I listened to the local Top-40 station, U93, but alternative station Q101 from Chicago was my favorite. It usually had better and more interesting songs than U93 did.
Even when a Q101 song crossed over to U93, it would often happen some time after it was first played on Q101. I also listened to dance station B96 from Chicago from time to time.
On June 8, I wrote this in my diary:
Fun happenings at [our house] tonight. We’ve been having terrible downpours (or ‘wonderful,’ depending on your point of view) for the past couple days. Tonight, lightning struck the tree on the [front] side of the house, and it split in two!
The one half fell into the neighbors’ front door….I saw the half lying on the ground when the lightning lit up the sky once. My parents were on their way out to help them, when they saw our back door was blocked as well, by a limb from the oak tree!
When we first saw the tree in the neighbors’ yard, after Mom called Dad and me over with a voice that told us something was up, the phone rang (I knew it was the [neighbors], after only one ring;
my parents probably guessed as well), and we heard sirens off somewhere–all in the space of a few seconds! I thought the sirens were for us, but I guess not.
[Our street] was flooded, too. Some people on FOX [32] News were saying their Chicago neighborhood got flooded the worst it’s ever been, that it gets worse every year.
This weather’s covering several states, including Wisconsin, but it’s worst in Michigan and maybe Indiana. There are flash flood and severe weather/thunderstorm watches all over the place, and in some places they’ve even had tornadoes.
FOX News was reporting baseball-sized hail, and I saw a newsclip of someone holding some.
This weather must be covering most of the Midwest, all the way over to Minnesota! White Castle restaurant, in Chicago, has a moat around it, which probably won’t be pumped up until about midnight, so the people there are stranded, wanting to go home. What a week, so far.
I had no idea that the storm that led to the trees falling down was only the beginning of an awful summer for Wisconsin and other areas. Though we got nothing worse than constant rain and annoying earwigs, there was flooding in some states that caused property damage.
Wisconsin was hit with flooding, and when junior year began, notices were posted on Krueger Hall doors about how to get relief if your farm had been damaged by the summer floods.
I believe Missouri got it, as well, and I wondered how Latosha was doing in St. Louis.
Though a South Bend Tribune article on earwigs said it was only a myth that they bit people’s ears, my older brother could swear that they did so to him when he was sleeping in his basement room one night.
Imagine, though, what it was like for me, when the house was invaded by earwigs, to find a big picture of an earwig on the front page of the Sunday paper!
****
Fortunately, I recorded my dreams–which, somehow, foreshadowed my future relationship with a guy I hadn’t even met yet: Phil O’Hara, Dave’s brother. Phil’s face reminded me of Eric Idle of the Monty Python troupe, and I told him so a few times.
At least twice over the summer of 1993, I dreamed about Eric Idle: He’d be my hero or a teacher making a move on me. Yet when I actually met Phil, I forgot these dreams completely, not remembering them until 1999, when I re-read my diary and wrote about my junior year.
On July 9, I dreamed about a young priest. I wrote, “I like the priest, even though he’s ‘unavailable,’ because I feel he could become available.” Phil spent seven years planning to be a priest, until he decided he didn’t want to be alone.
On August 14, I dreamed this:
I discover that I’m to be married to a guy I’ve just met at school, or wherever that place is….I’m finding out about this guy by talking with him, and it may be this one or the next one that knows some ninja moves.
This guy’s about my age, with short, thick brown hair, and a bit taller than me. Then something happens to him, so I have to marry his twin brother. He’s a little different than him, but not very much.
He shows me the knife blade…that he carries in his pocket, and I think, …’This guy’s a fighter. He could beat Peter up any day.’ The fact he’s a strong fighter stirs up something primitive in me, and I feel a strong attraction.
I hope my thought of Peter isn’t a problem. But the marriage can’t take place until I take care of some things….
I’ve found out some things about him and like him, but I can’t say I can’t live without him or can live with him, because I don’t know….
I was afraid he’d get tired of waiting [after some things I did] and leave, but here he is, ready for the after-wedding. I guess there isn’t much to do, maybe exchange some words, to be married.
The physical details I recorded matched Phil’s. The alarm went off too soon, and I wrote, “I was disappointed, of course, to find it was only a dream and I didn’t even have a boyfriend, let alone a fiancé or husband.”
I recall a dream about getting engaged to a priest, whose brother did not like me. We may have even had a secret wedding. Unfortunately, I can’t find it now, or I’d copy parts of it for you.
This, as well as the Eric Idle dreams, has an uncanny resemblance to what was to happen with Phil. The funny thing is, on June 26, I pondered in my diary whether I was precognitive.
****
Over the summer, Catherine began dating a guy named Glen. And also over the summer, she got engaged to Glen. She had all sorts of praises for him in her letters to me.
****
I wrote in my diary on July 30, “Why do I keep thinking of Peter so much these days? It’d make you think I wanted him. Maybe I’m alone too much; I don’t know. A little voice said, ‘Perhaps he’s thinking of you, too.'”
Several months later, I would find out the answer to this question. On August 10, I wondered if the memories of Peter were taking me over again because they were “actually less painful than those of Shawn.”
That is possible, that after all the hurt from Peter, what I felt for Shawn, and the pain I felt over Shawn, was far more than I ever got from Peter.
Keep in mind that our whole strange, twisted friendship-with-benefits lasted for more than a year and two months, far longer than my relationship with Peter.
September 1993
Life at Roanoke: My College Memoirs–September 1991 through May 1995
Table of Contents
Freshman Year
December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?
April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign
Sophomore Year
October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:
Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams
- Classmate a stand-in for “Rudy”; Jigging at College Dance
- Library Tales
- Happiness Returns
- Living with Friends in Krueger
- Funny Library Stories
- Shawn Calls
- Psycho Roommates and Bug Wars
- Return of Rick
- Adjusting to New Dorm
- Spitball-Throwing Teacher
- Rat-Obsessed Teacher and Doctor Zhivago
- A Teacher Dated a Student; InterVarsity Fun
- Charlie Peacock Concert
- Random Stories
- Letter to Shawn
- Erotic Vampire Dream (Inspiration for Alexander Boa)
- I Ask Out James
- Peter Calls!
- The Fateful First Meeting of Phil
- The Birth of Dolphin Philosophy
- Our Group of Friends Splits Apart
- Spring Classes
- Big Red Flag: Phil’s Dysfunctional Family Life
- The Drunken Stork (Phil’s Controlling Nature Manifests)
- Idealizing Phase and Early Sign of Control
- Phil Tries to Control my Friendships, Unfair Accusations from his Dad and Brother
- Phil Gaslights Me with Fake Dreams, Ridicule and Psychological Abuse
- Another Pre-Engagement
June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:
- The Abuse Worsens in the Summer of Hell
- Phil rapes me anally
- Phil tries to control me through refusing everything I want–even proper hygiene
- Phil’s cruel hoax on me: his “subconscious” coming out to be with me
- Phil’s “subconscious” explains why he’s coming out to talk to me
- The lies unravel as Phil admits to conning me; also, fright as my periods turn wacky
- How Phil’s behavior fit the signs of abuse
- Phil Mindscrews Me: changes history, blames me for things that were not my fault, treats me like an idiot during games
- Phil says if he abuses me, it takes two people to sign the divorce papers
- Pearl reveals that Phil is costing me social invitations
- Hints that Phil is checking out of the marriage
September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:
- Phil picks fights and avoids responsibilities to make me feel like a shrew
- My husband Phil, Dave and Pearl call me a party pooper for getting a Grade II concussion
- I’m ecstatic to be back with my friends (the ones Phil hates); I meet Charles
- Phil vanishes without a word of why
- Phil wants a divorce
- My friends tells me that Phil is controlling and possessive
- My first Pentecostal church service: They speak in tongues
- Phil refuses to accept responsibility for the divorce
- Phil cuts off contact
- Attack of Phil’s Flying Monkey and Sycophant: Dirk
- Phil the narcissist admits to manipulating people and using them as pawns in his game with me
- Phil comes crawling back to me–and we put our marriage on paper
- Phil demands my complete submission and forces me into oral sex–and my will is broken, for fear he’ll divorce me again
- Phil walks away from me again–because I dare to have my own mind, opinions and needs–and because he’s a sociopath
- Fierce anger against Phil and PTSD from the abuse
- My friends tell me Phil is psychotic
- “Soul Ties”
- I return Phil’s things and he skewers me; consolation from friends
- My letter to Phil
- Phil shows my letter to his friends; I’m triggered by reminder of forced oral sex
- I start dating Charles
- Friends tell me Phil is controlling
- I feel stalked by Phil
- Poem about being stalked by Phil
- Fury at Phil stalking me and rubbing my face in his new relationship
- A Date with the Vampire
- Celtic Class: Knotwork, Tin Whistles, SCA–and Drinking from a Skull
- The Teddy-O Incident; Birth of These Memoirs
- We Hook Up to the Internet–and Shawn Fixates on My Sex Life
- New Guy Begging at My Feet
- Life on TCB
- Meeting Cugan (Hubby)
- Learning my ex Peter was a love-fraud; New Men
- Before Tracy, There Was the Avenger (Sociopathic Female Bullies Pt 1)
- Torn between three men as Catherine pushes me toward Cugan
- The Love Rectangle
- Torn between FIVE men! Me?
- Persephone’s Own Outrageous Stories of Phil’s Abuse
- College-style living
- Online Shenanigans
- Phil Finds TCB; Meeting a Hit Man
- Gypsy’s Party: Healed friendship with Peter
- The Avenger Starts a Flame War (Sociopathic Female Bullies Pt 2)
- Meeting the elusive Speaker
- First Date with Future Hubby Cugan
- On Breaking Up with Kindness
- Loony Roommies and Flying Gargoyles
- The Goddess of Pleasure and Salt
- A Conversation with Oscar Wilde
- My First SCA Event
- Cugan: a vast improvement over Phil
- Easter with Cugan’s family and SCA
- Cugan breaks up with me
- After breakup: Phil’s return and trolls
- Cugan comes back
- SCA hippies; college senioritis: anxiety!
- Or should I move back in with my parents?
- Peace with Phil
- Defending my Thesis; Graduating with Honors
- Graduation: Trapped at school
- Epilogue and Apology from Phil