I've been avoiding this for long enough. It sucks to have to get into this with it being a late night but I really need to sit my butt down and do it.
The abusive relationship.
Not that I hadn't been in codependent or psychologically confusing situations before. David did a job on my head while I was with him. I totally lost my sense of identity.
Ally had a hard time being consistent. She loved me. She loved me not. She constantly said things one week and totally said the opposite the next week. Drove me nuts.
I dated a bipolar girl for a few weeks and got jerked around once. After Ally I was sensitive to that kind of thing and cut her loose.
I did hook up with Ally one more time around the millennium. It's relevant.
She had stopped by my room in may of 99 and left an email address. She was leaving school and didn't plan on coming back. I had one more semester that fall before I was done. I took the bait. I contacted her over the summer and we started chatting again. The feelings were still there so I let it progress. Round three.
I went to visit her in Dec and Jan of that year. Spent the millennium on a military base. She introduced me to a guy named Steve. Total neanderthal. I entertained the idea of a relationship with him but it didn't go very far emotionally. He was the type that didn't like to wear a condom. Really? In this day and age? Idiot.
He got pushy and disrespectful toward her and me and was trying to Alpha Ally's husband. They kicked him out. Her husband tried to pull me into a threeway but I laughed it off and avoided it. They had an open marriage. Still do, I think. I heard on the gossipmill that she has two girls, still happily married and doing really well. Started her own editing company. She'd always wanted to do that. I remember her mentioning editing careers repeatedly over the many years I knew her.
Anyways, we got really serious. I even told her I wanted to marry her and we were making plans. I came back and transferred to a new school in her home town even. She eventually came back to stay with her parents for a few months while her hubby was deployed on a six month ocean voyage. We spent more time together and things started to unravel.
Here's where it sucks. She introduced me to Scott. I had sorta been seeing a guy name Karol I had met through a yahoo group. We ended up being just friends for a short time after romantic feelings didn't emerge. He was really interesting and intelligent and perpetually hours late for everything. Drove me nuts.
Scott was really exciting and interesting and I felt an instant connection. Things seemed magickal between us, like we had had lifetimes together. Ally was not pleased. She had mentioned him to me before when we had been at SBU and some of the idolizing he had done of her. I believe it.
I met him when Ally, a current close friend and I went to an apartment where he was. We hung out with him and his girlfriend. Yeah, he had been taken. Dave had been too, unbeknownst to me at the time. Same story. He said they were on the outs. We chatted quite a bit and it "enchanted" him. I didn't do any magic but at that time I tended to have an effect on people around me. I think it was my manifesting abilities coming through as a result of my developing practice. I knew how to "sparkle" when I wanted to and draw others to me.
Not as cute as 37 as I was at 23. hehehe
I met up with him on my own a few times. We spent one night driving all over until dawn when we met up with the others to go to the Ren Faire. We held hands and were manic giggly. We took a lot of road trips.
I was staying with a relative at the time about 30 min from the city and school I went to. Over the summer Scott stayed at that house and I really needed to leave after that. I told him to walk around and keep himself busy while I was at work but he stayed at the house instead of taking a shower and leaving and making himself scarce. My relative came home to this strange guy in his living room and was not happy. Being a responsible adult now, I totally get it. Back then I was still in my kid mindset and so decided to leave instead of taking that event as a huge warning sign. He obviously didn't respect me enough to do a simple thing that I asked him.
I found an apartment in the city and moved in. I bought my first furniture and I really liked the place. It only took a few weeks for me to invite him to stay with me. He was over there all the time anyway.
That's when things changed. Once his stuff got moved in the fun wore off quick. He started sabotaging my practice and the beings I worked with. We got into some nasty fights where I slept on the couch. Our road trips stopped being about spending time together and turned into shopping trips where he wanted me to spend all this money on him. My parents were calling weekly with issues about me over-drafting my account. It's a good thing they weren't in the city within an easy distance. They were 6 hours away. They didn't know he was living there. I think they eventually figured it out. He couldn't keep his damn mouth shut while I was on the phone.
Everything became about me supporting him. He couldn't keep a job, couldn't give me money to help out for multiple reasons. His mother told me I'd regret ever meeting him. I found out that all his mania was part of a mental illness. I was starting to see the downward slide. He started getting aggressive and emotionally violent.
I ignored all the red flags. Sometimes I'd scream at him to get out but I had no leverage. I couldn't physically attack him. I didn't know if they law was on my side or not as far as the lease was concerned and he wouldn't detach himself from me. I'd take it back too. The first year we were together I really thought I could make it work. I had gone from this confident chick who moved to a new city, got an apartment and made a go from scratch with determination and bravery to someone who was afraid to be alone. I didn't believe that I could do it without him, at least socially.
Things got philosophically dark. He started talking about how he believed he was the anti-christ. He read way too much into song lyrics and became obsessed with Marilyn Manson. Now, I really like Manson's music and really believe he's more of a cool, laid back kinda buy beyond the stage persona. His interviews with people show a really intelligent and calm guy. He'd probably have been creeped out. But Scott thought he had some kind of psychic connection and he was getting messages in the music.
I know, this is some crazy shit. I really didn't see a way out at the time. Eventually I started buying into some of it. He was really into Babylon 5. It's a great series and a couple years ago I made myself watch it again from start to finish. I made hubbie watch it too. It's still well written even by more recent standards.
He believed the Shadows were real, he was one of their soldiers and they spoke to him. We started to develop plans for our own commune like situation, our own schools. Recreate society according to our own philosophy.
My journals became a place to write down his ideas and discussions I had had with him. I stopped writing about myself, my feelings, processing my past, my own ideas or spiritual experiences.
Before we left that first apartment I tried to throw him out one more time. I found out he was screwing someone else and lost my shit. He had left his computer on with his e-mail up and I read a note from a girl named Katie about something they had done sexually in her car outside of our apartment, It explained why he brushed his teeth before getting into bed. He also wrote emails to this other girl that he was having sex with. When I called him he was at her house and I screamed at him on the phone to come get his stuff. I was putting it on the porch and locking the door. He didn't have a key.
I should have done it too. I don't remember if I lost my nerve or thought I didn't have a legal right to actually do it. I backed down. Needless to say, the sexual aspect of our relationship ended. We became "friends" and I signed a lease with him on the next place.
That fall I had a horrible migraine and ended up in the hospital. I remember being at the toilet puking so hard I was peeing myself and just crawling back and forth between bed and bathroom. He kept yelling at me that I needed to get up and drive him to his parents. I don't think it was really getting through that I couldn't even walk. He finally went upstairs and asked Magda to drive me to the hospital. She was very sweet. She stayed with us for a few hours but then she had to leave to do classwork. I ended up on an IV for fluids because I was dehydrated and a nausea suppressant. His parents drove us back to the apartment. Magda made me some dinner and then gave me the "abused wife" talk.
I think I started disconnecting and reclaiming my own mind again at that time. I started trying to find dates again. I never really did get passed the second date with any of them. Scott answered the phone a few times and scared the shit out of them. Lost a few that way.
Kelly became my friend through Ally as well and again through Scott. I think she saw through the manipulation of Ally and the crazy of Scott. She's always been able to see me really well both personality and energy. She's really gifted.
I lost Karol as a friend shortly after Scott moved in. Scott introduced me to Amy2 who wanted to date me. That never really took off. A couple months later she flipped out at me and made some comment about how she would have stabbed me if she had her knife on her. She went over to Karol's house and he drove her home. He had a huge crush on her. She was really pretty and shapely. He pretty much dropped me after that. He wouldn't respond to phone calls or emails anymore.
As luck would have it, Scott also introduced me to the one person who helped break me away and undo his influence. One night Scott brought to the apartment a girl named Amy1. We had actually been at the the same college, SBU. She had to drop out after one year due to some severe menacing from her roommate.
The university would not help her. Not surprised. Colleges always do that.
She knew about Ally and me. Apparently we were a major source of gossip on that campus during our tumultuous times. I found that interesting. I remember thinking Ally would have been excited over her status at campus celebrity. We had stopped talking some time during my stay at the first apartment. I sent her a taunting kiss-off letter meant to hurt her while I was being mindless. Scott's idea.
Anyway, we went out that night together. Scott asked if I would be upset if she spent the night. This was after a few weeks earlier he had lost his shit when Kelly had stayed over and slept in my bed. Jealousy. He had also been proposing to me nightly again. Yeah, I was pissed. I don't think Amy understood why I was suddenly angry. At the bar I mentioned to Helene that I was interested in her and she told me she couldn't date someone who was so violent. It was an hour later we needed to leave and he said something to taunt me so I had what I came to call my Courtney Love moment.
I remember a scene on MTV music awards back in the nineties when Madonna was being interviewed on the balcony and all of a sudden a makeup compact came flying passed her face. Courtney was screaming up at her that she loved her and she was awesome. She totally crashed and stole the interview.
Well, I wasn't yelling compliments but I let all of the skeletons out at 2am in the middle of the parking lot screaming at the top of my lungs. Did you tell her you proposed to me last night? Did you tell her. . .?
They took a cab to get away from me. I was driving home alone and suddenly felt this urge to drive into oncoming traffic. Somehow I knew that urge came from him. I felt like he was trying to influence me from afar. I actually laughed out loud and said, "You missed."
I got to the apartment safely. He arrived a bit later and I confronted him about the impulse. He seemed surprised but admitted it. It was around this time he started to change from telling me what to do and told me the Shadows had made me a general and he would be taking orders from me.
A few months later I met up with Amy1 again. This time Kelly asked me to go to a MaryKay party with her.
It actually went well. Amy and I chatted. We stayed outside for over an hour telling her all the delusions that he believed in and how he had told us that he wanted to recruit Amy into the fold. We warned her and even told her what tactics he was using so she could defend herself and see them coming.
Scott came back to the apartment after classes one day and was furious. Amy had told him she knew what he was doing and wanted no part of it. She mentioned the stuff we had told her but didn't tell him we had told her. He really couldn't figure out how she had figured it out.
At one point he said to me that I could kill her now. He had done this one other time at the first apartment. He wanted a friend of his dead, but it needed to look like a drug overdose. He told me to do it. I didn't of course. I may have been drawn into his shadow philosophy at that point but my ethics were strong enough to hold their course even in the face of that.
When he told me this the second time we were in the car. I shrugged and said okay. In my head and I was like, totally not gonna happen. He was shocked. He said to me, a year ago I would have fought him on it but I had changed. I really hadn't. t least not in the way he thought. I just made a decision. I was going to play along and undermined him behind his back. Everything he told me I relayed back to Kelly and Amy1. I armed them and he couldn't get his talons into them. It drove him nuts.
The second apartment was during the first year after 9/11. The second half of that year he went into ROTC. He wanted to use it as a stepping stone to a political career. He was freaked out by the attacks. His uncle worked at the Dept of Defense. He encouraged it. He enrolled into bootcamp and left the first of May.
I finally had gotten rid of him. The girls came over and we did a huge ritual. We spent hours pouring over books then spent over an hour in circle. The ritual dealt mostly with getting rid of the energy links between him and I so he could no longer feed from my energy.
We had determined that he was the worst of energy vampires. He actually hijacked others abilities and fed from them until they were dangerously low. This would explain how I had become so depleted that I became mindless and even lost the ability to see colors at one point. I was completely numb. I think that migraine wasn't just a reaction to a 50 degree temperature and pressure swing. My body may have been purging itself of psychic poison. The only other time that happened to me what in Elmira. After teaching at that school I was psychically poisoned as well.
Anyways. We put a lot of time and effort into cleansing ourselves of those influences.
The following day he called me in a panic. He said he had felt a massive power drain from the city and wanted to know what was going on. I smiled and said "nothing that I know of".
Amy1 and Kelly and I did a few more rituals after that. Part of that was we really enjoyed talking shop with each other. But we continued to cleanse ourselves and even our apartments. We experienced astral plane stalking for a while afterward and had to cleanse and shield almost constantly.
A year later he found me online. He stalked me in a chat room and contacted me asking me questions about my job that could only have come from listening into to posts and chats, lurking. Although it may have been that barista at the mall that knew us both. I hadn't cut her off. She knew where I worked.
He actually showed up one day and walked into where I worked. I was either off that day or on my break and was able to disappear long enough to not get found. I also changed my name online and changed my email to an old one I hadn't use since 98. He didn't know about it. I still have this account and my new name online. It's really become a magical part of who I am. I have a public one and a private one. He hasn't been able to find me on the astral since then as well.
He backed off when one of the members of the group said she was a decorated soldier and was able to locate his base, his commander and give phone numbers. She told me to call and report the harassment.
There was only one incident that brought this all back a few years later. I last had contact from him in 2003 with the online stalking. In 2005 when I had moved to another city about 2 hours from here, hubbie (boyfriend at the time) was spending the night. That morning he told me he had been woken up by a presence in the room. He confronted it and sent it packing. He traced it back to the city I had left. I figured it was Scott. He was still trying to find me. I don't recall having mentioned any of this astral stalking to hubbie so he got a good whiff of it on his own.
Since then there has been only one close call back in 2008 when I was working at a convenience store. He came in the front door. I hid in the back until he was gone. I didn't want him knowing I was back in the city, north of it actually.
After leaving the relationship I went through years of thinking I was tainted or dirty in some way. I had been through something I really didn't want to to talk about. It was embarrassing because at some point of the relationship I believed some of the delusions. I got drawn in. Part of that was the vamping making it easier.
But there was some self-blame to deal with. I really thought that I was ruined in some way. I didn't want anyone or anything pure or clean near me. I stayed away from good people because I didn't want to corrupt them with my presence.
There was also the constant paranoia of bumping into him in the physical or astral. I was obsessed with shields and protection. My third apartment was like the diamonds in the Tower of London. No spirit could get anywhere near me. I experienced a loss of sensitivity to energy. Even now, over a decade later, I still have to work really hard to be in touch with the energy around me. My shields became instinctively thick and difficult.
The joy in my practice, splashing in puddles and letting myself go took a huge dive. That's actually one of the things that drew him to me. I remember pulling over in a rainstorm, a deluge of water, and splashing in the puddles and squealing, completely on a whim in heavy traffic. That's why I say he was "enchanted".
I've only just started to get that back. Bri has been helping tremendously with bringing back my child self.
After Scott, it was Frank, and Andy and a couple others whose names I can't remember. Just dates with those. It took three years of him being out of my life before I felt I could be around good people. Hubbie is definitely the type I would have shunned out of fear of dirtying him. The sense of shame in myself was so intense after that experience. I don't know how I managed to shake it.
It eased gradually over time. I don't remember one specific event that would have shaken it. Maybe Evanescence came out on the radio with their song "Bring me to Life" when I was leaving Scott but pretending to still be enthralled. It made me cry. I felt feelings for the first time in a long time. It wasn't a romantic song for me but one from the Goddess. Crying out for spiritual lift and the strength to do what needed to be done. Cliche as it became from being overplayed, it was an anthem for me at that time.
I have not reread the diaries. I know there are events that I didn't work in. Like the time Amy1 told me she cried when I let her read my diaries about that time with him. She told me she wanted to write a book about what we went through. She said one entry really got to her. It was one that I wrote before work in the car only two months after moving in together with him. I wrote about how I could feel myself dying in a way. I couldn't feel that connection to spirit and the Goddess like I used to. Like bits of myself were dying and falling away.
I'm not going to be one of those people that resents the experiences they have. I won't call any part of my time wasted. It sucks but I'm a tough bitch because of the crap I've been through. When my mother went into the hospital and then died I had such a crazy Springer situation to deal with. I don't know if I would have made it if I hadn't had so much pain in my life. I'd probably be a lot happier and have a whole lot less to process in my brain.
But I can't guarantee that I'd still be this strong or this focused without those experiences. I'm not condoning abuse. Maybe it's just the attitude of taking whatever life throws at you and just doing the best you can with it. At least try to take a lesson from it even if it's only what not to do.
I'm still working on putting the fun back into magic. Working with the dragons that I do usually leads me to being very serious in ritual and intensely focused. Laughter has been sneaking back into it though.
I'll keep working at it.
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