Oddly enough, my blog stalkers finding this blog seems to have been a blessing in disguise. For two years, I wanted so badly to tell them how I felt, how badly they’d treated my husband and me, that it was bullying and abuse, that I did not deserve this after all the kindness I’d shown and how much I’d put up with from them, etc. etc.–and Richard just how badly I missed him just the same.
But I felt there was no way I could do it safely, without getting beaten up or worse. I didn’t know if I could trust mutual friends, and didn’t want to tell them all the gory details, or who I meant, fearing they wouldn’t want to hear it anyway. You know how mutual friends tend to not want to get involved.
And my own friends/family did not know them, and could not do a thing to help, could not intervene. They also had no clue what it was like to deal with traumas of this sort, without resorting to trite cliches that did nothing but make me feel at fault for having emotions, for not being able to turn them off at will.
Through blogging I could lay everything out, from beginning to end, without boring or annoying my loved ones. Only those who really wanted to would read it; no one would feel they “had” to.
If anyone did read it, I expected it would be people who had been in my shoes and wanted the validation and comfort of reading that others have been there, too.
(That’s how I felt when I found Joyful Alive Woman’s blog about her narcissistic best friend, especially since such stories were much harder to find than stories about narc family/spouses.)
Sure enough, this blog has been such an outlet that I no longer post much of anything about it on Facebook, or talk about it at home.
I also missed running home after services and writing Richard an e-mail about all the things happening at church, since we went to different ones.
Nobody else could appreciate it from the same vantage point he had, being from a similar background and having seen me through the conversion. I’d sit at my table while everyone was leaving to go home, feeling sad that I couldn’t tell him what had just happened.
But now I seem to have Richard and/or Tracy’s rapt attention. Whatever I write, whether it’s the next day or a week later, unless they have no interest in the topic of a post, they read.
I have four trackers going, and glean all the information I need, to know when and what they read. I have found all sorts of codes for IP blockers and could now conceivably block them, but decided to just open it up and let them read it all without worrying anymore.
Now, I just let it all out. It’s my chance. All they have to do is say, “I’m sick of reading this,” and ignore it all completely. But they don’t. Nobody’s forcing them to read, but they choose to keep coming back.
Since I have their attention, sometimes I rant, sometimes I rave, sometimes I mourn, sometimes I ponder.
Because, no matter how much all people take their problems to their friends, family, and whoever, what we really want to do–what is truly satisfying–is to take the problem directly to the source and tell them what a complete a**hole they’ve been.
Though, of course, if you want to keep the relationship, you do it more civilly and tactfully….
If they choose to ignore the truth and not work on how they treat people, if they choose to continue bullying me rather than repenting and making peace, it’s their salvation at stake. They have to make that choice; I can’t choose it for them.
But I have told them what they’ve done, so it’s on their hands what they do with it, not mine. They themselves have admitted to losing other friends besides me, because those friends couldn’t handle Tracy anymore.
If they want to keep losing friends, that’s their choice. But they can’t keep blaming those friends for feeling traumatized, angry and/or damaged.
I finally get to say what I really feel about politics without fear I’ll lose my friend, because, well, that happened already anyway. I even find it oddly satisfying that I can post about my church happenings and he’ll read it again…..
I know it keeps me connected to him, and that’s dangerous emotionally. I know he’s shown every sign of not being the friend I thought he was, of me being duped with the gullibility and naivete that have served me ill time and time again throughout my life.
But sometimes I dare to hope that he still cares. I don’t know what he’ll do with the outpourings of my heart, if it’ll lead to good or if he’ll rip my heart out again and twist and squeeze it until it turns to dust, like the Evil Queen does to hearts on Once Upon a Time. All I do know is that I know it’s dangerous, and that I do it anyway, so I own it.
And another thing is, I finally had a chance to stand up to my bullies. I told them to leave me alone, gave them the terms if they ever wanted to speak to me again.
I told them they were bullies. I did not hide in a corner, afraid to tell, but told my husband, friends, family, the police and priest what was going on.
Actually, except for the police I had already told all these people two years ago what had happened before, but now there were more things to tell.
The blog stalkers knew I told my priest, seeing me go up there after they did; the policeman told me that I’m doing nothing illegal and they can’t sue me for talking to my priest.
Their threats are baseless; they would get laughed out of court, and fined for wasting the court’s time. At first I felt scared and intimidated, but over time I gained strength to stand up for myself and not let them scare me. I’d been scared for far too long already, and that’s just what a bully wants.
My anthem has been “Bully” by Shinedown. Telling about how you’ve been abused and bullied is crucial, because abuse thrives in silence, in the shadows. Telling takes you from being a victim to surviving, to eventually thriving.
It may even save you from worse, because if the bully carries out his threats, everyone will know who did it, and he knows this. If you’re threatened with physical violence, tell the police.
Many of my blogs these days basically go into more minute detail on some topic I already covered in my stories of what all happened, so it’s not as if they’re reading anything new, but it’s for people who want to read about those specific topics in general.
Like the other day, when I saw in my stats that somebody in a library in some other state, read my page on abuse against husbands. Based on the search term, I bet that was an abused husband looking for help, using a library so his wife wouldn’t find out. It warmed my heart to think that I might be helping this man.
I’m so driven by the topic of abuse of all kinds, and wanting to stop it, that one of my oldest friends keeps urging me to turn it into a profession.
I’ve long since written off Tracy as a lost cause, and don’t want her back. But if there is any way at all to break through Richard’s hard heart, I know I have tried it. I know I have said all I needed to say to them both. And while I still have moments when the anger flares up, I feel the angst starting to depart…..
I went back to Prozac Blogger’s blog the other day, and found an announcement that he has finally healed from his father’s abuses, that while he’ll keep the blog online for others who need it, he’s doing a new one on happier topics.
I also discovered a few posts a few months ago about directly confronting his father and cutting him out of his life–that he has “won.” (“I Won! or: How I dealt with my father,” which I can no longer find, even in the Wayback Machine. 😛 ) Gee, could there be a correlation…..
So what festered for two (really, four, because there were so many things Tracy did back then and never apologized for) years in my head, I’ve spent the last six months finally getting out to the ones who put it there.
It’s like when I told my husband a dream I’d had, and he interpreted it as, me wanting to tell them to take their crap back. Many people warn against confronting abusers, legitimately because it can be very dangerous. But even so, it can be healing, so many others say go ahead and do it.
It’s just like when, in the past several years, I read over the copies of some letters I’d sent to abusive exes, and discovered that even if I did not then have all the knowledge I now have of abuse, I still confronted them with everything I needed to say.
Even though they reacted badly, I had this proof that it had been done, which suddenly released me from the feeling of unfinished business. Since I had directly confronted the abusers, rather than just writing their actions into stories, journals, letters and forums–all forms of communication which were to others, not the abusers–I could feel peace at last.
Though I could still do the other forms as well, the chief need had been fulfilled.
….How odd. It looks like, yesterday, unless somebody else is now matching their domain stats in one of my trackers, which is highly unlikely because nobody else ever has, they found my Mammoth Cave page through a Google search….Did they even realize it was mine?
[Update 7/26/14: In those days, my stalkers were the only ones showing up in my Google Analytics with the Network “mcore.” This seems to be AT&T’s mobile core network. Through a new category added to Analytics recently, the “User Bucket,” I was finally able to discover whether this reader of “Mammoth Cave” was my stalkers. No, it was not. But all other hits from “mcore” were my stalkers.]
Just gonna stand there and watch me burn But that’s all right because I like the way it hurts Just gonna stand there and hear me cry But that’s all right because I love the way you lie I love the way you lie Rihanna/Eminem, “Love the Way You Lie”
I’ve pulled some quotes from the Net about blogging used as therapy, an intensely popular pastime this past decade:
Research has long backed the therapeutic value of diary-keeping for teenage girls and boys. But according to a new study, when teenagers detail their woes onto a blog, the therapeutic value is even greater. Blogging, it seems, can be good for you.
The study, published in the journal Psychological Services and conducted by Meyran Boniel-Nissim and Azy Barak, psychology professors at the University of Haifa, Israel, found the engagement with an online community allowed by the blog format made it more effective in relieving the writer’s social distress than a private diary would be….
In all the groups, the greatest improvement in mood occurred among those bloggers who wrote about their problems and allowed commenters to respond. –Pamela Paul, A Blog as Therapy for Teenagers
Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings.
But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery….
Unlike a bedside journal, blogging offers the added benefit of receptive readers in similar situations, Morgan explains: “Individuals are connecting to one another and witnessing each other’s expressions—the basis for forming a community.” –Jessica Wapner, Blogging–It’s Good For You
When a 24-year-old woman who called herself “90DayJane” launched a blog in February announcing she would write about her life and feelings for three months and then commit suicide, 150,000 readers flocked to the site….
Few, however, questioned why she would share her deepest thoughts and feelings with strangers online. In the age of cyber-voyeurism, the better question might be: Why wouldn’t she?
…Roughly 12 million Americans have blogs, according to polls by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2006, and many seem to use them as a form of group therapy….
Writing long has been considered a therapeutic outlet for people facing problems. A 2003 British Psychological Society study of 36 people suggested that writing about emotions could even speed the healing of physical wounds:
Researchers found that small wounds healed more quickly in those who wrote about traumatic personal events than in those who wrote about mundane activities.
But it’s the public nature of blogs that creates the sense of support. Reading someone else’s blog can be surprisingly beneficial….
“Blogging can create an instant support system, especially at a time when you might not have the energy or resources to seek out people who’ve shared your experiences,” says Mason, author of “No One Cares What You Had For Lunch,” a book on keeping a blog interesting. –Anna Jane Grossman, Your Blog Can Be Group Therapy
Some people have all the time in the world to have therapy sessions to talk about their feelings with a shrink who constantly asks about their “mommy” or “daddy issues”. Don’t get me wrong, I believe psychiatrists help a great deal in solving serious problems that their clients have.
However, everything does not require a professional to solve problems that persist in our lives. We sometimes just need to let it all out, whatever it is that bothers us.
Here’s something you can actually do to air out your issues – blog.
What I have learned from blogging is that it gives you time to reflect on the things you are writing down, giving you a clearer perspective on the real underlying issue. –Margaret Keely, How Blogging Can Serve as Therapy
The Internet is now teeming with some 15 million blogs. Although the medium first drew mainstream attention with commentary on high-profile events such as the presidential election, many now use it to chronicle intensely personal experiences, venting confessions in front of millions of strangers who can write back.
Nearly half of bloggers consider it a form of therapy, according to a recent survey sponsored by America Online Inc….
“I think it’s a way of validating feelings. It’s a way of purging things inside of you,” said Judith HeartSong, a 41-year-old Rockville artist.
As a child, she kept diaries filled with anguished accounts of abuse hidden under her bed, she said, but now she posts entries on the Web. –Yuki Noguchi, Cyber-Catharsis: Bloggers Use Websites as Therapy
David Sax once joked that I use my blog as cheap therapy. He was right. I use this space to unload all the angst, worry and pent up emotions from my life in the restaurant. From my personal life too.
It feels good. More than once I’d be tossing and turning in bed only to find relief at my keyboard. Not like that. Well, yeah, like that and by blogging too. –Zane Caplansky, Blogging as Cheap Therapy
One woman’s fight to divorce her narcissistic husband, here on a blog.
“Through sharing my personal battles in the California Family Court System, I have created a support group for thousands of women to share their stories and receive advice,“ states Tina Swithin, creator and founder of One Mom’s Battle blog and Facebook page.
Like most independent bloggers, Tina began writing without an audience, a clear direction, or an understanding of her potential impact:
“I began my blog for personal reasons. It was a way for me to purge the emotions and stress resulting from a horrendous, high-conflict divorce. I was tired of burdening my friends and family with my fears, vents and frustrations, and I sensed that they were equally tired of hearing about it.
What started as a simple online journal has turned into something healing, empowering, and sometimes overwhelming in a positive sense. To date, I have had almost 150,000 views on my blog and the numbers grow every day.” –Paula Carrasquillo, Can Facebook help us heal? | Washington Times Communities
Realizing your best friend was manipulating and playing you the whole time, is very disturbing. But it finally hit me this week as I kept piecing things together, put 2 and 2 together and finally got 4. My proof is right there in the e-mail Tracy sent me back in May of this year.
My blog stalkers twisted my words into threats I never made, and then used those imaginary threats as justification to threaten me with legal action.
(See Now I’m Being Stalked, where you can read about this, my dissection of the e-mail, and the full text of their e-mail.)
I looked through all my posts but could find nothing to back up their claims that I threatened to expose them to the local community and/or church.
(Just a note in one blog, not addressed to them, that I hoped they would move away so I wouldn’t have to see them around anymore, and a note in another blog, not addressed to them, that if their church merged with mine, I would have to go to the priest for help, for my own physical, emotional and spiritual safety.)
But I reviewed all my posts and could find nothing to justify their threats, I have tons of documentation, and I am an eye-witness of, or got directly from my blog stalkers, practically everything I wrote….
It also went against something I wrote in one blog, that I had no intention of spreading around the church the story of what they had done.
My blogs were merely about personal release of metaphorical demons, and I had no intentions of revealing their real names on here or somehow publishing them to the whole local community.
(And how on earth I was supposed to do so, I have no idea. Take out an ad in the paper, perhaps? As if such an ad would even be run! Pass out fliers? Go door-to-door? If they mean talking to my local friends–they can’t stop a person from confiding in friends.)
Their e-mail was so ludicrous, paranoid, absurd and revealing as to be laughable. It gave me concrete evidence of their abuse, self-centeredness and vindictiveness, so I’m holding onto it. It even gave me concrete evidence that they just used us for our generosity, and were never true friends.
Just think: Not only did they demonstrate the same utter lack of regard for the feelings and points of view of Hubby and me that they had shown during the “Incident” and that Tracy showed for me the entire time I knew her…
But a lawsuit would be an attempt to get money out of us.
Didn’t we give them quite enough money over the years?
Considering the extreme lengths we took over the years to help them out, far beyond what most people would do, and the fact that we’re not even remotely related to them,
I think we are at least owed kindness, consideration, a restraint from verbal abuse and bullying, and apologies for outbursts.
But to not even get that from them, and have them come out and say in this e-mail that they owe us nothing and did nothing wrong, is clear, documented proof–which you yourself can read–that they feel entitled to bad behavior without apology. It clearly shows a lack of conscience and empathy.
Me always getting blamed for that bad behavior, without the blamers taking any of it onto themselves, is another telling piece of the puzzle.
Hubby has said all along that he does not want me debasing myself to her, that Tracy has to get down on her knees and apologize to me. And he wouldn’t mind apologies for how he got treated, either.
I, Hubby, our parents and one of my old friends all have a distinct impression that Hubby and I were played for suckers.
For me, after two months of happily hosting only Richard, there was the sudden, unexpected announcement that the rest of the family was coming to move in–and Richard already had to sleep on the couch.
There was no room for another adult and three more children, but they came here with no other place to go, no move-out plan, and ended up staying for six long weeks.
Neither my husband nor I approved this, thinking the other one must have okayed it, but never being asked, just told they were coming. My son was forced out of his bed and into ours.
When Richard made this announcement, I got him an apartment guide and told him to find a place. I kept asking/begging him for a move-out date, but it kept getting put off, or he’d say he couldn’t give me one.
Yet Tracy complained that I did not make her feel welcome,
complained about the food we provided (who can afford fresh produce and no canned/frozen every night for eight people on a middle-class salary and ballooning utility bills???!!!),
they gave us no money when they had promised to pay for food,
they left messes all over the house (including a massive pile of dirty laundry in the living room),
and she was very rude and aggressive to me and abusive to Richard and the kids even while living in my house,
as if she expected we would just let her do this without kicking her out–That shows a sense of entitlement.
As does the distinct feeling I got that what I did or where I went in my home was subject to her approval.
(I got this from her complaints about me taking time to myself,
the way she’d follow after me if I went to talk to Richard by myself,
the angry look she gave when Richard invited me to play cards with them,
and her complaints to Richard about my “routine” and to her mother about who does the cooking in my house and what we served for dinner!)
Then, a year and a half later, when they were on hard times again and I bit the bullet and offered to let them stay here again,
I discovered from Richard that she refused,
that she spit on our hospitality,
accused me of being a bad, unwelcoming hostess (because I had to do housework and change diapers, and desperately needed time to myself every day with all these people and noise crammed into my 1100-sq.ft. condo),
and was very upset with me for overhearing me tell my husband she was bullying me and abusing Richard.
Yeah, I can feel your ingratitude from here, a lack of appreciation for how you forced yourself on us and then complained about the accommodations,
just how much your presence put us out financially and personally,
for how you were driving me crazy and making me want you OUT.
And because of this, they tried to force me into an uphill battle to please her and get back into her good graces if I expected to be friends with Richard.
Meanwhile, she had no intentions of changing anything about herself that caused me to call her abusive and keep her at arm’s length. More entitlement. And more evidence that we were sponged off, used, by fake friends.
On the very night of the “Incident,” Hubby said to me, “Do you feel used? I do. They were not good friends.”
On the part of Hubby’s parents, all it took was one long phone conversation describing what happened, to convince them we were taken advantage of.
They said Hubby shouldn’t have let things go on as long as they did, that as soon as they began complaining about the food we provided, he should’ve (politely) shown them the door.
My mother, also, keeps noting, “And to treat you like this after all you’ve done for these people!”
An e-mail to my old friend resulted in the friend’s observation that these two were very manipulative and were never real friends to us, that she’s met people like this.
Then that e-mail from Tracy/Richard? came, confirming these suspicions for Hubby and me.
I’m not even sure what all was real and what was fake, because Richard sure played a convincing part, I thought we had a special bond and that he truly cared about me,
but then he began complaining about “pampering” me, and started coming out with things he’d held back from me, which first made me wonder what was real.
His behavior since has belied the impression he gave Hubby and me both; he had fooled us both for years.
A true friend would never behave the way he has done,
would reflect on his own behavior and return your apologies (which I gave both of them not just that very day, but a week/month later) with his own apologies,
would apologize for blowing up at a good friend.
It’s hard to admit that he may never have actually cared and was just playing a part to get our monetary and other support, especially since it is hard to be sure, though his behavior the past few years has been steadily confirming this.
But with Tracy, I’m sure, and her e-mails to me are proof.
All you have to do is read in the e-mail at the above link that they “had a good laugh” at my pain and point of view, that they “did nothing wrong” and would not apologize.
Those lines in themselves are glaring proof not just of a lack of empathy and conscience,
but that these two are a couple of con artists and spongers,
that neither of them ever really cared about Hubby or me, or they never would have written such callous lines.
And because those lines prove that they never truly cared,
that leads to the obvious conclusion that they used us for our generosity,
because we were so willing to give them a place to stay to our own inconvenience and financial strain,
to open up the wallet,
to give them food and out of our other surplus,
to give them rides,
to lend them things which we had to remind them to return. (We never did get the crib back.)
How often were we there for them? All the time. How often was Richard there when I needed him? Not so much, often ignoring my phone calls or e-mails.
After all, how much did I really know about either of them before letting them in? I met them on an Internet forum. It’s easy to misrepresent yourself on a forum.
There were all sorts of things which Richard never told me until right before he was to move in, things which made me start wondering if I should let him stay here.
There were things which he didn’t tell me until after he moved in, which shocked me.
There were things which came out little by little over the years; I didn’t hear about the Mafia goombah stint until 2009.
An even more telling piece of evidence of their duplicity, is the way they just let us end the friendship without a fight, the way they kept putting their pride and anger above friendship even a month later, even two years later.
Obviously getting their own way is far more important to them than anything or anybody else.
True friends would have at least tried to change our minds. Instead of dead silence, we would’ve gotten phone calls, visits, apologies and/or requests to talk it over. That’s what another of my friends did when one of his friends broke off the friendship.
Maybe it was because I showed signs of no longer believing Richard’s wild stories.
Maybe it was because we were not going for his politics.
Or maybe we had outlived our usefulness: Most of the time we knew them, they were both either unemployed or underemployed.
While Hubby, who lost his job when the economy tanked in 2008, did keep finding good-paying contract jobs,
but then in very late 2009 felt forced to take a job that barely paid the bills, made us buy poor-quality food at discount stores, but was permanent.
His employer was a miser, while Tracy finally found steady work. So they didn’t need as much help from us, while we didn’t have as much help to give.
It all fits together now, the more I think about it. To still, two years later, defend your abusive and nasty behavior as “nothing wrong,” is a sign of narcissism and sociopathy–and proves to us that we did the right thing in cutting them loose. True friends would not be proud of having mistreated you.
Their e-mail also references Richard’s criminal conviction, with a snide remark about “speculation” and not having “all the facts,” but I got all sorts of facts straight from the newspaper and court records, which are posted online, free for the public to access.
And though they tried in this e-mail with that snide remark, there is no way to spin what he did, to make him look good. (He choked his 9-year-old daughter to unconsciousness.)
I’ve witnessed their vindictiveness to others and to me, and maybe they think everybody is like them. But I am not the sort of person to do what they accused me of.
Their e-mail is proof that they felt the need to terrorize me into silence, rather than trying to work things out or even defend their actions through reasoned arguments.
It shows Richard to be just like the government officials he hates so much, who he claims will hound and intimidate him if he ever publicly comes out with their secrets.
It’s also proof that if I had gone through with that “conference” Tracy kept insisting on, she never would have allowed me to have an opinion of my own,
because that e-mail is how she responded to all the arguments I made, everything I’d wanted to say to her, in plain language and detail in probably dozens of pages of blogs:
basically, to poke fun at me for thinking things were that way, to shut me up and say I had no right to say it, or even to make my own terms about how I would be treated, after she determined how I was to be treated.
More entitlement to do whatever the heck Tracy wants, and take and take and take from us, while giving us nothing in return. And even to go so far as to threaten us into compliance and silence about the truth to those who could help us.
Their e-mail is all the proof I need that Hubby and I are right about them. Their true character shines all the way through it.
Though at the time it felt like they’d put a huge pile of crap in my lap, I now see it as a golden egg. I’ve shown it to the police, posted it online and shown it to friends [on the Forum where we all used to post] as proof of what I’m dealing with.
At the same time they sent it, they also a sent a friend, whom I will name “Chia,” to spy on my Facebook account.
I’m not sure what she did there, only that I did not know this person who friended me shortly before Tracy sent the above e-mail, that they were both on her friends list, she lived here in town–
and spikes from their IP address suddenly showed up on my website right after I friended her and it showed up on her wall.
We had absolutely nothing in common other than our city and knowing Richard and Tracy. None of my friends were on her list.
There were even a few sentences in her profile about defending friends when they’re being attacked, or some such.
(I bet she wasn’t told the full story, that I had been viciously attacked by Tracy over and over again, that my blogs were about telling my story of abuse, and that what I actually did was tell Richard and Tracy to leave me alone.)
I sent her an e-mail asking how she knew me, but she never responded. In fact, the following day I discovered she had unfriended me.
Am I being paranoid when I say she was a flying monkey, as the blogging community calls it, otherwise known as sycophant, abuser-by-proxy, or dupe? No. There’s far too much evidence to support the flying monkey theory.
Then at church, you could actually see Tracy’s feeling of entitlement in the way she carried herself, and the way she tried to intimidate me by getting right up behind me in the communion line, pressing up against me, and literally breathing down my neck in loud snarls.
It was ridiculous. What did she think she was, a scary pirate? Better put a few “arrs” in there for good measure.
And Hubby noticed, every time they came to my church and Greek Fest for the next several weeks, their false, exaggerated piety, a show for me, though I did not watch them.
They even took communion, which, from what my husband, father and I all understand about communion, is a huge no-no when you have conflict with another at the same church, lest you taint the sacrament, and eat and drink condemnation unto yourself.
(After the first week, I realized this, and refused to take communion when they were present, but they kept taking it.)
I need no further proof that I was right about her.
Their behavior in real life and online, including what they look at on my site and how often, is very much that of people with something to hide, trying to keep me under their thumb.
I don’t even care about seeing my blog stalkers in the stats anymore. I know it’s them because of telltale signs, such as IP addresses and other things I won’t go into publicly. I no longer worry about them. When I see them in my stats, I go, “Oh, there you are. I missed you! Where were you?”
It is very disturbing to discover just how badly you’ve been manipulated and used by people you thought were friends.
I now understand why most people are so reluctant to help non-family to the extent we helped these people.
Hubby’s parents told him you put yourself out like that only for family. We will be keeping a tighter hold on our purse strings and offers to let people stay, after being so badly taken advantage of.
It’s rough to think that Richard would be this kind of person. It’s very different from what I thought he was.
He had seemed like the perfect friend, with interests very much matching my own eclectic interests, giving us an overabundance of things to talk about: music, Goth, geek, Orthodoxy, theology, intellectual, ghosts.
I don’t know what went wrong, if it was always a ploy, or if it changed later on….I keep looking for hope in what blog posts he reads, hope that he still cares.
But the proof of a very different reality is in how he has allowed me to be treated in such a fashion. The proof is in that e-mail.
If he had ever truly cared about me, he never would have laughed at my pain. Only sociopaths laugh at grief and pain caused by them. It’s only denial that keeps me hoping.
Let my story be a warning to you, especially with the economy the way it is. The blinders my husband and I had up, have led to financial and emotional pain.
On the 10th, I got up at 8:19 but had to lie down to not get overcome by nausea (the flu, you dirty-minded people), but Clarissa was probably at class by that time.
My first impulse was to call Shawn because we both had Music History that morning. I could also have called Pearl, but Cindy might still be sleeping. At least if I called Shawn, it would probably be a wake-up call, the only thing he’d found so far that got him up on time.
I brought the phone (just a receiver with a cord, no cradle) to my desk so I could lean against the backrest on my bed, and dialed his extension. Two or three rings; then a weak, sleep-laden “Hello?”
“Shawn?” I said in a much stronger and more awake voice.
“Yeah.”
“Are you awake?”
“Just barely. I only got three hours of sleep last night. I didn’t get to bed until 5.” (That was from studying, and had nothing to do with me.)
“Five? That’s even worse than four!” (Referring to an earlier conversation.)
“That’s how long it took P– and me to get to bed. I got my Calculus done!”
“Finally!” That’s all I ever seemed to hear about–the Calculus homework he had to do.
“What time is it now?”
“8:39.”
“So I have 36 minutes to get to class. Thanks for waking me up.”
“Probably longer for you.” (This referred to his chronic lateness.)
“No, you’d be surprised what I can do when I have to.” This is the same day that I later heard from Pearl: He got to class on time, highly unlike him, but some other kid was late. He said, “I even got here on time. Why didn’t you?”
He said, “My mom called me at 8 this morning.” (I suppose he went back to sleep then.) “Then you called. I thought, ‘My alarm clock’s pretty loud this morning. It’s never been that loud before. Oh, it’s the phone. Aw, man!'”
“What were we going to do in class today?”
“Turn in papers, maybe do some listening to music, etc.”
I said, “I hope it’s nothing too important for me to miss.”
“Why? What’re you doing that’s so important that you’re skipping class?”
“That’s why I called you.–Probably barfing.”
“Oh! Well, if you think barfing is more important than going to Music History and Appreciation….I only got three hours of sleep. So, you see, there are people going to class in worse shape than you.”
“Could you tell him for me?”
“Yeah, I’ll tell him you’re going to be too busy barfing to go to class.”
“Don’t tell him that! Tell him I feel sick and can’t go to class this morning.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“No. I was going to keep the phone call short, just in case.”
Clarissa was a good roommate, getting box lunches for me from the cafeteria.
****
That night, I wrote to a friend that I still hadn’t barfed yet, but sure felt like I would. I wrote that Shawn kept talking about his old girlfriend all the time. I wrote, “I feel like saying, ‘Quit bringing her up! She’s engaged; she’s gone! Start thinking about me!”
In another place I wrote that he was afraid we were on the rebound, but by then, we both should have been off the rebound. It had been twice as long since the breakup than Peter and I had been together, and it was a year and a half for Shawn.
On the 11th, he said that, due to long and complicated reasons, “Let’s wait until after the break to talk about the things we have to talk about, because right now I just can’t handle that and finals.”
On the 13th, I noted that Shawn was overburdened and almost burned out. This could have influenced what happened later. It certainly meant that I was getting no visits from him; my arm and flu would also have affected that.
I prayed that he would figure out his true feelings for me, whatever they might be–though I also prayed that he would like me.
I played with him a lot when I saw him. That day, when he walked up to my table, I said in a fake mean voice, “What do you want?” He smiled at me.
On the 15th, I’d been studying for Music History finals with Clarissa, when Shawn called around 11 or 11:30. Even though it was originally supposed to be about music, he asked me to tell him what I’d been wanting to say. I began to say, “Why are you always criticizing me? My friends don’t agree with you, and they like me just fine!”
This may have been referring to a time when Shawn told me things people had told him about me. Since I didn’t record the things he said this time, I don’t remember them all now, but rather how they made me feel. These things were nasty and untrue, yet he believed them!
Also, someone had asked Shawn why I was sad all the time. He said, “She wants to be.” What kind of crap was that?
Shawn’s actions did not match his words, and he kept criticizing me. Shawn should have said, “She’s sad because she’s dealing with some difficult stuff in her life right now.” Anyone would have understood and cut me some slack.
But instead, his reply made me sound maudlin or morose, like I was too stubborn to be happy, like I wanted attention or enjoyed sadness, like I was a negative person who would always be a downer. In fact, I am an optimistic person who is usually content. We can’t be expected to be happy all the time, no matter what, just to please others.
I needed Shawn’s support, not his criticism. I was being cruelly treated by my ex and needed someone there to help me through it, not criticize me for being upset about it. This is a common problem for people being abused or bullied in some way, being treated like there’s something wrong with them if they don’t blow it off and pretend it didn’t happen.
I told him now that I wanted him to defend me against the character assassinations of his friends. Who were these people, anyway? I didn’t know. He refused to tell me who they were.
He didn’t even tell me details or dates or examples or anything that could’ve supported his claims; there was nothing to jog my memory so I could say, Oh, that’s what happened, that’s what I did. They could be people who didn’t even really know me, people who had some axe to grind for some unknown reason.
All my life, from babyhood through high school, I had been bullied by other kids, made fun of and called weird and accused of nasty things I did not do or think, with no clue why they treated me so cruelly when I was nice and meek to everyone, and far too terrified of everyone to do the things they accused me of. So it was hardly a stretch to believe it was happening all over again with new bullies.
These people were calling me “just Nyssa” to Shawn, like there was nothing about me worth bothering with. Maybe it was Heidi; I never could figure out what she had against me. I was just late on occasion to suite meetings; I wasn’t mean or anything to her.
Maybe it was a friend of Peter’s, such as Dave O’Hara, who–I discovered the following year–just listened to whatever Peter said and decided I was a horrible person without even knowing me or interacting with me in any way.
Shawn said things that I could not imagine even doing, could not remember doing. The only people I could be close enough to, to do these things, would be my close friends–including Shawn. My old suitemates seemed to like me just fine; my current suitemates, some I liked, some I didn’t like so much after the pledging fiasco, but I mostly did my own thing and didn’t interact with them often enough for there to be disputes with them.
But other than Shawn, my close friends insisted the complaints were not true.
Some of the things may have been true for a little while freshman year, but those issues were situational, had long since stopped, and I no longer did that (such as incessant talking about Peter, which I stopped early in the spring after Sharon complained).
I lived by a code of niceness, sweetness and kindness to everyone, so that others would not suffer from me what I had suffered from others.
And most of the time, this is how people described me, even Shawn freshman year: nice, sweet, innocent, kind, caring. And usually I was too frightened of others I did not know well, to do any of these things.
Everyone has faults, but Shawn made me sound like this horrible, mean, aggressive person who went around hurting people.
But when I perceived that someone was dangerous for me, such as a bully, I would avoid that person, not antagonize them, since I did not have verbal sparring capabilities.
I don’t recall ever yelling or arguing with anyone, not even Heidi. My problems with Ruth did not include yelling, just her criticizing all the time and me quietly seething, because she was my teacher and not my equal.
Outside of Shawn, my only dispute was with Peter, and I rarely spoke to him. I rarely spoke to most people beyond a few simple pleasantries or class discussion, and when I spoke to friends, most of the time it was pleasant and fun.
None of his criticisms made any sense; they did not sound like me at all. This is one reason why I identified with the description of people with NVLD being accused of all sorts of things they don’t actually do, because their disorder makes them appear to be acting deliberately when they are not:
Perceptual cues serve in the same capacity as traffic signals; they govern the flow, give-and-take, and fluctuations in our conversations.
The child who cannot “read” these nonverbal cues is frequently determined to be ill-mannered, discourteous, curt, immature, lacking in respect for others, self-centered, and/or even defiant.
This child is none of the above.
Like the color blind driver who cannot respond appropriately to traffic lights, this is a child who is utilizing all of the resources available to him in order to try and make sense of a world which is providing him with faulty cues and unreliable information. —Sue Thompson, Nonverbal Learning Disorders
As for him–What, was he upset that I would disagree with him and get angry at him for how he treated me? Was this why he thought I had these faults? Were these unnamed other people actually made up to validate his remarks?
Like, for example, he scolded me once for chasing him, but he kept letting me catch him, encouraged me by coming over and asking me over, then begging or encouraging me to do the things he wanted.
If he did not keep kissing and carrying on with me, I would have stopped “chasing” him and turned my attention to James.
Rather, I always let him take the lead, let him decide when to come over or ask me over, let him decide when he wanted to do more than talk, because I did not wish to force him into anything, to be blamed for any of it. He could have stopped the physical relationship at any time.
When he used my body, led me on this way because every time he said he wouldn’t do it again so I thought this time he was doing it out of love, and then constantly criticized me afterwards, I had the right to be angry.
When he constantly analyzed our relationship, I felt I had the right to respond with my own perceptions, not just agree with his.
I also felt criticized, like I wasn’t worth dating, because some of my theological ideas were different from his. He’d tell me he wasn’t so sure about dating me because I believed in ESP.
As if I had to agree with him on every doctrinal point or I wasn’t worth dating, no matter what my other qualities were. Couldn’t I think for myself?
Yet even my Nazarene pastor, at my church back home in South Bend, believed in ESP. I believe it was he who said we must have ESP for God to be able to speak to us.
Later, in March, Shawn kept asking me, “What else is going on?” so I kept thinking of something to say to answer his question, even though I was probably tired and wanted to go back to my room. Then he complained that I was rude to keep him up so late that night. !!!!! Why did he keep asking me to keep talking if he wanted me to leave?
Was he actually projecting his own faults onto me still, as he once admitted to doing? And all these supposed faults were his reasons for not making an honest woman of me, a legitimate girlfriend rather than a toy when he was bored.
He also kept comparing and contrasting me to his ex-girlfriend. I was always found wanting for one reason or another, whether my appearance or the way I did things:
I was too reserved. I didn’t do my hair like other girls. I didn’t wear makeup. I didn’t dress sexy enough. I didn’t play around with friends enough (i.e., behave like an extrovert). Everything I did was wrong. Everything about me was wrong.
Even the first day we ever met, in September 1991, he scolded me for probably an hour, cutting down everything about the way I acted, saying I was too shy and needed to talk to complete strangers. He’d say his ex was like this, making me think if he liked one girl like this, he could like another–but no, it became a fault he could not get past.
He screwed with my head so much that I wanted to scream.
I wanted him to see me as beautiful, sweet, smart, passionate, creative and pious. I wanted him to know everything about me and like what he knew.
I wanted him to recognize what I did: that we both liked many of the same TV shows and music, had similar religious backgrounds; he had a nutty sense of humor which I could appreciate; and we could have a lot of fun together if only he would do what he kept admonishing me to do every time he got me to lie down next to him: relax!
But now I was having it all out with him in our phone call. I didn’t record everything, not wanting to remember much of it, so I don’t remember what I said, what he said.
But there were tears on both sides (him about his past, me about something I did not record). There were also things he did not want me to reveal to anyone, so I won’t. He eventually told me I could forget everything he said before I began to cry.
Shawn asked, “Are you crying?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Tell me again what you want to say to me. I’m listening.”
I told him that I’ve always been told I’m weird, that I’ve always believed it. Probably from something he said, I said, “I didn’t realize it was more than a suspicion.”
“No, you are definitely not weird, no matter what you believe. You’re one of the most normal people I know. Now things you do and say make sense to me. I’ve found out what it was I could never put my finger on.”
I told him how Peter had been making me feel. I told him how an old admirer/crush in high school called me beautiful: He flirted with me all through Photography class.
When one day he finally asked me out, I had, unfortunately, discovered from my mom that I was not allowed to date till I turned 16. This guy then put his hand to my face and said, “You are beautiful!” Peter called me gorgeous and the most beautiful girl on campus.
But Shawn had torn that all down again, always saying he was not attracted to me, even after spending an evening acting as if he were, making me feel homely and undesirable, when my lack of dates and boyfriends back in high school had already made me feel this way.
Shawn said, “Maybe I’m shallower than Peter, then, since I couldn’t see your beauty. A beautiful side to you is certainly coming out now.”
He realized how he’d harmed me by always criticizing me, due to my “demon,” the insecurity, the belief of being weird, and the not having found myself. (I think the last is just psychobabble, frankly, but I had the idea I was supposed to do this.)
He told me to cry, get it all out, because he was there in my room with me, in spirit. He’d finally broken down a barrier. We talked until almost 4am! (Test–Music History–9am, Tuesday!)
He said, “The phone is the best way for us to talk because it’s not physical.” I agreed. He said, “If I’d come over tonight, something else would’ve been happening instead.”
As for the “she wants to be sad” comment, he told me what he’d really meant, but that it didn’t come across the way he’d intended. Unfortunately, I didn’t record the true meaning and have now forgotten it.
A Proposed Cool-Off
We spoke more after lunch on the 17th. He gave me some brochures on self-esteem from a nearby table, since the campus kept various such brochures by Memadmin’s office. He rolled them up together and handed them to me.
I tried to put them that way into my right coat pocket, so people wouldn’t see what they were about. He said they weren’t going to fit, but they fit, and I buttoned them in. I said, to use Shawn’s recent assessment of me, “I have a strong will. I made them fit.” He smiled.
I told him more things….
Then I had to type up “Bedlam Castle” for my final, and he had to finish some delinquent Physics homework. (Geez–Physics and Calculus? No wonder he was so swamped!) But later on, we spoke again.
He said the physical things were going to stop because they felt wrong to him. From that and other conversations later, it was clear that things were spinning way out of control; we were playing with fire. I said, “You’ve said that before.” He said, “Yeah, but this time it is going to stop.”
I felt relieved on one hand but depressed on the other. It felt like a breakup because I enjoyed it so much.
I suggested we do more social things together, start getting to know each other, hobbies, likes, dislikes. I hoped this would begin a new stage, that maybe he would eventually return my feelings.
He said, “I can’t be your boy friend, but I can be your best friend.” Even that elated me, since I’d wanted him to be my best friend since February.
It felt we had turned a corner, that things would be different now. He felt so sorry for the night that had scared me. He recited the Epistle verse that we are to think on whatever is virtuous, whatever is pure (Philippians 4:8). I said I no longer felt virtuous and pure; he said, “No, you are still virtuous and pure.”
The funny thing is, this whole weird twisted relationship lasted longer than the others I had before I met my husband: one year and two months.
In October, I decided to join the Phi-Delt sorority, which some of my friends belonged to. I can’t go into great detail because I was told to keep certain things secret. But I can mention things of more general knowledge, which “outsiders” were involved in, or which everybody knew about anyway.
My pledge folder, which held a pledge diary, was easy to spot because of the Greek letters on the blue cover, and the sci-fi pictures: The “Don’t Panic” creature from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a Vulcan hand signal, the Star Fleet symbol, one of the Doctor Who logos, and a picture of the head of the androgynous diplomat from Alpha Centauri on one episode of Doctor Who:
(By the way, no, I am not a science fiction fanatic; I just happen to like sci-fi.) On the back is a drawing of me on a desert island. I colored my folder because of a note from one of the actives: “Please color me!”
My fellow pledges were Rachel, Dori (the one who was in InterVarsity for a while), and Tammy.
Rachel’s reason for pledging: “It looks good on a resume.” My reason for pledging: The sorority seemed like fun, and Pearl and Sharon were in it, along with other people I knew, such as my suitemate Mary.
Latosha once found me in the stairwell in the Campus Center, and we talked about pledging. She said,
“I heard you were pledging. It surprised me. At first I wondered if you were doing it because Peter’s a Zeta and the Zetas are the Phi-Delts’ ‘little brothers.'” I forget how, but she concluded that no, that wasn’t it. Which it wasn’t: The sorority sounded like fun, and some of my best friends were in it. I was also getting friendly peer pressure from my Phi-Delt friends.
At an open house for potential pledges on Monday, October 5 at 8pm, the actives said they wouldn’t make the pledges drink alcohol like the Pi-Kapps and frats might. During pledging, the pledge master, Wendy, said, “We’d never make you pledges do something we wouldn’t want to do ourselves.” However, her tolerance of being hazed must have been much higher than mine.
The Pi-Kapp room was right next to the Phi-Delt room in the Krueger basement. Jennifer said, “When I pledged last spring, one night we came here to our room and saw a bag of manure outside the Pi-Kapp room. We were so glad to not be pledging the Pi-Kapps!”
The Pi-Kapps were the enemy, and they partied too hard. They made their pledges drink alcohol. You wouldn’t want to be a Pi-Kapp.
The Phi-Delt room was prettily furnished with comfortable furniture, Greek letters, and various mementoes. I don’t think there were paddles; at least, I don’t remember any. Our InterVarsity group occasionally met there, and at least once I had a private conversation with Pearl there.
We drew names for pledge sisters. I got Jennifer. Rachel got Joanna. A pledge sister was an active who mentored a pledge.
Among the pledges, it was universally agreed that even while so many of the other actives had seemed to turn mean, Joanna was the one who was still nice. No matter what, no matter how the other actives treated us, she was always sweet and treated us more like equals.
Some of the actives were always nice, but several turned mean later on. Jennifer, as my pledge sister, also seemed nice. Wendy sometimes got disgusted with us, even though she was pledge master.
We could never be sure if the anger from the actives was real or just feigned because they were “supposed” to be mean to us during pledging. I believe that at first, I thought it was all just a joke, that none of them were really mad at us.
Near the end, however, there were times they did seem truly mad at us. I grew to dislike many of them–and what kind of beginning is that for a sisterhood?
Once, when the actives were gathered together for something at Dori’s house, she was scared that her brother and mother, who were there, would think the sorority girls were all b**ches.
She didn’t like the way they had acted there, whether it was in fun or not. I wish I could say that Pearl and Sharon never joined in, but I do seem to remember being mad at them as well for a while, though I still hung out with them.
I seem to remember Pearl or Sharon saying once that there were people in the sorority that year who made it into something they didn’t like, and that when they graduated, it changed character into something better. I believe Sharon was glad to be president one year because she truly could make a difference.
Later on, I asked Pearl if most of the meanness was just a facade, the punishments we were given just jokes and not real punishments, and she said that they were–except for sometimes.
One particular example was when the pledge class couldn’t go through a recital of the Greek alphabet in unison without laughing or smiling. We thought it was funny to be reciting this stuff.
We thought it was all light-hearted, just a fun tradition of using Greek letters, and our standing there reciting the letters seemed like more of this light-hearted fun–and a bit ridiculous. But they got mad at us and made us keep reciting it until we said it more seriously.
At the time, I believe I thought their anger was just a facade, that they probably thought it just as funny and perhaps had even recited the alphabet in the same way when they were pledges.
But Pearl later said they truly were mad about this, since the Greek alphabet was really important to them, like the rest of the sorority traditions. I still couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about. Important or not, couldn’t they at least have some fun with it?
The final walk, the one I wrote about which took us out in the cold, was a real punishment, I believe. They talked as if there would have been such a walk anyway, and they did have two of their own walking with us, but it still seemed to go far and beyond what any walk should have been.
****
Now that I’ve given you an overview of what pledging was like, kind of like the first chapter of Genesis gives you an overview and then a chapter or two later you get more detail about the Creation story, now for more detail about pledging.
Once, the actives told the pledges to go into Grossheusch and probably Muehlmeier to collect guys’ underwear. Of course I shirked from this, being a conservative Christian. The actives half-jokingly accused me of a lack of unity. (“Unity” was bandied around a lot. The actives encouraged us pledges to develop it among ourselves.) However, this qualifies as hazing.
We knocked on Timothy’s door–Timothy, the guy who almost moved in with my suitemate Tom the year before. When one of us asked for a pair of underwear, he whipped off his pants and underwear and gave us his briefs. I must have averted my eyes, since I don’t remember a “visual.” This shocked all of us, but we laughed about it afterwards. I hope the underwear had no skid marks.
Early on in the pledge month, as we pledges went out on some odd quest, I said I had finally found the college antics I had always expected in college. On TV and in movies, people would steal the other team’s mascot. On Ozzie and Harriet, one of the Nelson boys and his college friends did an elaborate prank.
I had expected to see these things happening in college all the time, and had been a bit disappointed to not see any. But in the sorority, we were doing so many crazy things that it seemed I had finally found what I had craved.
I liked the thought of the Zetas being our little brothers once we became actives. I liked this special bond with them. And no, it wasn’t because of Peter: it was because of Darryl, Steve, Marc, and maybe a few others I knew or knew of who seemed cool.
I was still shy and hated to raise my voice, was uncomfortable saying hi to people I barely knew (this was also a product of my big-city upbringing, where people didn’t usually talk to strangers on the street but allowed them some privacy by not looking at them), and was scared of the actives and their power to punish me with unpleasant errands or (so we were told at some point) blackball me into not joining the group, so of course I didn’t say hi to the actives I didn’t know very well, when I passed them on the sidewalk.
To a shy person such as me, social situations are divided into those with “power” and those without. The ones with the “power” to take charge and say hi and things like that are the ones who are comfortable in the situation, who are older or have been in a group or organization longer than you have, or the ones who own the place you’re in. The ones without the “power” are the newcomers.
I perceived the actives as having the power and me, as a pledge, as not having the power, so I expected that if anyone were to say hi first, it would of course be them.
To my surprise, Jennifer told me that the actives were offended because I wouldn’t say hi to them! (Why didn’t they ever say it to me first, then, if it was so important to them?) But even if I tried, my voice would probably have been so low that they wouldn’t have heard me anyway.
When the frats said they were service organizations, we saw that as a joke. Everybody knew the frats spent most of their time partying and hanging out. It seemed that the service they did do was to make sure they got in their obligatory service and didn’t lose their right to be a fraternity on the Roanoke campus.
When we had to do chores for the actives, Sharon asked some of us to wash her dishes. She felt bad, however, because these dishes had been sitting around for some time and were moldy. I don’t remember what happened to those dishes. I hope she threw them out instead.
Once, when the actives took the pledges down to the lake and island, I was blindfolded and Pearl was driving around in her scooter. Something happened on the mud or on the bridge that made her temporarily lose control, and next thing I knew, she was crying out in shock and dismay and a bit of amusement as the scooter banged against my heels.
I wasn’t hurt at all, and she soon got the situation under control. But after that we joked about Pearl running me over with her scooter.
On October 12, I joked around with Pearl. I made a low bow and said, “Greetings, active,” after class. I gestured her inside when I opened the Krueger door. I put my palms together like my genie Zara, and said I’d wait in line so she’d have someone to stand by.
She thought it was funny, and told the others as I went in line. Then Rachel started calling me a brownnoser. It was fun. Behind it all was an ever-present, “NOT!”
I wasn’t brownnosing; I was just having fun. Then I drew a picture on Pearl’s board of Zara coming out of her water jar and saying, “Your wish is my command, mistress!”
The next day, I found several notes about it, ranging from, “Bebe hasn’t got enough brown on her nose for everybody. We’ll have to fix that” by Sharon, to “Nice picture, but it should say MASTER SIR (followed by ‘In your dreams, man cub’).”
****
On October 14, I got kidnapped by the actives: Jennifer told me to come to the Phi-Delt room at 8:15 to interview her before the meeting. When I arrived, I saw actives whispering together by the room, and began to worry. When I got down the hall, two of them grabbed my arms and said, “You’re being kidnapped.” They took me out to a car, and stuffed me in the back with another active and Jennifer. It was fun.
They took me to one active’s family home, ordered pizza, and played the Grease soundtrack. Somebody passed around playing cards with pictures of Chippendale dancers. I don’t believe I sat there in judgment, but I didn’t join in as the others goggled at the cards, because it was against my religion. One of the girls picked out a dark-haired guy with glasses and blue-green eyes and said, “Here’s one you might like.”
When explaining what pledges could do while kidnapped, the actives included homework, just as naturally as if it happened all the time. Yet when I said I wanted to do homework, they acted like I was strange, and said, “NOBODY ever does homework on kidnaps!” But I was a student first, pledge second, and I had a lot of homework to do. My teachers would not have accepted the excuse that I was at a sorority party.
They were supposed to kidnap at least one pledge, and we were supposed to kidnap at least one active. Since I’d already been kidnapped, I couldn’t be kidnapped again, so I was safe after this.
The other pledges finally found me after calling up a lot of S– numbers to find me. They said I was the most popular person in S– that night.
Our punishment for me being kidnapped, was to bum pennies from people on the afternoon of the 18th. People were pretty nice, but a few of them gave us funny looks. On the 21st, we had to get 50 people (preferably guys) to sign a roll of toilet paper, without ripping it. We got at least 51 in half an hour.
On the night of the 18th, we went on a scavenger hunt dressed in bathrobes. Dori wore a shower cap, Tammy wore a Burger King crown, someone had Pearl’s Spike, and I had a soft, cuddly Garfield. We got funny looks from people.
The worker in a gas station, our first spot, gave us such weird looks that I showed her the sorority button on my robe as we left. Rachel told everyone we were sleepwalking. A guy employee in Hardee’s, obviously in on it, laughed his head off.
In another place (the wrong one), there were a bunch of guys a little older than us. Dori told them, maybe to a comment that we looked good, that it was the latest style. She also told the guy in Hardee’s that it was a winter version of a bathing suit contest.
We were supposed to tell people we wanted to be dressed like that. At a small Dairy Queen (another wrong place), some girls there, probably our age or younger, saw us, and one said something like, “I don’t know. They probably don’t dress like that all the time. I hope not!”
I believe all the Greek organizations would send pledges on night walks. This was no secret; I heard stories about such things even when not pledging.
We’d be driven out somewhere, then have to make our way back without letting the actives see us, because they said they’d take us out even farther if they did. We were told to dress warmly for these walks, and if we had to change, would be given a chance to run back to our rooms and do so.
It was fun at first, all this wandering around in corn fields and by the side of the road, trying to find our way back in the dark and without being seen by any passing cars. We all loved it.
I said it reminded me of the End Times (when interpreted literally), with Christians wandering around during the Tribulation without being seen by the authorities who would kill them. It wasn’t terribly cold yet, though it was fall and starting to get cold, and we were (except for the last time) taken only a short distance away and could find our way back pretty quickly.
On the 25th, I wrote in my pledge diary, “Starting to get stressed out.”
On the 26th, we did a carnival of some kind; the actives changed the meeting time on us, which inconvenienced the pledges. Rachel and Tammy were ticked about everything.
That night, I learned that I was not the only one thinking of quitting: Tammy had the same thoughts. Sometimes it just seemed like too much to do, with everything else. The actives were also ticked with us, and sent us on a walk with a piece of toilet paper that was not to be torn or wrinkled. But by Grossheusch, we saw a huge, white shape, probably an owl, fly from a tree.
On the 27th was a Trust Walk, a kind of obstacle course, with our pledge sisters. You were supposed to wear a blindfold and do whatever your pledge sister led you to do, showing your trust in her.
This was supposed to be a secret thing that Memadmin considered hazing; once or twice, there was a bustle because they saw Memadmin’s car (so they said). They said that Memadmin hated the Greek organizations and wanted them gone, and would find any excuse she could to get rid of them.
The Trust Walk was by the suites, probably in the courtyard or maybe in the yard behind Hofer. I think it was at night. It was snowing and cold.
Jennifer took me to a stairway in the suites and had me crawl up and down and go under things which I couldn’t see, with me, all the while, trusting that she was leading me in the right direction and wouldn’t let any harm come to me. We didn’t know where we were at the time, or that there really wasn’t a low fence above our heads.
On the 28th, we unsuccessfully attempted to kidnap Sharon. We hid in the darkened RA supply room for this. There had been tales that it was haunted by a spirit of suicide, and that it had been made into an RA room because at least two girls who’d lived there had committed suicide.
But no ghosts bothered us that night. I took off work and Rachel skipped her late French class, which was, I think, with Ruth.
****
Hell Week was aptly named: it was the week of testing, after or during which you would be initiated. You had to follow so many rules it was hard to remember them all. The Phi-Delts had to be dressed up every day, for one. I won’t go into everything I remember because I’m not sure how much of it is secret.
Our punishments were carrying around various items, which I also won’t name, though everybody in the school would have seen them. These items were always in danger of being stolen by frat pledges. The Phi-Delt actives called it “Help Week,” but everyone else called it Hell Week. I’ve mentioned elsewhere some of the things other pledges had to do.
On the 31st, I spent all day cleaning my room and ironing. Though no one ever actually checked my room, the word was that we had to have even our underwear ironed for Hell Week and that the actives could come check our rooms at any time.
The first day of Hell Week was Sunday, November 1. I got to hold Baby Omega, a hard-boiled egg in a miniature baby basket, decorated to look like it had a face and was a baby in a basket. It was cute.
Though we were supposed to ignore “evils” (males) as if they didn’t even exist during Hell Week (which I believe the actives said we were excellent at), we were allowed to talk to men if it was for or in a class or if it was a teacher or if we were at church. So when I went to church on day one of Hell Week, it was a relief to be able to talk to the men and boy there. I told them about the “evils” stuff, and they laughed.
I expected Hell Week to be a bit of a trial, but until I got involved in pledging, I didn’t realize just how taxing it could be. I couldn’t memorize all the rules they gave us (I think there were several pages of them), and often forgot them. (I bet NVLD had something to do with this.)
I had no idea I was supposed to greet all the actives before sitting down at meals, for example, until they got mad and told me I had to do it. Rachel later said it was pretty stupid not to, but it wasn’t stupidity, it was ignorance.
Then we also had to get up and wear a dress for 7am breakfast, which was really hard to do after they kept us up late into the night. Then they didn’t let us take naps during the day to make up for this.
In the evenings at the meetings, they would give us our points and I would find pages filled with various things I had done “wrong” and the points taken away from me. I felt I could do nothing right.
I was punished far more than anybody else: Some of the point amounts taken away were so large that it seemed ridiculous, probably going into the tens or even hundreds. My points were going into the negatives! It was impossible to make them up now.
Then I’d be made to carry Sally, this big rag doll, which I believe was supposed to be a “punishment,” what the person with the least points would carry. Carrying around Baby Omega wasn’t so bad; this was for the midrange of points.
But soon into Hell Week, I never got to carry her; I only got Sally. I always had the least number of points of anyone. I wanted to cry.
The thought of a whole week of this stuff made me only wish for the end of it–and wasn’t pledging supposed to be fun? I also wondered how I could stand going through a Hell Week every semester until graduation, since even as an active I would have to deal with them: getting up for breakfast, going to meetings, that sort of thing.
We pledges often complained that the actives themselves showed a lack of unity by not always showing up for meals or meetings during Hell Week like they were supposed to, and often backbiting each other.
We were supposed to yell greetings (such as “Hello Miss —“) to the actives even if they were halfway across the campus and we saw them.
I felt physically unable to yell. There had been various times throughout my life, including when Emily would yell greetings to me, when I had tried to yell and ended up barely speaking above my normal voice. I had never even been able to scream, except maybe on a roller coaster (and even then I don’t think I was very loud). To this day, it’s hard for me to get my voice that loud.
I believe that, during Hell Week, I made myself look neither to the right nor to the left as I walked along the sidewalks, in hopes I wouldn’t see an active and have to yell at her.
I didn’t wear a dress in Food Service, though I was supposed to wear one the rest of the time, because that was hardly the place to wear nice clothes like that. You’d sweat in them (it was very steamy back there) and possibly get ketchup or the weird Food Service smell on them.
When I was expressing my worries once, Rachel said the actives probably wouldn’t make me wear a dress to work because “they know it’s a suck job” or “sucky job” or “sh-ty job.”
Since I also hadn’t heard any rules stating that pledges could carry each others’ doll or egg or whatever, I had no clue that I could give Sally to one of my pledge sisters to watch while I was working. So where else could I put her but in the coat room? For what happened next, see a letter which I have copied below.
It may have been during Hell Week when Dori dropped out. I believe Tammy dropped out a bit before that, saying she came into the sorority to meet people but I believe she said either she had no time or didn’t like the pledging stuff that was going on.
I didn’t know about it until somebody told me about it the next day, and I believe Dori was talking to us about it on the little lawn outside the front door of Old Main.
It seems like there were three of us during the first day or two of Hell Week, but soon there were only two. I believe she told us she didn’t like feeling like she had to be friends with the Phi-Delts just because they were Phi-Delts, and may have said that this was especially because of how they were treating us.
The last walk, the one which I considered to be hazing and a true punishment, along with an unfair and dangerous one because of the possibility of frostbite, was on the second day of Hell Week, Monday, November 2. I wrote about it in the letter copied below.
We were sent on this walk because we couldn’t find anything during an on-campus scavenger hunt. Pledge “unity” had turned into an us against them attitude, since the way the actives treated us had made this necessary. (One compliment they did have for us was that we were very unified.)
Rachel and I had a talk during the walk about both quitting. I was so angry with the actives that I began thinking seriously about it, and I may have made up my mind before the walk was even over.
I keep thinking I made it halfway through Hell Week; maybe I quit on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. It was said that we would have only had to go through part of Hell Week, and that the night of the day I quit (and then Rachel quit) would have been the night we got initiated. The word was that they were already getting ready for it.
Here is a clipping of my e-mail to Mike (Wendy’s brother) in late 1999:
Did you know I was part of the Ill-Fated Pledge Class of 1992?
“The Ill-Fated Pledge Class” was the Phi-Delt name for it.
For about a month I actually thought I’d like to be a Phi-Delt, me, the loner. One person wondered if it was because my ex was a Zeta, but no, it was because I had friends in it and it sounded fun.
But as pledging went on, it just didn’t seem as much fun anymore. Actives being mean may have been playacting, but it still was annoying, and I didn’t see any sense in it.
And we never could understand why we should take the Greek alphabet recitals so seriously. It was just so funny to stand up there reciting it in unison for the actives. But when we giggled we ended up getting demerits.
These demerits were made up by carrying out punishments which the actives gave us, such as bumming pennies or going on a walk.
Then there was the time I was forced to leave Sally in the coat room by the kitchen…I didn’t know of anything else to do with her, since I worked in Food Service and couldn’t have her with me, so they [somehow found her and] stuck her in the Phi-Delt room and made it look like she’d gone and gotten drunk because of me not watching over her…She was just a doll!
Then there was Hell Week… All those rules I could never memorize, constantly breaking ones I wasn’t aware of because of that, trying to get my homework done, trying to survive on little sleep and not being allowed to nap, actives acting meaner, then finally the actives get really upset with us (there were only two of us left by this time) and send us out on a walk in the frigid cold, so far out we have no clue where we are…
We had our pledge sisters with us, but they didn’t know any better than we did where we were. We walked for hours trying to find the campus in the cold and dark, and by the time we got back, it was already 1:30 (on a school night), my feet had gone from chilled to [hurting to] numb (possibly frostbitten), Rachel and I had discussed dropping out (while the actives were out of hearing range), and I was mad.
There’s no way I’d ever want to go through that again. It was that night or the next that I decided to drop out, and Rachel soon followed, after going through breakfast in the morning.
She told them I’d dropped out and then told me they were a bit ticked I hadn’t gone there myself to tell them, but after the late nights they’d been giving us, there was no way I wanted to dress up and go to breakfast at 7 in the morning.
A couple years later, I was mystified to hear that Rachel would have liked to try joining again. Why, after all that?
I also talked with Rachel in her room before or after quitting, and she read a letter she had written about the Phi-Delts. I remember something about a tree being used as an image, and her showing disgust about how the actives had treated the pledges and the actives’ lack of unity. Then she asked me if I thought it was a good letter, and I did.
But one thing I don’t believe I knew at the time was that it was a letter, and not just a poem or essay she had written to make herself feel better, and that she planned to actually give it to the Phi-Delts.
The ironic thing about it was, Pearl later told me that the letter about their lack of unity had so distressed the Phi-Delts and given them such a common cause that they ended up more unified.
Jennifer soon pulled me aside, probably after Sophomore Honors and probably into a deserted hallway in Verhulst, the music building, and talked to me. She was worried that I was mad at the Phi-Delts and felt the way Rachel did about them.
At that time, I felt I could truthfully say I wasn’t mad at the Phi-Delts. (I was mad at some of them, but, I guess, not all of them as a whole.) Perhaps she had tried to explain the actions of the Phi-Delts and put them in a nicer light, which would explain my change of heart.
Of course, I hadn’t yet read a letter Rachel would send to the campus newspaper in April. Jennifer told me about the letter Rachel had dropped off in the Phi-Delt room–she just went down there while they were there and dropped it off–and I told her I hadn’t been aware she would actually show it to the Phi-Delts. I’d thought it was an angry letter which you write but don’t send.
She asked me not to talk to others about the secret pledging things we did, since part of the fun of being in a sorority is having these secrets.
Of course, things like walks and pledges avoiding evils and all that are common knowledge (all the Greek organizations seemed to do that), so I don’t feel bad about talking about those things.
As for any secrets I may have revealed here, well, for one thing I’ve been told they changed their pledging because Rachel revealed so much of it in her letter in April. The things I’ve written here were, most of them, done in front of people outside the organization, either students or people in the surrounding towns.
Jennifer told me to keep my pledge diary so that, if I ever decided I wanted to pledge again, I could read it and remember why I dropped out in the first place, leading me to never make that mistake of pledging again.
I did, however, have to let her remove things from it, things that pertained to the actives which they didn’t want people outside the organization to have. This included the actives’ schedules, mottos and such which we were to memorize, and the interviews I had done with the actives.
Cindy got really mad at Pearl and Sharon over how they treated pledges, and noticed, the day after I quit, that I sat by the non-trad in Sophomore Honors instead of by them.
I did this because, yes, I was still hurting and fuming over the whole thing. I did soon start sitting with them again and forgave them, and it all seemed forgotten–though, possibly, not by Cindy.
After that, and after a Zeta party which I describe in the November 1992 chapter, I did not like fraternities or sororities. I was told that the Phi-Delts changed a lot of things because of the “Ill-Fated Pledge Class,” and because of scathing letters Rachel wrote to the Phi-Delts and the school newspaper, and that I should pledge again, but I refused.
Though I didn’t think Rachel’s letter was appropriate, and she later regretted it, it spoke of things I was not aware of before, things which made it sound like some actives did not want me in the sorority for some mysterious reason.
We were told that we were the most unified pledge class; however, we were unified against the actives. I don’t see how hazing causes unity in a fraternity or sorority.
To my shock, senior year, Rachel said she wanted to pledge again, but couldn’t now. She even regretted dropping out. How could this be, after the things we’d said to each other the night before dropping out?
Not all the actives seemed to join in the hazing. Some were really sweet. I think my friends and our pledge sisters stayed out of the worst of it, but it was still hard to deal with being reprimanded or punished by a group that included close friends.
I soon forgave my friends, but there never was any sort of relationship between me and my Phi-Delt suitemate, Mary. I also had trouble with the pledge master Wendy.
That semester, only the Phi-Delts and the Zetas could have pledges, for some reason I’ve forgotten. All the Zeta pledges also dropped out one by one, until neither the Phi-Delts nor the Zetas had pledges left.
On April 30, a letter to the editor by Rachel hit the school newspaper. It filled the last page with complaints about the Phi-Delts.
The Phi-Delts were very upset, and also changed many of their practices to be less harsh, and because the letter gave away pledging secrets (one reason why I included the details I did in my account: they were no longer secrets anyway).
I won’t describe all of what she said, just how it affected me and my own account, since I don’t think there’s much point in rehashing all of her complaints.
She spoke of “psychological abuse,” such as being “ridiculed and degraded” with laughs, heckles, snide remarks and crudeness for not finishing the scavenger hunt on time. She spoke of “mental abuse, belittlement,” “cruelty.”
I noted a few references to me, though I was not named: forcing even a “rather conservative” pledge to ask guys for condoms and underwear (I felt humiliated by this task and not having the option to sit it out), and “the only other [remaining] pledge” on the Trust Walk.
This part particularly bothered me, because I now discovered new reasons to feel paranoid, things I did not know before, and could have happily spent the rest of my life not knowing: Rachel was told to climb a stairway on her hands and knees, but walk back down; I was “forced to crawl” up and down. The actives had also gathered an audience to watch us.
Another example of hazing is the point system the actives put us under. Rarely did the other pledge receive a positive total of points at the end of the day.
It made me want to cry.
In fact, it was said that the actives would discuss in their meetings reasons they could take points away from this pledge the next time they saw her. (All this, and more, because they did not want her to be a successful pledge. Several members were quoted as having said, ‘I hope she quits.’)
WHAT? WHY? Why on earth did they have it in for me? What could I have possibly done to make them want me to quit? Me, who never wanted to offend anyone, who barely even knew any of them, and was usually called sweet, quiet, innocent, nice, kind, caring? I could not recall ever doing anything to hurt these people!
I don’t know why they didn’t like me. I try to be nice to people. Here I was feeling a rejection I hadn’t felt in some time, and remembering that I’d felt like crying when things were going on.
It was especially bad because of what was going on with Shawn at that time, which already depressed me and did horrible things to my self-esteem. I was glad to realize that it probably wasn’t the whole group doing this, just maybe a few people who didn’t know me all that well, that my friends there would never have done such a thing as those few people did.
This also reassured me that I made the right decision in quitting, because, as I jotted in the margin, this was “subtle, but classical, sorority snobbery”–and I wanted no part of an organization that behaved this way. It was middle school all over again! She wrote,
Is it really so difficult to tell someone when you don’t feel that person is ‘Greek material,’ especially if you pressure her into joining in the first place?
She spoke of backstabbing, gossip, complaining instead of changing, harassment, “criticize in the cruelest of ways,” “degrade to compensate for lack of self-esteem, belittle, or abuse others for their own pleasure.”
It confirmed that what I felt was abuse, really was, that I was not the only one feeling abused. Even Cindy had been upset at them.
Losing hundreds of points for stupid reasons and having to carry Sally, that humiliated me. And isn’t humiliation one of the determining factors for if something is hazing?
And if it was all just mind games, something they didn’t really mean and something they claimed to have gone through themselves that only brought them closer together in the end–why would I want to be with a group of people who treated people that way as a joke?
The fact that they didn’t apologize for the things they did need to answer for, or even try to explain them as misunderstandings or rumors, concerned me and made me even more glad I quit before I was initiated.
As I told Clarissa, the letter actually embarrassed me because Rachel would refer to the only remaining pledge besides her–and anyone who paid attention would know that was me.
This is a time when I probably most wanted to speak to Shawn, but he was gone home. Though I’m not sure why I’d want to, after the psychological abuse he himself put me through, but I still suffered from Stockholm Syndrome.
Rachel later felt sorry for sending this letter to the editor, and even considered pledging again. That surprised me.
Once upon a time, I used to have a pleasant fantasy. In it, I would tell my birth-mother that her behavior was upsetting to me.
She would apologize, tell me that she would never dream of continuing to hurt me because she cares for me a great deal, and promise to stop her offensive behavior immediately.
Then, true to her word, she would never do it again, enabling our relationship to be happily restored. Boy, was I living in la-la land.
When that never worked, I had a slightly more complicated delusion. After I complained about her mistreatment, she would continue hurting me anyway.
Since it stressed me out to be in her presence, I would begin to avoid placing myself in that position. I would begin to feel distant from her.
I might even decide to take a break from the relationship for a few weeks or months, of which I might or might not choose to inform her, to get my thoughts together about what to do next.
Mom, sensing my withdrawal, would realize what she was doing and become concerned about losing the relationship. Afraid that she might really be driving me away, she would come to her senses, immediately stop her hurtful behavior, and make every effort to be as pleasant to be with as possible.
Her turnabout would enable me to enjoy being with her, and our relationship would be happily restored. Yeah, right. What in the world was I thinking?
If we were talking about normal people who truly do love and care for those who love them, this would really happen.
In fact, the reason we try to talk things out with a loved one who is hurting us is that we are hoping against hope for such a happy ending.
But those of us who have had the misfortune to try and reason with a control freak or an abuser quickly learn that there is almost NO CHANCE that this will actually ever happen in our situations. –Rev. Renee, Desperate Measures–When They Sense They’re Losing Their Grip on You
This article from Luke173 Ministries sounds very familiar, and I should hold onto it. After being bullied constantly and then told that I was the abuser and deserved what I got, that I had to change my behavior for the bullying to stop–This article sounds so much like dealing with Tracy.
Like, for example, “Abusers will not respect our request for a break or for time to think.” (What was her response to my request for a break, after all the venom she’d spewed at me made me want to spend many months away from her? “Have a nice life and let me know when you GROW UP and stop being hurt over the consequences of YOUR BEHAVIOR.”)
Me begging (through Richard, since Tracy scared me) that she be nice to me so I could relax and feel comfortable enough around her to break through my natural shyness and reserve.
Me explaining (to Richard, since she scared me) that my reserve with her came from her nastiness to me and her abuses of Richard and the children, that those things had to change for me to break through my natural reserve, but there never was a change in her nastiness to everyone. Rather, I was treated like my legitimate problems and complaints with her were just “excuses,” like I had no idea what I was talking about, like I was being the stubborn one who wouldn’t comply.
Me feeling like I was supposed to just put up with and accept her bad temper, but I was not allowed to struggle with the constraints of my introverted and NVLD brain, which causes all sorts of social issues which I did not ask for and still have problems with, because that’s how my brain works–Basically, she’s allowed to be as nasty as she wants to people, but I’m not allowed to have trouble reading people’s social cues or thinking up things to talk about.
(Their common response when others were upset with their behavior: Deal with it. But I was not allowed to respond in kind. Also, I was expected to put up with her moods and nastiness and never return an angry word back, but they’ve treated my standing up for myself as some sort of crime.)
Being treated as if she’s perfect and doesn’t need to change a thing, while I need to change everything about myself, and be forced into friendship (and sharing secrets with) someone who struck me as being emotionally and physically dangerous.
Never being sure where I stood with her, thinking for months that she was perfectly fine with me now, even having confirmation from Richard that she was perfectly fine with me now, only to find that she still was finding all sorts of reasons why my behavior did not suit her.
Her refusing to honor my request that she not use cussing or nasty words with me.
Her using the slightest capitulation as a chance to vent all the things I supposedly had done over the years, mostly things that had long since stopped and been apologized for, and then say she had far more to say as well, leaving me baffled as to what on earth could be left.
Me feeling like all the complaints I had ever had about her behavior, were being ignored and tossed aside as nothing, while her complaints about me were the only ones worthy of notice.
No matter how calmly and politely we request a change, things will go south fast. Any attempt we make to have a loving and rational discussion will quickly degenerate into a crazy-making, nasty argument.
We will be left scratching our heads and wondering what on earth went wrong, and why a simple plea for a little consideration had to be blown up into such a big deal.
On the surface, abusers seem to have absolutely no sensitivity to others at all. But in reality they are acutely sensitive to their victim becoming stronger, beginning to heal, or pulling away from their toxicity.
Control freaks sense instantly when they begin to lose their grip on their victim, which will mean losing their ability to control her. They are desperate to prevent that from happening, and will pull out all the stops to keep her enmeshed with them.
It also gives me an idea of what I need to do. Escalating the argument, putting me on the defensive, making me her toy to play with as she wishes by pushing my buttons and getting me upset–This is exactly what she wants.
The e-mail she sent in response to my telling her to leave me alone (“Now I’m Being Stalked“)–that fits right in with the above cited webpage. Basically, not only will she not leave me alone, not only will she not honor my requests, but she will step up her attacks by doing everything I don’t want her to do and poking and prodding me into anger and irritation.
It’s all a game for her; she did the same thing to Todd. She can do or say anything she wants to me, but when she finally reaps what she has sown in my anger and fighting back and finally getting the balls to stand up to her, she acts as if I’ve committed some horrible crime and am accusing an “innocent” person.
She can certainly come to me in peace and forgiveness/repentance if ever she wants to. But I don’t expect her to ever do this.
The only thing I can do is disengage, refuse to let her pokes continue to bring a rise out of me. And yes, I know she’s going to read this, since they’ve been reading everything.
But I don’t post it for them, I post it for other people who are going through this, and I know there are many of you.
We have followed the story of Margo and her particular brand of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) for several articles (see links below).
We have also looked at how Margo took out her deep sense of insecurity by tormenting her younger sister Leah, who at twelve years her junior was for many years not able to control the situation that she was being subjected to.
Today we will examine how Leah finally took the reigns and removed Margo’s power once and for all….
She next stated that she required Margo to make a choice. Either be civil to Leah or be silent….
This particular incident also shows that when Margo was faced with the reality of losing her only sibling forever, she made no attempt to try to rectify the situation and actually attempt to have a normal relationship.
This is because Margo and people like her cannot truly care for others, and Margo certainly never really loved her sister otherwise she would have been distressed at the possibility of losing her forever.
Such is the lack of feelings for others that Margo prefers to have no family as she does not possess the emotional skills to deal with the situation she found herself in.
And Leah is happy that she got rid of a sister who was nothing but a millstone around her neck. –Beth McHugh, The End of Margo’s Reign of Sadism
