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Humpty-Dumpty Someone broke into our office. The thief somehow got up to our floor, which is locked off by a key-card reader, and unlocked an office door, even though the locks for the entire department were changed last week. They riffled through everyone�s unlocked drawers looking for cash, and then attacked the locked doors. A drawer was torn open and the float for our till was stolen ($300). The chair�s office, the financial office and the APO�s office were all broken in to. The APO�s belongings were strewn around; broken tools and keys lay on the floor in front of the still-locked safe. A laptop computer and digital projector sat untouched in one of the unlocked offices. The thief also missed over $1,000 in key deposits hidden in random unlocked drawers.First Campus five-oh arrived, then the police, then the forensic type police (I forget what they were called). By 2:00 I had a policeman in my cubicle, fingerprinting the contents of my drawer and examining the whorls and dips of my own finger pads. Freaky! This calls to mind a small ad I saw posted in a campus newspaper. �To the jerk who broke into my truck and stole my CDs. There was a laptop under the seat and over $3,000 in the glove compartment. Don�t you feel stupid.� This always makes me laugh. -----Yesterday I was involved in a discussion of favourite high school English books (and I�m not going to bore you now with all of the assigned reading that I loathed and why). I was having trouble remembering which books I studied in High School so I googled to see if my HS had a website. It did. Did it have an alumni section? It did. Did I look at my year to see if I was on there? I did. Did I accidentally stumble upon my scary ex? I did. Did I click on the link anyway (while a tiny voice in the back of my head screamed �Nononononono�.�)? I did. My stomach clenched, my throat clenched, my heart clenched, I clenched muscles that I didn�t even know I had as his current photo popped onto my screen. I couldn�t even look directly at his face so I focused on his clothes. No change since high school: a too-big long sleeved shirt tucked into pale blue jeans. The watch on his skinny pale wrist was made for a larger man. I glanced at his scruffy face and just felt sick. I couldn�t focus above the neck without wanting to throw up and I kept involuntarily swallowing then sticking out my tongue, trying to somehow push the dirty taste out of my mouth. Glancing at his all-too-familiar face partially obscured by scruffy growth caused dry heaves, so I didn�t try that twice. My hand shook as I scrolled down. A pang of fear shot through me, electrifying my chest, arms and legs, as I discovered that he works IT for the cable company. Information! He has access to all kinds of information about me. Oh god. I�m linked to Bear, he could find Bear. At this point I�m freaking out. I try to calm down, telling myself that if he really wanted to find me, he could. Again debate the merits of an unlisted phone number and address, rather than relying on caller id. Consider asking to have my name removed from the work website. Frantically run through a mental list of the details that I�ve revealed about myself in this journal and in the forum I visit. Vow never to get cable in my own name. Realize that I�m being irrational but cannot stop the panic. Hyperventilate a bit. Call Bear. Hang up before he picks up. Bear doesn�t understand why it bothers me so much and it�s a hard concept to explain. Most people can instantly understand why a person is scared of someone who hit them or raped them. As Penny said in High Fidelity, �It wasn�t rape because I said okay, but it wasn�t far off.� Most people have no concept of the vast human capability for emotional and mental abuse. Most people have no idea how a normal person can be manipulated and controlled in every aspect of their lives, until they aren�t even a person anymore. The victim is left with no friends, no family, and no support, alienated because she doesn�t even believe that she is worth helping, maybe not even realizing that she needs help. There is no point in leaving because no one else will ever love her. Worthless, hopeless, pointless, stupid, fat, ugly�no you�re beautiful, I�m sorry, I�m sorry. I�ll make it up to you. How can you love someone who treats you like that? It never starts like that. It starts as a normal relationship. Maybe he�s a little shy and you have to draw him out a bit. You have fun together, you laugh, and he tells you he loves you. He needs you. You�re all that he has. The whole world is against him except you. It�s the two of you against the world. You spend all of your time together, not a moment apart. Suddenly you realize that you haven�t seen your other friends in a while. You call them up, make plans. He is hurt, sad that you want to spend time with someone else. Isn�t he good enough for you? He loves you the most. No one else will ever love you like he does. You feel guilty for hurting him and vow to do better. He is the only one you see, the only one you talk to. Your parents don�t like him so you skip school to spend time with him. Your parents are obviously standing in the way of true love. Your friends stop calling since you never want to see them and you can�t talk when he�s around. You sneak visits and calls like swimming up for a quick gasp of air before immersing yourself in him again. He loves you the most. No one loves you like he does. You understand that sometimes he hurts you but that�s just because he was hurt too. His parents are cruel and he was abused by step-father after step-father. You will protect him and take care of him, you will work extra hours instead of doing homework so that you can buy him food, since there�s no food at home. No one else will ever love you like he does. No one else will ever love you. He proposes and you don�t realize that you�re allowed to say �No�, it never even crosses your mind. You�ll be together forever. Forever. Hearing his name still causes a jolt. I rarely ever think about high school without feeling nervous, anxious, sad and sick. Everything that he has ever touched is tainted and the contagion is spreading. I want nothing more than for him to disappear off the face of the planet, to be erased from my memory and to purge him from my life forever. I�m so tired of feeling these shock waves whenever something involving him, or the impacts he had on me, arise. It�s been 10 years since my friends came back picked me up off the snow-covered gravel road. It�s been nine years since he slit his wrists and nearly bled to death in his parent�s basement and nine since his other girlfriend swallowed a bottle of pills. Three years of my life spoiled and irretrievable, and ten more years of jumping at shadows. Every little encounter, even years later, leaves me feeling shaken and violated, unclean, wanting to brush my teeth, have a shower and scrub my hands until the skin is red and raw. I�m immobilized by fear, scared to move and draw attention, scared to lose the control that I have fought so long and so hard to regain. Bear says, simply, �You�re better than that. You�re better than your past.� But some part of me knows that girl was me. I�m still alone and sad and scared and no one will ever love me again. I�ve cut myself and no one can see that I�m bleeding. No one understands why anyone would hold still to be carved, to be so powerless in their own life. And that�s the biggest thing for me. Control. Someone else was in control of my life. A sick and sad boy was my puppet master and I let him be the boss of me. I know that I�m stronger now, healthy and in control, and Bear is my safe haven. I have balance in my life between work, friends, family, Bear, and extracurricular activities (with and without Bear). I live alone, I make my own decisions and my own rules and, at least on the surface, I am fiercely independent. But somehow, I am still afraid. I still feel threatened by someone that I haven�t seen in years and when I last saw him I told him, �No, we cannot be friends. No, I don�t forgive you.� Somehow I need to calm down and focus on moving past fear to distain. His blog has a Microsoft rip-off title; he�s so arrogant. He has playboy advertising on his website. He has a one-year-old child with a ridiculous name (it was either Switch or Kitty or both, I couldn�t tell) and I pity that child with every last empathetic fiber of my being. He calls himself a photographer and appreciator of the female form to justify posting nude pics. He lies on his resume and has a criminal record. He doesn�t even realize what a loser he is. Bear is right, I am better than that. I need to let go and allow myself to grow beyond the protective shell that I�ve been hiding in, instead of gluing my shell back together and hiding the cracks. Like the rotten egg that he is, I will throw him out before my life starts to smell like sulphur again.
2004-05-28 || 12:22 p.m. |
