Honesty can expose vulnerabilities you would otherwise keep hidden. This is what has happened with my stalker/abuser. I have been working to protect myself by moving them out of my life incrementally. Every exposure to them in email, phone, social media, my website, my mailbox and anywhere else they know how to reach me triggers the fuck out of me.
I have so far into anxiety since our last communication that I don't have the energy to get angry. I expressed a boundary, they tried to control me by being awful, I said nope and restated the boundary and now the person is staking me out in new online spaces. I wish I could block them. A HUGE part of what I do is keep people safe. I want to keep everyone safe from this narcissist, but I they have their hooks in deep, working hard to establish codependence with our mutual connections.
Why I didn't block them and email all my friends when I saw they friended everyone I knew on Facebook, I don't understand. How could I let it get so far?
We do stupid, stupid things when we love people and they hurt us. We get trapped. I help others get out of these types of relationships on a regular basis. And here I am. I'm very good at my job, but not so much my life is how I'm feeling.
That is false. I am great at protecting myself. I have created and established boundaries. I am upholding them. I have done everything I know to protect myself and my family including enduring this abuse silently as I step by step extricated myself over a period of several months. I wish I could have hit the eject button and sent them on their way. I would have but for safety.
It is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I want to take a moment to speak to that. I often hear the question of why people stay in violent relationships. Why not cut and run?
This question assumes one could accomplish escape safely. Or that there is a place for the person to run to. Or that children aren't involved, or business, or other factors that are unseen such as a low sense of self, terror, mental illness, disability or previous abuse.
I am very proud of who I am. I believe in my ability to get through this and away from this person. I recognize that many believe I should have just blocked them from every part of my life as I have others. But I also see how much harm that move could cause my children due to financial ties. Or what that might do to my business due to their level of access to my clientele. Or what that could do to my clients who, through this abusers manipulations, have been brought into trusting relationships with them on the lie that I supported the interactions.
I am one person. I felt something was wrong but couldn't see the multiplicity of their efforts to entangle me.
I want to protect myself, but there were so many other to put before me. The many before the one, so to speak.
Next steps are in order. My game plan is to allow this fool to expose themself for the psychic vampire they are.
When that happens, I will move on. And this is the most frustrated post I will write on this topic because, even though I truly despise this person for purposefully hurting me and putting others at risk, I recognize they are a complicated human being whose desperation for a sense of self-worth has driven them to repeat actions that harmed rather than helped.
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