After the sociopath: How do we heal? Part 9 – Returning to Wounded Innocence
PDF In the series on recovering from traumatic relationships, this is the third article on grieving and letting go. It is an extension of the last one, which discussed exploring the past to understand our patterns of belief and behavior. This is about how we do it and what we find. Or rather about how I did it, and what I found
Unpacking frozen memories
This week I reached out to someone whose name is part of my history. She was once the lover of a man I regarded as the great love of my life. He was an alcoholic poet who died when I was 23. She is a poet too. I found her web site, read a poem about the first time they made love, and wrote her an e-mail to introduce myself.
She wrote back, asking about his life and how he died. I tried to answer her factually, but found myself drifting over and over into how I felt about it all.
She asked if I ever wrote about him. I told her that, when he died, it was as thought my memory was wiped. I couldn’t remember his voice or the joking banter that was part of our everyday conversations. Except for photos, I couldn’t remember what he looked like. I was so angry, it took me four years to finally grieve him and let him go. At that time, I dreamed about him, and those memories are more vivid than our life together. If I could write anything, it would be only my story. I couldn’t reproduce him in prose. I wish I could.
I wrote a second letter, apologizing for going on and on about my feelings. I tried to tell her more about our life together, getting lost again in telling her about how it was for me as more and more memories returned. Then, within the same day, I wrote her a third letter. Apologizing once again for dumping all this me, me, me on her, a stranger. Telling her it wasn’t my conscious intention when I wrote her, but I was using her to unpack those frozen memories. That’s what she was seeing in these letters.
It wasn’t the first time I’ve done this. Through the years of recovery, I’ve reached out several times to lost people in my history. Always thinking I was just writing to say hi, and then finding memories flooding me. The one the sticks in my mind was an e-mail exchange with my high-school boyfriend, who broke up with me after we begin attending different colleges. It happened at the same time that my mother threw me out, because I’d tried to tell her what my father had done to me and was about to do to my younger sister. My mother accepted my father’s lies about a 13-year-old seducing him. Before this boy broke up with me, I finally told him the truth about me. Then he told me he wanted to date someone else at his new school.
He remembers only the sensible break-up of two teenagers going to schools in different states. But talking to him reopened what I was living through. I was at the edge of adulthood, abandoned by everyone who cared about me. Until then, I survived on an illusion that I could have a “regular life” by pretending it never happened. Now I saw that I was going to pay over and over. I felt how my personality tightened around fear, determination to ward off new monsters, and a hunger for something I called love, but now think was simply safety.
This was one of the foundations of behavior and belief I described in the last article. These events shaped much of what happened later. I didn’t have to think about it intellectually. I felt it. The insight shined like a light on the future of that young adult.
I had to stop talking to him. I was starting to say cruel and provocative things to him, sniping he didn’t deserve. Because in insight, I also saw him as he was, as well as my mother as she was, from the vantage point of the distant future. He too was entering his adulthood, actively shaping his future. How much of his potential could I expect him to sacrifice for a girl who was truly messed up? Would he fight my father? Was there anything fair about expecting him to take care of me, when he never would have gotten involved with me if he’d known the truth? Likewise, my mother, what did I expect from her? She was beaten down, trying to survive with her three younger children, and she was afraid of my father and afraid to leave him. She chose their survival.
I could see how my father’s behavior had damaged me and how my damage burdened other people. It wasn’t my fault or theirs. Whether they took on my burden was a decision about their lives, their resources, what they could handle. I had no choice, but they did. And they had more than me to consider.
I could see how it all came together. Without thinking about the word, I forgave my boyfriend and my mother. Instead of being angry, I mourned for myself, that young girl with no one but herself to depend on. It could have been different. But it was what it was. She had to move on, wounded but with no time or place to heal. She would create a life that reflected the reality of those unhealed wounds. And in understanding this, I forgave myself too. I stopped thinking I was stupid or selfish or incompetent or lazy or anything else. I was someone who lacked the resources that a lot of people took for granted, and I did the best I could.
Inside the myths
The more I crack open the “truths” of my life to discover what is really inside them, the more I come to realize that luck is a big factor. Perhaps that is too light a word for what I mean – the random way that events coalesce at a moment in time.
The great learning of the angry phase is that we are not responsible for what we cannot control. Our traumatic encounters begin with location and timing. If things had been a little different, we would not have been there. Beyond that, we did not want to be hurt or ask for it. Other people have their own histories and structures of behavior and belief. We did not create them and we cannot control them. If they had been different, it would have come out differently.
In the angry phase, we spend time dissecting what happened, finding what to blame on the circumstances and on the people who hurt us. We look outside ourselves for the reasons our good intentions attracted such bad results.
Twenty-five years after this husband died, another man drove me into healing myself. I believe he is a sociopath. In getting over him, one of the things that moved me from anger into grieving and letting go was a jarring realization that there was nothing I could blame on the sociopath that didn’t seem to be equally true of me. He was using me and he didn’t care about my feelings. True, but I also wanted him to be what I wanted him to be. And though my methods of coercion were more socially acceptable as “expressions of love,” their intention was to persuade him or guilt-trip him into giving me what I wanted.
The same was true for lying or obfuscation. Whatever he hid from me, I hid as much from him. I didn’t share what I really felt or wanted. I kept posing as an adult when I had a wounded child’s needs for unconditional love and complete safety. The same was true for being selfishly uncaring about what I wanted. I claimed to be committed to making him happy, but what I really meant by “happy” was him loving me and making a forever commitment. .
If I had accepted what his words and behavior were telling me about his capacity to give me what I wanted, that would have been the time to decide whether I liked or loved him. No blame. No fault. He fit or he didn’t. The truth was he didn’t. I wasn’t lucky that way with him. His life might have been improved by me, but the opposite wasn’t true. This was a frog, not a prince. It was that simple.
Luck turned on its head
As I get older, and keep cracking open the bits of mythology that make up my beliefs about my own life. I sometimes find surprises.
Writing the former lover of my dead husband, my memories opened up. Because I read her poetry and remember a few things he told me, I knew that she wasn’t certain about him and ultimately sent him away. She knew he was an ex-con. She knew he always had a bottle of beer in his hand. She knew he was seductive and smooth. I understand why she passed on him. She had professional stature, life equity, something to lose.
It was different for me. I was barely 20, desperate for a new life. Equally desperate for acceptance, because I felt like a freak. I had a soul-killing clerical job, no money, no clue of what to do next. I had heard things about him.That he had stocked the library shelves in a brand-new prison and was literate, had read everything. He was already a published poet, and people spoke of him with awe and affection.
When I met him, I saw a big handsome man with a background as bad as mine who had made something extraordinary of himself. The booze and drugs, the terminal liver disease, our shared ability to ignore the fact that he was engaged to another woman somehow just added to the mystique. I looked at him and saw a future that was better than anything I could create alone. That night I stayed with him and never left.
I told her how it began. And then I told her about the end. Watching his character and intellect deteriorate as his liver failed, the blessing of his death in a car accident, my angry refusal to grieve him until I had a psychotic break four years later. But, by the time he died, I had a profession. I was a writer. He fed me books, taught me to edit, gave me rules of writing and thinking which serve me to this day. He left this girl, 13 years younger than him, a new future.
That’s the mythology. In the first letter, I wrote “I was lucky.” I meant lucky to find him, but the words stayed with me after I sent the letter. As I told her more in the second letter, I found myself looking at me through her eyes. My myth of a great romance began to shrivel to the story of a vulnerable child-woman and the out-of-control addict she had chosen as a replacement daddy. I would do anything, accept any treatment or circumstance, as long as he would stay alive and keep convincing me that he loved me. Yes, he was charismatic and funny, brilliant and talented, and probably more tolerant of my childish neediness than almost anyone else might have been. But it was a dead-end ride and I wouldn’t get out of it without more damage.
By the time I was writing the third letter, I was not telling her about the times he had hit me. The ways he made me carry his grass, because he was already a three-time loser. How, when we were broke, he wanted me to start whoring. How our open marriage was a license for him, not me. How when he became too bored writing the trash novels that supported us, I did it alone. Or how, at the end, he kept getting into serious accidents with other women, until he eventually died in a car with a woman who barely survived it.
In the myth, these were blips in a mostly charmed life with someone who understood me and who my horrible life into something interesting and glamorous. But now I remembered that the last time he went to prison, it was because of a tip by a woman he was living with, who was supposedly working her way through college as a prostitute. I thought about how people with my background make up the majority of prostitutes. The woman who tipped the police about the suitcase of grass in his trunk had gotten rid of him, like the woman poet, like the wife before her, another beautiful and gifted woman who fell in love with him, corresponding while he was still in prison, but gave up on him after his drinking created grief, chaos and endless expense. Like me, they probably all loved him after he was gone, but they got rid of him, because he was dangerous to them and himself.
Looking back at him, another damaged child with a terrible background, and me, who was hungry and bright but with no boundaries or any idea of what a good relationship looked like, I realized that I was luckier than I knew. Lucky that he wasn’t well and needed someone to take care of him. Lucky that, except for a brief scary period, we made enough money writing that he didn’t go back to dealing or trying to turn me out. Lucky that he was probably more kind than he would have been under other circumstances, and that I had the opportunity to see the best more than the worst of him. Lucky that I came out of it with a way to support myself so I didn’t have to submit to the next “rescuer” that came along.
Like the situation with the man who couldn’t be what I wanted him to be, this was a confluence of circumstances. If I hadn’t been so hungry, I wouldn’t have seen him as I did. Nor loved him and mourned him as the soul mate whose good influence stays with me to this day. If he hadn’t been too broke to escape from Albany, I never would have met him. If either of us had more resources, it never would have happened. But I was lucky. He was what I needed him to be, and I was that for him.
Who is under those sacks of cement?
Writers treasure people’s peculiarities. Stories would be boring without them. But, to write well, it is also necessary to dig under the stereotypes of good and evil. My husband’s story didn’t begin with prison, or the dope-dealing or pimping. I knew a few things about his early life, but in retrospect I know more from just seeing how he responded to trauma. He refused to be broken. It was something I loved about him, but it also spoke of entrenched habits of trying to ignore or bury pain. We had this in common.
We thought we were brave, but I’ve come to think it’s braver to face the truth. Which, in our case, was a dance of the walking wounded. Facing truth can take romance out of a story, but facts may be more nourishing. Truth may lead to spontaneous forgiveness, as I forgave my old boyfriend and my mother. It also can show us that we did the best we could. We see the burdens we are carrying and the innocent and good soul who is trying to bear them.
Blaming ourselves is a function of anger. Realizing that we are not perfect, that we live with handicaps, is part of grieving and letting go. Facing it doesn’t mean we give up trying to heal. And forgiveness has nothing to do, ultimately, with the people we are forgiving. It is a choice of what we want to care about, what burdens we decide not to carry. Being mad at a sociopath for being a sociopath and exploiting or hurting us is like hating the sun for shining and giving us sunburn. Facing reality empowers us to deal with it. Wear sunscreen. Trust conditionally.
The best reason to invest in healing from unresolved trauma is because it is crippling. It blocks our ability to mature through experience. It constricts personality structure with fear-based blinders and self-limiting rules that should only be interim strategies, rough protections until we see through what happened. The more we understand the confluence of events, most of which had nothing to do with us, the more trauma tends to lose its glamour and terror. It becomes simply a variety of human experience that we integrate into our knowledge of the world. When we stop mistaking a snake for a goose, because we now know that snakes exist, life becomes that much easier, safer and richer.
In the next piece, we will talk more about the relationship of fear and forgiveness. Until then
Namaste, the unchangeably innocent spirit in me salutes the unchangeably innocent spirit in you.
Kathy
written by Kathleen Hawk • Permalink •
James says:
Rune
“You were targeted by a psychopath who wanted to hurt you.”
Yes I believe she was as well as the other members. Abusers will use Logic to disable their victims. But there logic is without true empathy or understanding. For them logic is king and nothing else matters. How many victims can tell us how the abuser will talk at them (not talk to them) for hours and hours and will wear them down using logic as abusive as any hand raise in anger. Think as it like this, water boarding is use because the person feels like he is drowning but there is no real danger of that. It’s how the person feels and not what is really the reality.
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britneyhammer says:
Again, thank you. I thought I would check before I went to bed and I’m so glad I did. ..in fact, I’m going to read the responces again.
Did I say that I wished my S was the guy I wished him to be? (Just kidding!) It really made sense what Rune said about him working to “set it up for me”. I never thought about it that way, but OF COURSE HE DID!!!
Thanks for your links too! I truly believe that alot of progress has been made. As for my life being “happily ever after”, I have some doubts, but I’m willing to be open about it- things change. As for now, I’ll just settle for David being out of my life. Bye for now, Blessings to all.
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Rune says:
Britneyhammer: If you go to the “aftermath” site, check out the topic called “The 1st day.”
We all need all kinds of support, depending on what stage we are at. The Lovefraud community is amazing. You might also find some research on this other site that will help you. This isn’t an “either/or” question. Surround yourself with support in any way that you can.
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James says:
After my last post I not sure if members know about “waterboarding” so some information about it..
Waterboarding is a form of torture that consists of immobilizing the victim on his or her back with the head inclined downwards, and then pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. By forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences drowning and is caused to believe they are about to die. It is considered a form of torture by legal experts, politicians, war veterans, medical experts in the treatment of torture victims, intelligence officials, military judges, and human rights organizations. As early as the Spanish Inquisition it was used for interrogation purposes, to punish and intimidate, and to force confessions.
http://science.howstuffworks.c.....arding.htm
Like I stated abusers use logic like verbal torture to wear down the victim.
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Tilly says:
Rosa:
I know you were not avoiding me Rosa! but I knew somenting was WRONG! and i was worried about you.. and I’m glad you spelled it out. Although I missed who it was and how our members addressed it. mainly coz I can only get to the computer sometimes at the moment.
Anyway, I hope you are ok, you gave me a scare disappearing like that! Thankyou Rune for helping Rosa!!
I don’t know what happened but I can imagine.
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Tilly says:
Rune:
You are amazing..so strong! Thankyou for being here for me too! xo
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OxDrover says:
Dear Rosa,
(((((ROSA))))) Thank God it isn’t often that one of these creeps comes here, I had one (posing as a victim yet) zing me more than a year ago when I was still sooo fragile. I know it hurts. It is scary, and hey, “just cause you are paranoid means you have ALL the facts” (joke) But they can’t hurt you here if you pay them no mind. You are SAFE HERE cause they can’t reach through the web to do you harm. That’s the nice thing, we can reach through the web with love, but the barrier keeps their toxins on the other side of the screen.
(((hugs)))) and all my prayers!
ps. I harvested garlic a couple of days ago and I am surrounding my computer with crosses and garlic so that will keep his toxins away!!!
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Kathleen Hawk says:
Rosa,
I’m just checking in again. And I want to tell you something really important that anyone else would tell you here. The only thing personal to you about that post was the fact that he used your name. I’m not going to go back into your earlier posts right now, but I would bet that you said something that indicated some kind of wistfulness or wishing that things were different or life was better.
What he wrote was a standard sociopath come-on. All that business about your being wounded, and how you need to open yourself up, and how you don’t understand yourself is a technique, that’s all. The purpose is to use your emotions, your insecurities, and hope for a better life to slip past your defenses and make you question yourself. What they get out of it is a sense of control and “winning.”
If you look at your reaction, you’ll see exactly what buttons he was pushing in you. We’re all vulnerable to this kind of thing, until we realize from hard experience what a snake-oil salesman looks like.
Here’s what you need to think about to make yourself more invulnerable to this baloney.
First, anyone who starts talking to you about what is wrong with you is immediately suspect. As is anyone who tries to give you the impression that they can fix you. We do our own healing, and we are our own authorities, even when we’re upset. We may go to good friends or therapists to help work things out or process them, but in particular anyone who offers us some kind of magical solution that we don’t understand has control issues, and we don’t need other people’s control issues in our personal lives.
Second, anyone you don’t know who makes personal comments about you of any sort is being disrespectful. LoveFraud is a special place where we have an unspoken agreement that we share our feelings and allow other people to react to them. But that is in the spirit of mutual support. If someone starts to tell you who you are, and you don’t like it or agree with it, you have every right to shut them down or walk away.
Third, anyone who starts talking to you in a complicated, confusing way that doesn’t exactly make sense to you is suspect. This is the verbal equivalent of a shell game. If you’re in a classroom and you’ve signed up to learn something, you know that a good teacher will do everything possible to present new information so that you can understand it. If you had a teacher who was deliberately presenting information in a confusing way, you’d know that it was a bad teacher or someone who was setting you up to fail. In social situations, it’s the same thing. This person was deliberately trying to mess with you.
Finally, if you feel messed with, if you feel bad about yourself, if you feel insecure as a result of a conversation, believe your instincts that this is a bad thing. If you’re worried about being disrespectful, or fear that it’s just your stupidity, or feel intimidated in any way, someone is playing a power game with you, trying to get “over” you. And we all feel this when it happens. If you’re not feeling strong enough to know that you’re not interested in their “authority” or their greater wisdom about who you are, you can still just walk away. If you give yourself some time and space, you’ll figure out that this person is trying to make you feel bad or feel weak. And that’s NOT about you, that’s about what they’re doing.
This guy was intelligent in the way that sociopath’s are. He could manipulate words in a way that made him look smart. But the two big tip-offs with him were that he tried to make himself look smart at your expense and that his logic was so convoluted.
You are the authority on you. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is messing with you. From your last post, I gather that you’re not mad yet about having your feelings manipulated like that. You will be. He’s a jerk who just showed up to see if one of us was vulnerable enough to bite. It’s not the first time one of them has cruised the site. For them, it’s the equivalent of cruising a sex-addicts 12-step program to find a quick lay.
And we’ve seen people who have been here a long time get sucked in for a moment. It’s just a lesson. That’s why I wrote “thanks for reminding us.” It’s not the worst thing to get a close look at one of these creatures in this safe environment. Not just to see how they operate, but to remember the emotional self-sufficiency we still need to develop in ourselves. So we’re not vulnerable to these “fixers” or not interested in people who make us responsible for fixing them.
Rosa, you’re a courageous and compassionate person. You care deeply about other people. Everyone here has seen that. If, like me, you believe that the universe sends you exactly the lessons, you need, the lesson of this encounter may be a simple one. Just that you’re still learning to take care of yourself, and that you can’t assume that everyone is as caring a person as you are.
There is a natural tendency to assume that other people are like us. This isn’t any sort of stupidity; it just the way we see the world though the lens of our own consciousness. It’s one of the reasons that we get a little smarter when our anger finally rises, because that lens starts to include realization of danger out there and the necessity that we be prepared to protect ourselves. But meanwhile, if you’re not angry, maybe you can just start to play with the idea that you can’t fix everyone and everyone’s idea of fixing is not for you. And that a key to taking care of yourself, and not wasting time with people who aren’t helpful or good for us, is taking the time to make that discrimination.
We don’t have to blame or criticize passerby to come that that conclusion. He’s not helpful. Not for what we’re doing here, not in our efforts to heal and become stronger, more effective people in our own lives.
In every way, Rosa, you deserve better.
Kathy
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learnthelesson says:
Kathleen,
The most profound, healing words Ive read to date on my healing/learning/growing journey were these words…
“The best reason to invest in healing from unresolved trauma is because it is crippling. It blocks our ability to mature through experience. It constricts personality structure with fear-based blinders and self-limiting rules that should only be interim strategies, rough protections until we see through what happened. The more we understand the confluence of events, most of which had nothing to do with us, the more trauma tends to lose its glamour and terror. It becomes simply a variety of human experience that we integrate into our knowledge of the world. When we stop mistaking a snake for a goose, because we now know that snakes exist, life becomes that much easier, safer and richer.”
WOW. TRIPLE WOW!
And thank you for sharing so much of your experiences – I really understood your “lucky” theory/perspective and your ability to say what I have felt with my situation that WE WERE BOTH IN BAD PLACES and such is so true about the confluences of circumstances… and facing the truth about so much of that part of the journey. Made it a bit easier for me to come to terms with and accept so much about my x and within myself that allows me to regain just the right amount of my innocent spirit back so as to enjoy my life in a more peaceful and empowering way and feel stronger and whole as a person again…as I continue to let go and move on. There is abundant healing in sometimes painful truth, thanks Kathleen.
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learnthelesson says:
Rosa,
Remember, nobody can offend you if you understand that what they project on you is what they carry within themselves. – LTL
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justabouthealed says:
Another dead give away is the attitude implied toward women. I refuse to reread or read anymore posts from that poison pen, and I’m SO GLAD AND RELIEVED to see the true reactions here. (GO LF!) But as I recall there was a “god’s gift to women” implied, and standards he has, and MAYBE a woman would be lucky enough to live up to those standards. That was my S exactly. And the not-so veiled references to certain things he needs to please him. RED FLAG, RED BANNER. Sure enough, this morning we learn of what is on his mind, which Donna (THANK YOU) has now deleted.
It is SO good to have a very mentally healthy person in your life. I always ask myself ” Would my [mentally healthy male in my life] ever say or write or even THINK something like that?
In this case, the answer is a clear resounding NO!
Even though it brought on some PTSD, it was so good to see my red flag system alive and working….and the same for all of you!
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justabouthealed says:
It was a post on another thread that brought on some PTSD. Rosa, I think MANY of us on here thought for a second…..”Could that be the S I know????” I can imagine I would have freaked had my name been on it, thinking he had “found” me, because for a second that fear occurred to me anyway, with the other post.
Well a good opportunity to remind myself, as the one blog says, that was then, this is now. I read a comment on another site from a psychologist which said something like you may have had a tooth pulled years ago, and it was painful, and scary, and horrible…but you are able to let go of that and move on.
My reaction reminded me maybe I DO have more healing to do….but part of me remembers that time is the best healer of all, and to just let all this GO!!
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Kathleen Hawk says:
Thanks, LTL, for understanding. I wrote this article in mid-process. Usually my stuff is more “baked.” It was more personal, but less structured. And I’m really glad you and anyone else found something in there.
About returning to wounded innocence, I’m glad you caught that. The structures of coping get layered on our pain, and then we come to define ourselves differently.
But underneath it all, the truth is that we are still innocent, and just trying to cope with a painful thing we don’t really understand. We have intermediate coping strategies, which include denial, bargaining and anger. But none of these things, not even anger which is a huge step forward, open the big picture to us
The more we realize that there’s a lot going on around us — natural events of the changing world of nature, human trends of belief and behavior, individual dramas that have nothing to do with us — the more we realize that we are really a part of it all. Each of us is a very small element in the big scheme of things, and very vulnerable to things outside of our control. In other ways, it clarifies the amazing role each of us has in influencing not just our own lives but the entire tapestry in which we live, because it’s all connected.
It’s one of the reasons I love the Internet. It leapfrogs new connections over time and space. Imagine how much harder it would have been to heal if we couldn’t meet here. And imagine the power of this work we are doing rippling out into our lives. The language we are creating gradually reshaping mass consciousness. (Always a slow thing to move that big elephant, but we will see it happen, as awareness of incest and domestic violence moved into mass consciousness.) The expectations we have of our recovered lives being shared over and over to encourage and reward some people, create repercussions for other people who want a cheaper or less honest approach to relationship.
Every single one of us is a tiny part of this and larger things beyond LoveFraud. Small, but our contributions shape the whole.
And it’s not just that. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t had a relationship with a sociopath, and I wouldn’t have had that if I hadn’t been damaged by childhood abuse. I could have had another life, but I didn’t. I had this one. Was I lucky or unlucky? I don’t know, but I do know that it thrills me to be part of this important work that may be creating a better, more conscious world. And so all that tragedy turned into something that gives meaning to my life, and a chance to actually have a part of something huge, changing things that have needed to be changed for a long time. Because my tragedies were not just mine, but symptomatic of bigger problems.
That’s the kind of perspectives that returning to wounded innocence can give you. There is not one thing that’s really wrong with me. I just am where I am in the big tapestry and in my own development. Like all of us, I am challenged to find meaning in the events of my life and to do decide what to do next.
I am so grateful we all are here.
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Kathleen Hawk says:
justabouthealed, you wrote that you wondered if you knew this man. I read his post and found myself challenged and/or attracted by some things he said.
Even though I could see where he was, how he was relating to life. Even though I knew I’ve already been through that lesson and don’t need to do it again.
I understand what you mean about comparing his words to something your mentally healthy partner might say. I don’t have one, but I check points of energy in my body to see what’s being appealed to. Places that are weak? Places that are strong? And I could feel it going to old sicknesses, old insecurities, old twisted ideas about what I needed to do to survive or be loved. And that was enough to repel me.
When we stop fighting those old battles, we tend to forget about them. Or I do. I know your life puts you in contact with a lot of people who are fighting victimization and abuse in the here and now, so you have sharper awareness than me, I think. But then something like this shows up to remind me of vulnerability.
I can resolve old business, and build new internal and life structures built on self-trust and improved self-care. Every step I take in that direction makes me stronger and more resilient. But all those years of pain and doubt are still part of my history. And I could be broken down again; that pattern exists too.
Not that I’m trying to scare myself. But just to maintain humility. To take seriously that I only control myself; I don’t control life. Investing in who I want to be, being aware of what’s going on around me, and doing what I can to make the world a better and safer place is a neverending thing.
Thank you for helping to keep me grounded.
Kathy
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Joy says:
Rosa, I’m sorry that you had that experience, and sorry I missed that thread as I would be interested to know if I would have been as perceptive as some other wise souls here were. I’m glad there was a circle of support around you. I love that about this place.
Kathleen, I always come away from anything you write here feeling well fed with something to chew on and think over. Thanks for that.
Britney, You asked if anyone here could relate and I sure can. The addiction feeling even once you know they are bad for you. Like drugs. You got the high and want it again even though it has been a long time since that high felt good and you know that it will eventually destroy you. I find that it has helped so much just have the people here validate my experience and say yep been there, done that, know what you feel. Otherwise, it would be easy to fall prey to the voice of doubt in your head that says, “no you got him all wrong, he was a swell guy, you were the problem.” so easy to fall back under that spell of their twisted logic. But time and again it seems we come to realize that we loved not a real person but who they pretended to be. Having my parents in court and us all hearing his lies and thinking who ARE YOU! helped me see the light. He was never someone that we knew. Who he really is, we do not know. And we do not wish to ever try. You are well on the path. You may slip a time or two, but you know the road that you are on, and it is a healing one.
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sstiles54 says:
Rosa,
I am sorry you got freaked out, too. I have had the same reaction twice here at LF, when a couple of the chickenchit trolls tried to post on OUR site. I think it affects us that way, because we get so relaxed & comfortable by all the good talk here, that we are taken totally off guard when a creep pops up out of nowhere. Like Oxy said, we are safe & loved here. We all take care of each other.
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slimone says:
Rosa,
Sorry to hear you got stink-bombed by this creepazoid. I fortunately missed the displeasure of his written company. But I think I got what went on by others’ responses to you, and Kathleen’s outline of ‘tactics’. And I am sorry you got skunked.
I don’t write much, but I follow, and I have developed a softness and regard for you. Your posts inspire me, and amaze me with their consistent compassion and their ‘reaching out’ quality. Please don’t take on ANYTHING this smell wrote. Let this, and the others posts here, be an emotional incense burning……
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JaneSmith says:
That intruder was most likely the same one that was using the name of Secret Monster, Mr Green and another user name, can’t remember.
He is so insignificant, Rosa. Really he is. And there ain’t no way that your friends on LF are going to abide by that crap.
I’m not reeling from the painful involvement with a predator so I have 0 problem confronting such retarded, useless nonsense because frankly…they don’t scare me one iota.
I would have preferred if he would have directed that post to me rather than you as I would have just ignored him. Kathleen said it best when she responded that he has nothing beneficial to offer to LF. She is correct.
He’s just a bully and he can’t do you any harm on here. Just ignore any of those type who seek to cause disruption by being trolls.
**HUGGS TO ROSA**
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OxDrover says:
Dear Rosa,
Sometimes in the earlier (more raw) stages of healing our souls, just like with a flesh wound, the scab gets suddenly knocked off and we start to bleed. That SUDDEN attack that is so unexpected from “out of the blue” is one of those things that just takes us by suprise and knocks us to our knees.
Running into the P unexpectedly, or a phone call in the middle of the night that we just pick up, and THERE HE IS, etc.
Each time one of these things happen, we regress a bit, but in the end, each of these encounters makes us STRONGER. It may hurt, but the benefit is that we LEARN FROM THEM.
From time to time INTRUDERS do come here, just trolling for someone to either hook into their bull crap or poke a stick at one of us, they are unwelcome guests for sure, and I think they are just attention seeking—even negative attention is attention to these trolls. Typical narcissistic-psychopathic creeps, unimportant in the greater scheme of this site.
Just remember that you have the “network” behind you, just like in that phone commercial where the guy with the phone looks around and there are hundreds of people standing behind him. You are protected by the NETWORK of caring people who do understand and care for you! Hang in there sweetie!!! You are an important part of LF!!! (((hugs))) and all my prayers!
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shabbychic2 says:
Rosa: All for one, and one for all!! We need your sense of humor around here!
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Jim in Indiana USA says:
Well, Rosa, et al…I read a few posts…what the others said. Most of what I read was “inappropriate” for the setting here. I just clicked on my virtual “ignore” button….
Kathy…good article!
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Rosa says:
THANK YOU so much everyone!! Your support and encouragement is AMAZING!
I am fine. I really am. There is no way I know this person, and there is no way he knows me. You don’t know what a relief that is.
I am going to stay off and just read for a while, because this “PasserBy” is not passing by as quickly as I would like.
Thanks again, everybody!
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blueskies says:
Rosa:)
I am glad to hear you are fine:)x like lots of people here I read those posts and was worried about knowing who this person was – the pattern of language is so familiar- but again its just so spooky how these creeps share so many characteristics isnt it. I am also sooo impressed by the way the guys on here dealt with it. Much love to you and I look forward to reading more of your wonderful loving and intelligent posts soon:)xxx
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Rune says:
Rosa: If you are here, you can ignore the potted skunk cabbage in the corner. We’ll help!
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libelle says:
I was also wondering why I was emotionally touched by the p-b. It was, I think now, because the wording was so general, blaming us of being manipulative ourselves, but as HE has so high standards we are poor failures and he can “read” us, has the power to be stronger in his logic arguments dissecting love, and passes on to the next wonderful intelligent woman who might have this “special qualities” he is not telling about.
But basically it was the blaming of being manipulative myself that hit home with me. It was like listening to the arguments of the X, my father, my brother. The “pretzel”-twist thing that was SO unsuccessful.
But then I had to remind me that he is trying to “wash old dirty laundry”, that has already been cleansed thoroughly by me with the help of LF and others, and that made me just plain angry.
It was like a newspaper horoscope at the hairdresser’s with general wording so that I can relate to SOME, usually “There is more in you than you dare to show”, or “be careful as the sun is meeting with uranus, be careful with the money” and so on. It is always good being careful with money, and we all feel sometimes underappreciated.
That was, as Kathy put it, a reminder, and I am very proud of us all to have spotted the true meaning behind this entry, and I am so glad Rosa who was chosen as the scapegoat is well and alive and kicking! (another red flag!!! She has no clue why he was addressing the entry to her, it could have been anyone but Oxy as she is armed with the skillet).
Kathy, wonderful article as always! I think the “wounded innocence” is the last layer that shows when we have cleared our internal “cellar” and “attic”. I have WAY to go, but I am thankful of having such a wonderful guide and companion on the way.
And now I will do some gardening with my niece and follow the “potted-plant-routine” with anything unpleasant to my eye, ear and heart.
Thank you Kathy and all the LF-bunch from the bottom of my heart. I wish you al a pleasant weekend!
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Kathleen Hawk says:
Thank you, libelle, for grasping what I was trying to get to. And thank everyone else for your wonderful comments. I’m sort of overwhelmed with work right now, and just checking in and out as I can.
Yes, you put it exactly right. When we get down to wounded innocence, we in a position where we can truly separate from the event and its causes and learn in positive ways. What it meant about the world, and how to work with that knowledge to “grow up” and move forward toward our personal positive outcomes.
Liane made a valuable comment on one of the other threads about all actions being motivated by pursuit of relief or pursuit of pleasure. As living organisms needing to sustain ourselves, there are always going to be many elements of relief in our motivations. We are pressed to find all the things we need to survive. Likewise, we’re continually going to find challenges to our survival and our pursuit of pleasure. The natural random events of life.
But an empowered life is primarily motivated by the pursuit of our positive outcomes. The is “pleasure” in a broad philosophical sense. But that word incorporates a lot of territory. It’s not just sensory pleasure, although that’s part of it. It’s intellectual, ethical and spiritual pleasure.
Everyone has their own pleasure spectrum, but a very strong element for me is effectiveness, seeing things working well, seeing communications being open and clear, seeing the evolution of an idea through planning, building and completion so that it serves it’s initial purpose. Some personality tests identify me as an “architect” type, and that matches this passion of mine for seeing something through from inspiration to living structure.
Another point of pleasure for me is something between surprise and learning. I discover a new truth in something I thought I knew. I love it when my internal categorization of things gets stretched or blown apart. Sometimes this is bad news (and I have to do a little trauma processing), but more commonly it is good news. I like these lessons that the world is more interesting than I knew and I like the feeling of my mind opening up to a gift I didn’t see coming.
The last big point of pleasure that pops to mind is human connections that are a big, powerful circuit of shared ideas and feelings and visions of the future. The more healed I get, the more I begin to interpret “love” as shared willingness to talk about the future. Not necessary a future together, but where we see ourselves going, what we imagine we are building, how we imagine we are influencing the larger whole. In these conversations, I find more much more than intellectual sharing. They incorporate our histories, our feelings, our ideas of the nature of the world, and when I can co-create that kind of conversation or that kind of relationship, I am really happy.
That’s just me, but these are some ideas about what pleasure might look like, when we’re no longer interpreting it as relief from unmet needs.
Before we finish processing a trauma, we tend to think that it is something about us. And that’s not wrong. Because we are still “wearing” it in some way, rather than seeing it simply as a lesson in life. Like any other type of school, these lessons in life are meant to give us more wisdom, but also more adaptability to what is real out there. It no longer stops us dead in our tracks. It no longer dominates our consciousness as a threat to our survival or wellbeing. It just becomes one more real thing out there — like bears in the woods or toxic bacteria in unrefrigerated seafood — that we know about, have some sort of internal plan about how to deal with it, and we can refocus on our own good.
And sometimes it also offers us a gift of purpose. In my case and, in the case of several of us here on LoveFraud, our traumas have given us a clear sense of what we want to do with our lives.
I know I talk about God a lot here, and you probably know that my concept of God is not a traditional one. I depend much more on the God spark inside me than any idea of an big, external power. At the same time, I use my old Catholic upbringing to come up with some of the images I use in healing.
And one of those images is my soul standing at the door of life, giving God my laundry list of what I want to be born to. I wanted a family that was exceptionally smart, physically strong, good looking, born leaders and gifted in handling the materials of the world. And I got all that. It never occurred to me to ask that they were emotionally healthy and happy people.
But at the door, God said one thing to me as he sent me out to this life. It was that he had chosen something special for me, a big challenge and a chance to change the world for the better, if I could understand the meaning of that challenge. He said, “No matter what happens, you can always find the right path by asking yourself ‘what am I going to do with this?’ Everything you need is there. You just have to look at it all, and think about what good thing you can do with it.”
The more well I get, the more I realize that my whole life has been about that. And I think that’s true for everyone one of us. We just don’t see it that way when we feel overwhelmed by things that have happened to us. The sense of victimization is all about feeling like the world is big and strong, and we are small and weak. As we emerge from it into the simplicity of wounded innocence, we realize that we are simply learning and grasping again all that we have to work with.
And we go on, smarter and more resilient, to the next important “pleasure” in our lives and to meet the next learning experiences along the way. Because there is one more important thing about successful trauma processing, and that is our comfort and increasing speed with the process. The more we do this, the better we get, the faster we learn, the less it costs us, and the more quickly and effecting we can get back to setting our God sparks loose on creating more good in the world.
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blueskies says:
Gosh! What a fantastic post kathleen. I wish I was a eloquent as you. I wish I could express myself like this.
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JaneSmith says:
Kathleen,
I haven’t spoken about this current essay you wrote. It is beautiful, touching and moving, inspiring and stunningly honest.
It takes mucho guts to share with us such personal and intimate experiences. I greatly appreciate the time and effort you expend in your writing.
And I read that you are no longer susceptible to compliments. Consider what I say as genuine praise for you. I’m an expressive woman and when I feel affection for a person, I show it! Effusively!
I admire and care for you even though we communicate through the avenue of the internet. Makes no such difference to me. You and the other peeps on here aren’t just words to me, but living, breathing, hurting, loving people.
I read these essays and comments sometimes with sadness in my heart and many times with flat out joy and exhilaration. I thoroughly enjoy reading that you all are recovering your strength, your own personal indomitable power, winning victories after victories.
I LOVE it when the good guys/gals triumph over tyranny. Makes my heart sing to the high heavens.
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JaneSmith says:
I’ve been reading the comments from you all about how the intruder’s words felt like a sucker punch in comparison to your ex-psychos. Seems the juxtaposition was alarming for you peeps and caused more than a little uneasiness.
I’m so sorry for the harm he might of caused. He is nothing in the grand scheme of the universe. Nada. Zilch.
My ex psychos, slime buckets, sleazoids were never as adept with the word salad as this here dude was. Heehee, they never could win an argument with me because they were sooo out of their league when it came to logic, rationale and practicality. It was a lose/lose situation for them.
And even when I was in throes of some serious heartache and confusion, complete loss of equilibreum, I STILL would not surrender that fundamental part of me that could not abide callous treatment.
If I was pushed or provoked one, two many times, the warrior deep within me introduced herself and let the red rage flow in my viens.
Trust me, I tried every strategy known including the most admirable diplomacy possible to get them away from me. If they were giving out awards for Ambassador of the Year when dealing with predators…I would have won. No contest.
I guess I was fortunate that my own personal losers were complete idiots. Could not in any way stand up to my logic and reasoning.
Word salad? I laughed in their faces when they would try to twist my words to suit them. To cause me grief and guilt. Never worked, those ploys. Yes, my heart was bruised, torn and wrecked but my innate self screamed at me repeatedly….”Get the hell away from this sicko! Fast, sister!”
And to state how very stupid and careless they are, the freak who stalked me for 2 years got busted for drug dealing and a dui. Rather than go to jail, I think he skipped the country. Good riddance to bad garbage, rubbish I always say.
In summary, peeps, remember that we are always, forever much more intelligent, resourceful, capable than the predators could ever be.
What comes around goes around and in the end they ALWAYS get exactly what the deserve.
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Kathleen Hawk says:
Thanks, blueskies, you probably can, if you just start writing every day. I’ve been thinking and writing about this stuff for years. That’s what you’re seeing here. For me, writing helps me get clear.
Jane, I probably should have said I try to reinterpret compliments as well as insults as feedback from the universe. I’m doing okay or I need to improve. But not live or die on them. For most of my life I was entirely dependent for my self-esteem on how I saw myself in other people’s eyes.
I had to get over it. I realized it that night at the poetry open mike when the audience got up and cheered and whistled. I felt like my blood had turned to ginger ale and my heart was going to explode. I needed that positive feedback so badly that getting it was almost painful. And I walked out of there thinking that I’ll never be able to cope with success, if I find it, if I’m that vulnerable. I had to learn to trust myself more. Take the feedback and use it, but in the end, be my own judge.
All that said, I am more grateful than I can say that you find something for yourself in my writing and that you are kind enough to tell me. And that goes for anyone else who takes the time to give me some feedback, even negative. In fact, especially negative. It’s hard to take, but it sends me to thinking and learning and trying new things.
Regarding your comments about relative communication skills of you (and maybe more of us) and the sociopaths, I think it’s a really good point. We get so impressed with their ability to “mime” our feelings, issues and dreams that we tend to overlook how clumsy they are with their lies, endless negativity, transparent manipulation and even their screwy and self-serving logic.
It’s no wonder they try to make us question ourselves, and try to break down our self-confidence or beat us up in some way. It’s the only way they can stay in control, because we really are smarter and more resourceful than them. They’re operating with one hand (or one side of the brain) tied behind their backs. And they can’t survive without parasiting off people who are more competent at life they they are.
I really like what you wrote. It’s another kind of success story. Maybe we should start an archive for posts like that. Even if we lost in one way, many of us won in another. Or we have clear insights about to recognize them, blow them off, finish it successfully, get back at least some of what we lost. These are important stories.
Thank heavens for LoveFraud. I think that the notes that we share here might help the good inherit the earth that much sooner.
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Leah says:
Ditto what Blueskies said. Your post was inspiring Kathleen. I had the good fortune to read at the time I needed a bit of help reframing. I really appreciate your threads.
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Tilly says:
Kathleen: “He’s a jerk who just showed up to see if one of us was vulnerable enough to bite. For them, it’s the equivalent of cruising a sex-addicts 12-step program to find a quick lay”. HA HA! I love it..thats brilliant! such a great analogy!
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JaneSmith says:
Just reread my 2nd post above and I sound like such a pompous braggart. Like I was a badarse, or something like. Was not my intention. I wanted to wholeheartedly express my scorn and defiance to my past psychos.
I wanted to yell my battle cry in their faces and say…Look here, losers. I’m not only still standing, undefeated but I’m a thousand times stronger than I ever was before.
I’m no longer that naive, trusting, foolish little girl who wanted to be loved at any costs. The costs being damage to my precious spirit. The costs being self doubt and feelings of worthlessness, unlovability, loathing directed towards myself.
I want them to be aware that I have experienced true joy for the first time in my life and they had absolutely NOTHING to do with it. My Lord in Heaven has been there for me from the beginning, gently and lovingly holding my hand, stearing me along the path of righteousness. I feel him with me always.
I want them to see how unsuccessful they were in seeking to greedily siphon my very soul from me. They failed as they all fail when trying to destroy good women such as myself.
See me, losers. I no longer wish to go to war with you as my time and energy are precious to me. I am not afraid of you, only bored and impatient with your tedious machinations.
Just wanted to set the record straight for you folks who probably rolled your eyes at my supposed silly bravado. Nothing silly about it.
I’m a winner in every way possible from my perspective. And so are you wonderful people of LF and the world.
Peace out…
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Joy says:
Jane, That post just made my scrapbook. And worthy of being taped to the mirror. Love it!
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justabouthealed says:
Here’s where I am in my healing today. Maybe it is two steps forward, one step back over and over and over. But first there was the pain and anger of realizing I had been used. Never had I ever felt like hurting someone so much! Then there was the horror and some fear and sadness in realizing I can’t fix him or even the relationship. Then there is today the grief of realizing I have truly lost someone that was in and out of my life for almost 44 years. And the added grief that the boy/man I thought he was, is not real, never was real. And that I will never ever see even the horrible real man ever again. Sort of the same feeling when I have to put down a dog that used to be so wonderful, but now is senile, suffering, biting at me. At least in the dog’s case, the “good” dog was real, but still at the end is no longer there. Good-byes are so hard, especially when you loved deeply, even if foolishly.
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justabouthealed says:
I know, I hate the word healing, I mean recovering. JAR–Just about recovered. Great, now I’m a jar! LOL!
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JaneSmith says:
Thanks, Joy!
I usually try to speak for all us when writing a post. Am in no way assuming to emphatically know you folks, but we are kindred spirits, been through way too much garbage over the years, some stemming from childhood, when loving PDIs.
That’s cool you have a LF scrapbook. If I tried to create one, I would have about 4000 mbs of stuff on the hard drive. My computer would be moving much more clunkier than it is now.
Peace, my friend…
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Kathleen Hawk says:
JAH, I’m sorry you’re going through this, and glad if it gets you free of some piece-of-garbage drag on your life.
Speaking of which, I’m about to post my next article, which is on forgiving. Which I admit, upfront, that I have a spotty track record with. But here’s the theory anyway.
I hope you’re feeling better. Weeding the garden is a good thing, for us if not the weeds. I grow roses. I feed them. The weeds love the rose food, and I have to keep yanking them out. There’s a lesson here somewhere, though I’m too tired from writing right now to figure it out.
Really, I hope you feel better. Whoever he was, he didn’t deserve your attention.
Kathy
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Tilly says:
Oxy:
I am in the internet cafe and my son is here with his psychopathic borderline personality disorder girlfriend and I am finding it SO F#N HARD to KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT!!!!! HELP!!!! SHE IS SOOO DESTRUCTIVE!! SO TRANSPARENT!!! THANK GOD FOR LF OR I WOULD WALK UP TO HER AND TELL HER RIGHT THIS SECOND!! I AM SLAMMING THE KEYS!!HELP!!
( repeat mantra, “Oxy did it for eight years I can keep going…”)
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Tilly says:
Maybe if I write it big enough she will see it!!
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OxDrover says:
Dear Tilly,
Darling, darling darling!!! I know it is hard, and actually, today I blew it myself, got pithed off at someone and ran my mouth when I should have stuck my SKILLET IN IT!!! BOINK!!!! But you know, just do the best you can, you know I love you!!!! ((((hugs)))))
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Tilly says:
Thankyou Oxy! I didn’t say anything…later I even kissed her on the cheek goodbye ( for my son – who was there). Both she and I nearly puked! It should have been on a tv comedy! “But there werent nuthin funny about it” in my heart.
We both got through another day Oxy, and we are still breathin.
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Joy says:
Jane, I just print out the stuff that resonates the loudest and put it in a quote book or on my mirror or fridge, or put it in pretty colors and frame it on my wall. Cheap art and so point on for me.
Tilly, I saw that scene like a movie trailer playing in my head. Good for you. You made it, and found a way to laugh about it, too. Towanda.
Justabouthealed, I feel you. I really do. It so sucks to lose the whole thing the person, the illusion, the sense of ourselves as smarter than we were. I feel stupid some days. Like what the hell was I thinking. I saw. I know that I did. I remember the very first time I saw a red flag flying, and I turned my head. It was before he moved here, before the joke marriage, before I was in so deep. I just told my gut to shut up because I wanted him. I wanted my fantasy. I wanted those love bombs to keep exploding on me because they felt amazing. Now I’m left with the destruction that bombs leave and trying not to trip any hidden traps on the mind field of my life.
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sotired says:
We thought we were brave, but I’ve come to think it’s braver to face the truth. Which, in our case, was a dance of the walking wounded. Facing truth can take romance out of a story, but facts may be more nourishing. Truth may lead to spontaneous forgiveness, as I forgave my old boyfriend and my mother. It also can show us that we did the best we could. We see the burdens we are carrying and the innocent and good soul who is trying to bear them.
Blaming ourselves is a function of anger. Realizing that we are not perfect, that we live with handicaps, is part of grieving and letting go. Facing it doesn’t mean we give up trying to heal. And forgiveness has nothing to do, ultimately, with the people we are forgiving. It is a choice of what we want to care about, what burdens we decide not to carry. Being mad at a sociopath for being a sociopath and exploiting or hurting us is like hating the sun for shining and giving us sunburn. Facing reality empowers us to deal with it. Wear sunscreen. Trust conditionally.
The best reason to invest in healing from unresolved trauma is because it is crippling. It blocks our ability to mature through experience. It constricts personality structure with fear-based blinders and self-limiting rules that should only be interim strategies, rough protections until we see through what happened. The more we understand the confluence of events, most of which had nothing to do with us, the more trauma tends to lose its glamour and terror. It becomes simply a variety of human experience that we integrate into our knowledge of the world. When we stop mistaking a snake for a goose, because we now know that snakes exist, life becomes that much easier, safer and richer.
In the next piece, we will talk more about the relationship of fear and forgiveness. Until then
Kathleen Hawk,
Thank you so much for this and your other posts. I’m beggining to read all of them although not in the order written. I have difficulty expressing myself in the written word… so much of what you say in your blog I have words for now.
Thank you again.
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OxDrover says:
Dear sotired,
Welcome to LF, glad you are here! Keep on reading and learning as knowledge=power and take back your power! God bless you.
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sotired says:
Thank you OxDrover. God bless you too.
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skylar says:
wow kathleen,
I hadn’t read that one before.
I can see now why you wrote so many replies to me before.
so much of sociopathy has to do with us as much as it does with them.
It is almost inevitable that we attract them and they attract us.
but still, it’s so important that we recognize them and the various incarnations they show us. Yours seems like he had a death wish. Mine was pure evil. He gave up fame, fortune and love (and cigarettes, because they leave dna behind) because it was most important that he be able to disappear at a moments notice – never to be found. Other sociopaths want money or authority – not mine, he only wants human suffering, he believes in the devil and he think he will be rewarded for each innocent he delivers and each evil one he seduces into doing more evil.
I’m trying to understand if any of these can be salvaged. If yours had lived, and you knew then what you know now, would there be any hope?
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OxDrover says:
Dear Skylar,
I think, for what it’s worth, that at some point they have a choice, “to go with the Force or turn to the Dark Side” and once they ahve made that choice and been in it for a while there comes a point of NO return, they NO LONGER WANT TO go to the FORCE, they LIKE THE DARK SIDE, and there is no turning them back. That enjoyment of the evil they do is so seducing to them, like drugs or alcohol, and they are their own pushers. The excitement of the hormone rush when they accomplish their evil plots or plans, but like a compulsive gambler, it doesn’t matter if they win or lose, they get the “rush” so it is ALWAYS a WIN for them!!!
It’s just not worth it to be around them, that’ls why NC is so important, FOR US! ((((HUGS)))))
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silvermoon says:
Well, the chapter closes quietly. Not with a bang but a whisper.
The final depositions are done. I am free with papers in a few weeks.
The attorneys laughed so hard at the stories that emerged that they agreed not to charge for about half the time because “it was entertainment”.
And I promised what to this guy? Wow. What a long road traveled fast….
The more information that came out, the worse it was.
And the amazing conclusion was that twice, this guy had it all. All he had to do was be faithful and tell the truth. But, he could not make that choice.
I know two women who will never know why, nor seek the binding answer.
It comes down to real life is better- who cares?
And that, at the end of the day points to a sad story about a tortured soul who can’t be helped or fixed and there is nothing to do but walk away. Nothing from nothing is nothing.
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OxDrover says:
Dear Silvermoon,
ENTERTAINMENT VALUE?????? WTF????!!!??? Boy, I bet that makes you feel SPECIAL!
But, I guess having your divorce be “entertainment” for the attorneys is something at least. Better than being billed for all those hours of fun and games I guess.
(head shaking here) There is an old “chinese curse” that goes like this:
May you live in INTERESTING TIMES.
Well, we ahve all lived in INTERESTING AND ENTERTAINING TIMES!
Glad you will soon be FREE! Congratulations.
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