped him out financially and emotionally during very difficult times.

And he was married to someone showing all the signs of Borderline, Narcissistic or some other personality disorder.  And his longtime ex also showed signs of BPD. So–okay–apparently Richard prefers the company of personality disordered people.

And then he and/or Tracy calls me crazy–yeah, that’s so ironic and ludicrous as to be hilarious.

Yet he kept criticizing everything about me, practically accusing me of stalking all my friends because I like to keep all my e-mails and letters to and from them, treating me like I was somehow clingy because I wanted the consideration of him either keeping to his appointments with me or letting me know right away when he couldn’t.

He felt my nutritional choices were open to his critique.  He treated me like a prude for not wanting to go around nude in my house, or for not wearing my nightgown around him without a robe.

He called me a prude because I don’t like sex-soaked TV shows like Sex and the City, or gory movies like zombie movies or Alien.  He even made it somehow personally offensive and inconvenient for him, because if he wanted to show me an exceptionally good movie like that, he couldn’t.  (So?  Show me something else, then!)

He talked like Jeff and I were prudes for our lack of sexual experience before each other, compared to his own.

In the beginning he love-bombed me and treated me like I was wonderful, but now he kept criticizing me for things that were none of his business.

One of his friends is a creep, but when this friend sexually harasses me, Richard makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me for being upset about it and considering this guy a creep.

I find conspiracy theories about government wanting to control us, to be a bunch of paranoid crap, so I’m the sheeple, the one who doesn’t care about personal liberties, who isn’t worth talking to about politics.

Okay…Sounds like the lunatics running the asylum.

Same thing with Tracy, who in her own way–considering how she accused people of insulting her, lacking respect for her, and needing to grow up, while she herself was doing the insulting and raging, lacked respect for them, and needed to grow up–is the lunatic running the asylum.

Shows me just how much stock I should put in the opinions and criticisms of both Richard and Tracy.

I also noticed that he would start treating me like an annoyance, but when I gave him some money or some other thing he needed, I suddenly became his best friend.  I believe this is in my story as well.

These quotes come from here and here in my story.  May it help you recognize red flags yourself, when you’re being abused by “friends” and/or suspect you’re being used by a narcissist.

If ever I start thinking that no, he was not using or manipulating me, that I have him all wrong–I can just re-read this chapter and see that I recognized the red flags even before I ended the friendship.

I didn’t know what narcissism entailed (other than loving yourself too much), but I had already encountered liars, users and sociopaths at various times in my life.  This chapter tells me I was correct.

May this chapter help you figure out whether your own loved one is really using you.

It’s Gone. The Depression is Gone!

I just realized: This past week, I just don’t feel it anymore.

Actually, I have been feeling down in the dumps at times, but that’s because of a NEW situation: My husband suddenly having a blowup with different friends, and wondering if they were ever really his friends.

But those are other people, and I think he may have made it into more than it was, thanks to his own version of being traumatized by what Richard and Tracy did.  I’m waiting to see how that turns out; in the meantime, my own friendships with these people have not been lost….

But as for Richard and Tracy, the depression is all gone, vanished.  I first began to realize this Monday night, after my second visit to the local writer’s club: fresh faces, happy people, nice people, funny people, potential friendships with like-minded people.

I don’t think I grieve Richard anymore, that my mind and heart have finally processed that he’s not what I thought he was.  I’m no longer troubled by the things Tracy said and did to me, as if it were just some mist of the past.

I also haven’t seen their little LG-P870 Android on this blog for nearly a month.  There has been no sign of them anywhere since they saw this post on January 29.

Before and after they found my blog, I would see them once in a while, on the street, at Greek Fest, or at church.  My husband would see them at the store.  Sometimes I saw their pictures in the newspaper, online or print.

After they found my blog, I could swear I saw them around more often: Last August, for example, they came to my church, then afterwards I saw them pass our car as we waited to leave a fast-food restaurant driveway.  Then another time that summer or fall, Tracy drove past me as I biked to an errand.

But since they saw this post, I haven’t seen them AT ALL.  Not at church.  Not at Greek Fest.  Not even my husband has seen them at the store.  I haven’t even seen them on the street!  Heck, I haven’t even seen pictures of them in the newspaper.

I know they’re still in town because I see them in my stats once in a while, from this town.  Did they get a new vehicle/license plate?  Or could they be doing this deliberately so as not to scare me anymore?

Or could it be related to a post (now removed) which they read on January 30, in which I posted part of an e-mail conversation which proved that either Richard and/or Tracy had lied to me about our sticking point, and falsely accused me?

In any case, my heart now feels healed.  I’ve read about this sort of thing happening when you’ve been talking and writing about your abusive experiences for a while.

Maybe now, forgiveness will come.

Though I still don’t ever want to see “them” again unless they’re ready to accept responsibility for the things they’ve done to everyone, and make amends.  Forgiveness and healing, does not mean being stupid.

Some people take down their abuse blogs after healing, but some keep their blogs up, so that others can read them and be helped along in their own healing journeys.

I’m keeping mine up.  Of course, this blog is kind of a hodgepodge, not just an abuse blog, but I’m keeping it all up, not just the posts on other subjects  🙂  From the amount of traffic I get to those posts, I see the desperate need for these abuse blogs.

As Christina Enevoldsen writes,

For the most part, when I talk about my abuse now, it’s for someone else’s benefit.  However, when a new memory surfaces or I delve into a deeper layer, I share it with my friends and I give myself all the time I need to process it.

As she also writes,

This past year, I’ve stood up for myself in big and small ways. One of the most significant ways I’ve objected to abuse is when I confronted my dad for sexually abusing me.

I knew there wasn’t much chance of any change of heart or action on his part, but just speaking up was liberating. I’ve never felt so empowered in my life.

I didn’t feel any smaller when he refused to apologize or admit his crime. It wasn’t about his response or lack of response. Standing up for myself was an expression of what I already knew about myself—I matter. I knew that no matter what he did or said, it didn’t define me or inform me of my value.

That’s the truth I know today that I didn’t know when I was a child. The way I’m treated doesn’t actually define me. I’m valuable whether or not others recognize that.

Knowing that truth empowers me. Now, I’m free to act independently of other people’s actions. I can afford to acknowledge the impact others have on me since I’m the one with the biggest impact in my own life.

 

 

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