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My abuser has been notified by an attorney, no less, to stay the heck away from me and not to stalk me any more. Still, he sends the occasional post card to my work via US Mail at work around the holidays. Did it again today.
He knows I won't open any envelope once I see his handwriting on it, so he figures postcards are the way to go. That's the level of his thinking.
This guy moved across country twice, giving up his job for a new one and selling his house for a new one, to stalk me while I moved away from him to get away from him. He's my father and a minister until he got caught committing fraud by his higher church authorities. He was always violently abuse in the home behind the scenes, and worried I would tell on him. That's why he always tried to stay on top of me and keep me close to keep the lid on his many cover ups.
The church authorities finally caught him in a corruption scandal with a politician he had on his church board. Like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, that kind of stuff. He thought I ratted him out. No way. I just try to get as far from him as I can.
He doesn't understand that another way to go would be not to have anything to cover up in the first place. But that would mean admitting he does wrong and changing his behavior. Not going to happen. Ever. That would be like expecting him to be a responsible husband and father and not just use kin as props to show off in his ministry newsletters.
Or use kin as punching bags on Sundays at home after church if a sermon performance doesn't go as planned. Once he started in the car before he got home one Sunday after he preached. He was behind the wheel driving, but he got my mom by the hair with one hand and bashed her head against the car window on her side until he got his frustration about his sermon out of his system. A true man of God, a peacemaker, my dad.
So today the post card went in the trash at the post office. He's wrong about those. I don't read them any more than I would read a letter in an envelope from him. I don't report these post cards to my attorney, though. Not worth the money it would cost me.
To anyone else out there who has an abuser who tries to act like the Energizer Bunny and keep going and going during the holidays, you're not the only one. Old habits die hard for people like that. The new thing is for us not to let it trigger a response to them, even if it triggers us, as this triggered me, and just write about it here instead. Way, way better choice.
He knows I won't open any envelope once I see his handwriting on it, so he figures postcards are the way to go. That's the level of his thinking.
This guy moved across country twice, giving up his job for a new one and selling his house for a new one, to stalk me while I moved away from him to get away from him. He's my father and a minister until he got caught committing fraud by his higher church authorities. He was always violently abuse in the home behind the scenes, and worried I would tell on him. That's why he always tried to stay on top of me and keep me close to keep the lid on his many cover ups.
The church authorities finally caught him in a corruption scandal with a politician he had on his church board. Like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, that kind of stuff. He thought I ratted him out. No way. I just try to get as far from him as I can.
He doesn't understand that another way to go would be not to have anything to cover up in the first place. But that would mean admitting he does wrong and changing his behavior. Not going to happen. Ever. That would be like expecting him to be a responsible husband and father and not just use kin as props to show off in his ministry newsletters.
Or use kin as punching bags on Sundays at home after church if a sermon performance doesn't go as planned. Once he started in the car before he got home one Sunday after he preached. He was behind the wheel driving, but he got my mom by the hair with one hand and bashed her head against the car window on her side until he got his frustration about his sermon out of his system. A true man of God, a peacemaker, my dad.
So today the post card went in the trash at the post office. He's wrong about those. I don't read them any more than I would read a letter in an envelope from him. I don't report these post cards to my attorney, though. Not worth the money it would cost me.
To anyone else out there who has an abuser who tries to act like the Energizer Bunny and keep going and going during the holidays, you're not the only one. Old habits die hard for people like that. The new thing is for us not to let it trigger a response to them, even if it triggers us, as this triggered me, and just write about it here instead. Way, way better choice.
Ugh...I feel like I am not articulating very well.....
It may be hard for me to do the usual family stuff this year. I'm not sure how I feel about it. Not sure what to do. I am pretty good at compartmentalizing but what if there is fall out on my part??? What if I pull one of those epic family drama scenes and tell everyone what growing up was REALLY like and how they are in denial...blah blah blah.....
Just not sure how I feel or what to do.
Muji...I think your dad takes the crown for King of Denial.
I'd want to get him back, badly.
The fact that you can just throw it in the trash and move on is so wonderful.
Hugs.
Document all attempted contact, and have him charged. Here's another situation where I need to take my own advice. As I travel back to my hometown for Christmas, my abuser will find out I'm in the area... it's inevitable. I'll be on the lookout., and will be surrounded with support, which is comforting. The restraining order I had in place was denied continuance as the abuser convinced the judge he only had weeks to live... 7 yrs ago.
Of course he continued the stalking I've managed to evade him . Last contact was a few months ago. His brother is my youngest daughter's father. Bizarre circumstances..
I, also, ignore contact, and do not respond. The legal system there failed me, and is busier there now more than ever before, as it's a boom town with increased crime of 'more important' matters.
Things in the present have to be put on hold, not because they're Christmas or anything necessarily, just because of your own agenda. Good for you for sticking to your own agenda to heal. It's hard but it's your life, you know? You're my hero doing this right now.
I agree, 51% and jr, that my dad's violating my privacy with these cards isn't nothing. It does give him some control, and as a control freak that's all he cares about, certainly not me. What I foresee is that as an addict he's on the lowest dosage he can stand at the moment, with these postcards. But like all addicts, at some point he has to increase the dosage. That's when I'll nuke Luxembourg, as the saying goes, unleashing every resource at my disposal.
I've prepared my supervisor at work and my human resources officers to be my allies. Since he sends these postcards to my work that's the arena most likely for invasion of privacy. A retired FBI agent who was a board member at one of his churches tried to be his point man as the retired FBI agent lives in the area, but I shut that off with my legal move. My mother is the real brains behind all of this scheming. She went from battered wife to being quite a monster herself. A story for another day.
I don't really worry much about how to control these people, and that sets me apart from them. Living well with self and others is the best revenge. They get along with coworkers just as badly as they do with me. Years ago my sister called a former assistant pastor who worked for my dad briefly, and he freaked out on the phone just hearing from her. His words were "I have to draw a boundary here." Boundaries are the theme with them and anyone who deals with them.
I believe that the only thing that ever completely stops people this mentally ill over boundaries is death. To me they belong to the category of child molesters as far as how they respond poorly to therapy and rehabilitation. So I leave that to the cosmos.
In the meantime, the only thing worse than being contacted by them is actually being them, I'm sure. They live in a perpetual hell of their own creation that I had to share when I lived with them growing up. I'd love to never hear from them again, but that day will come when they finally pass on. I'm just so happy to have gotten as far away from them as I have.
Muji- you say you don't push it b/c it would cost money? Is that true? Can't you just go to the police?
But would that just antagonize his aggressor and make it worse?
Sometimes, we just take the path of least resistance because that actually saves our sanity more...
Only you know the best way to handle your situation. I can understand saving the big guns just as well as firing with both barrels now.
Have a wonderful holiday. Enjoy it with the good people you know and hopefully that ugly man will not intrude any further. I am amazed that you are able to throw out those cards without evening reading them. You are strong.
51%, no, they shouldn't be allowed to run free. He has been allowed anything but that. However, unlike a child molester, by sending post cards only, he has been careful not to break the law to that same degree, so he is not pursued by the authorities for arrest with that level of priority.
As a corrupt minister, it should noted, his life has centered around doing anything and everything to have crowd attention. For that he sacrifices any true faith, any honesty or integrity, any good relationship with fellow ministers or with his flock, for that he threw his family under the bus over and over his whole life. It is like smoking crack to him.
So giving him even negative attention he is due from me for sending me unwanted post cards at work feeds him the way giving a child molester a free pass to a day care center would, to use that analogy. His kryptonite is not being told "no," it is being ignored entirely. I was out of contact with him 1992-2000, and that's what worked then.
Lastly, it's good to assert one's boundaries, but on the other hand it must be remembered that it's not worth it to become a control freak to stop a control freak. That really makes the abuser like him win, like when one of us becomes an abuser because we were abused.
Living well is truly the best revenge. It's something abusers will never know, because it comes from what they're too cowardly to do: heal.
He has no idea how important my self control has been to his well being. Only God knows. Anybody else out there show this kind of self restraint?
I do allow myself to make plans for dancing on his grave when he does finally die the natural death he's been allowed. I don't like the guy.