Truth
Tag: Toxic people
FREEDOM
What does freedom mean to you?
It means forgiving myself for tolerating the intolerable for decades and learning to protect my peace.
Lie down with dogs…
Have you ever caught yourself engaging in out-of-character toxic behavior and realized you’re emulating someone in your life who plays a big role? You’ve probably caught their narcissistic fleas.
It’s from an old saying – When you lie down with dogs, you’re going to wake up scratching with fleas.
Narcissistic abuse leaves deep scars and traumas that often make us wonder if we’ve become narcissists ourselves.
Being criticized most of my life turned me into a critical person and I’ve always hated that part of me. It’s easy to unintentionally pick up behaviors from a toxic person. I had multiple abusers.
Narcissist abuse is a very specific abuse that is hard to overcome and it does a number on a person. It’s very hard to understand unless you’ve experienced it, and those of us who have, we just feel bonkers.
If you are recovering from Narcissistic Abuse, be gentle with yourself. Instead of “I should have known”, say “Now I know.” No one could have predicted what we went through and they fooled us.
This is your reminder that we are all on a journey and healing takes time. It’s also not a linear process and it’s very messy.
There’s nothing wrong with you, you were a target.
Why? Because you are awesome and some folks can’t handle that. You will triumph regardless.
(⊙‿⊙✿)
💖✌🏻
What is love?
My Wusband used to tell me that love is wanting another person’s happiness more than your own. He was wrong about that (and so many other things).
Love is supporting someone’s path to happiness and accepting them as they are without wanting to shape them into who you want them to be.
I see people try to convince their romantic partners to do things differently or to stop doing something all together all the time. It never ceases to amaze me how people think they can convince their partner to change.
My Wusband always wanted me to change, too.
He’d tell me: Quit smoking, lose weight, eat better, be more polite, be more patient, be smarter, don’t watch this or that, don’t read this or that, be the way I want you to be, not who you are.
Too much.
He claimed he tried to talk to me several times about his unhappiness that led him to the decision to tell me he wanted a divorce. No, he didn’t. He told me I needed to quit smoking because it cost too much. That was his way of telling me he was unhappy. He frequently would tell me that over the 25 years we were in a committed relationship. How would I know that’s what he meant?
After awhile, you either get discouraged or start resenting someone who never seems happy with you as you are. I look back now and wonder why he stayed all those years he was apparently unhappy with me as a person, which made him unhappy overall. He was looking at me to fulfil and complete him in a way that can only happen from within. That’s not a marriage.
I was always and continue to be an object to him, not another individual with my own wants and needs and quirks.
Other people won’t complete you. You are a fully complete, whole individual on your own. So you don’t need to change unless you want to.
Trust
Trust is our universal currency of human interaction and is very important for our continued survival. It’s often necessary to trust others. We just have to be careful who we trust. Being skeptical is a form of self-preservation.
We often want to believe in the inherent goodness in other people and trust them because that’s what we want for ourselves. This is why the Golden Rule should have a disclaimer. Treat others with kindness, but don’t give the store away until you know them better.
Conmen and scammers know that people’s tendency to trust is easy to exploit, but other people manipulate us by using our trust in them to gain something as well.
There are people who will play on your sympathy while being seemingly vulnerable and in need, then the next thing you know, you’ve been had. Emotions are very powerful and anyone can be deceived. Emotions make people easy to manipulate.
The concept of earning trust should be taught to children from a young age. They need to learn that their trust should be doled out sparingly, not given up freely just for the asking, even to adults. Teaching healthy boundaries to children is just one way to protect them from those who would do them harm.
Giving people the benefit of the doubt, even folks you’ve known for years, can be the first step in a chain of events that can lead to undesirable unforeseen consequences.
All people lie. It’s human nature.
Scams abound everywhere because many average people trust scammers, or they are looking for some advantage for themselves based on what the scammer is trying to “sell”. Get rich quick schemes, Catfishers, romance scammers, and charity scams are just a few examples of the things that happen, we’ve all been warned about those.
Pyramid schemes, MLMs, Ponzi Schemes and more are plentiful. Look at how Bernie Madoff fooled a lot of smart people.
These scams are ones many of us have been warned about, and they used happen off the internet but are abundant in the online world. Even so, these are scams folks try to keep an eye out for, but they’ll think nothing of handing a few dollars to a “homeless” person with a cardboard sign begging for help standing at the entrance to the Interstate or freeway.
Scammers and bad actors have greater reach with the online world we’ve created, and it’s been an immense boon to them. There’s phishing, hacking and social engineering that all use methods of manipulation to gain trust.
Emotions are very powerful. They can drive regular people to do some very naïve things.
We often want to believe in the inherent goodness of other people because that’s what we want them to believe about us. It’s a way to use the golden rule. We assume a lot of stuff without hard evidence.
Wanting to help someone is a great thing, but there are a lot of people who will take advantage of your kindness and cause you or your loved ones harm.
Romance scammers are frequently looking for gullible people to trick and steal from online. People tend to think they are more familiar with someone and should trust them just because they spent a lot of time chatting online. The other people we share this planet with should need to earn your trust, not given it freely just for the asking.
Never give anyone the benefit of the doubt. We are social animals. We are taught to overlook red flags, dismiss concerns, and second guess ourselves instead of trusting our intuition because we don’t want someone to think poorly of us.
We’ve all had our moments we have trusted someone or something when we shouldn’t have. No one is immune from being deceived.
Be careful out there!
What’s your best quality?
People frequently tell me what it is they look for in a potential partner. The things I hear the most often are unrealistic expectations. People seem to have some kind of fantasy where nothing goes wrong and their partner is perfect, fulfilling their every wish and whim.
That’s not realistic. So I challenge the mindset that we all get sold that our happiness is up to someone else, who has to fulfill all of our wants and desires, like a genie granting wishes. 🧞✨
So I ask them: What do you bring to the table? Drama and novelty or confidence and stability?
Most normies aren’t looking for a project, they’re looking for a stabile partner. So before you inflict yourself on some other soul, focus on yourself. If you’re broken, address your maladaptive coping skills, learn to self-soothe and be emotionally intelligent.
Don’t try to be someone’s project.
The Other Night Stalker
This is Franklin Eugene Perry. Eugene is his preferred name.
I recently discovered his obituary. He died July 2, 2022 at the age of 66. Good riddance. Perry was a true predator. I met him online pre-internet, in late 1992.
I frequently Google people I’ve known out of curiosity. I Googled him in 2019 just out of random curiosity and discovered a news story about a guy named William G. Weekley and several other men involved in the sexual abuse and exploitation of 2 females aged 10-11 years old. The news story named Perry as one of the men charged.
According to court records, Perry plead guilty January 24, 2019 to coercion or enticement of a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity which carries a sentence of 10 years to life in prison. There were 6 other sick bastards involved in the sexual abuse of 2 little girls, one of which was involved in the production of child pornography.
In the case of United States of America v. William G. Weekley, et al, Case No. 2:18-CR-27-EAS:
Two court documents detailing the case can be downloaded below.
Perry ultimately made a plea deal, he received a sentence of 288 months (or 24 years) and had 7 years of supervised release. He also had to pay a $5,000 fine. It is unknown to me if he actually served time or not. Unfortunately, the US Justice system doesn’t always make the perpetrators of crimes against children serve time, which is tragic since the children who are victimized are saddled with a lifetime of the after effects of these crimes.
He looks like a normal person. But he was a monster. These predators don’t look like monsters, they look like your average guy. That’s how they escape detection.
The disturbing thing is that he married a woman with young children. This man should not have had easy access to children, as evidenced by the crime he was arrested for and plead guilty to.
My experience with him was as one of his rape victims. He used forceful coercion on me. He escaped detection for years due to the fact that many sexual assault victims do not report the crime. He fancied himself as a Dom in the BDSM community, which I was never a part of. He was very fond of women much younger than him, and he preyed upon them. I was pregnant and 24 in 1992 when I met him online, he was 37. I was raped by him in my own home in January 1993 when I was 5 months pregnant. He liked to inflict pain on his victims. He was a creep. He was 66 when he died. I’m glad he is dead. I wish there was a Hell for people like him.
He went by the screen name Nightstalker (one word) and he scoured the local online chat BBS* services looking for prey. He started his own 16-line Adult BBS called Night Life in late 1992 that he used as a personal victim pool. It was only around for a few years before the Internet took over and he shut it down. This BBS is where I met My Friend The Sociopath.
I had helped him set it up, I worked on creating the user interface for it using ANSI, and I had given it its name, not knowing what his true intent was. “…it started out as a 3-line BBS running DLX and expanded to a 16-line BBS running TBBS. It had chat, SIG boards, online games, and towards the end, the owner even got a link to internet email somehow.” It was operational between 1992-1997.
It wasn’t until years later that I found out his moniker was taken from the famous serial killer Richard Ramirez.
Revictimization is a hallmark of childhood sexual abuse survivors because we often have been groomed at a very young age to accept unacceptable behavior and to have flexible or nonexistent boundaries. This fact makes us great targets for unscrupulous people who prey upon us.
Please visit RAINN for resources if you are a victim of sexual abuse or assault.
* A BBS (bulletin board system) is a computer system with a program dedicated to the sharing or exchange of messages or other files on a network. Many had multiple phone lines hooked up to modems to facilitate chat and message boards. These were popular before the Internet became mainstream.
Ain’t Nothing Gonna Break My Stride
My father set me up for a lifetime of being easy prey to toxic, horrible people.
My family is unsupportive and full of mentally disturbed people.
Every serious romantic partner I’ve ever had has been abusive in some fashion.
People I thought were my friends, weren’t.
I ended up in a sociopath’s line of sight. (Not my ex husband.)
And limbo feels eternal.
Fuck you, universe.
Is that all you got?
You’re going to have to do better than this to break me.
I have a hard spiky outer shell with a soft chewy center.
And I bite.
Broken Trauma Bond, Part 1
The horrific abuse I suffered throughout my childhood made me extremely vulnerable and desperate for love. I carried a deep sense of shame throughout my life because I was repeatedly told it was my fault I was abused and assaulted.
It wasn’t a mistake or a misunderstanding. It was a deliberate systemic campaign of terror over many years designed to feed my father’s ego that nearly killed my brother and I.
It made me an easy target for toxic abusive people who abused me further. My younger brother has fared much worse in how his life is playing out.
My father used to tell me that I owed him everything because he provided a roof over my head, clothes on my back and food on the table. He demanded respect from everyone and his word was the ultimate authority in his house. He backed up that authority with angry words that cut us all down, his fists that blackened eyes, and his belt. He brutalized his wife and children. There was no such thing as compromise in his vocabulary, he was a treacherous, unscrupulous despot.
I remember thinking to myself that none of the things he provided mattered without love.
It is the job as a parent to protect, provide safety, security, support, love, clothing and nourishment for a child’s mind and body.
My brother and I were starved for love and affection, and it’s caused both of us horrendous problems throughout our lives.
I just remember my grandfather apologizing to me and telling me that he didn’t raise my dad to be the way he is after he witnessed one abusive episode. My father has a terrible temper that he took out on all of us.
I don’t care to know why my father did the things he did. No matter the reason, he chose to abuse his wife and children. So it’s irrelevant.
I suffered so much throughout my childhood yet I managed to not abuse my own children, so no matter what he went through, it’s no excuse. Children who are abused don’t have a high rate of becoming abusers themselves. Only 1-in-7 go on to abuse.
The brutal abuse didn’t strengthen me and mold me into who I am. I am who I am despite what I went through. It revealed my creativity, tenacity and intelligence. It’s a testament to the few people in my life who did show me love and kindness which I drank in like a desert nomad dying of thirst, and my own strength and tenacity that I was able to survive and become who I am. I’m still becoming. Yet sometimes I wonder what I could have become without it.
My father was a monster who was 10 feet tall and I was always afraid of him. Finally breaking my trauma bond with him released me from his internalized perfidiousness.
I am a victorious warrior and I not only survived, I thrived. That is an accomplishment. I’ve thrown down the last of the chains of oppression that were wrapped around my soul. I am living my new life and there is so much more to look forward to, I’m anxious to get on with it. 💖
Are they Toxic People or Are They All In A Midlife Crisis?
I have observed a problem I keep running into for the past 2.5 years where people have this idealized version of me that they carry around in their heads for whatever reason, and when reality doesn’t match up to the expectation they have, they get upset.
I didn’t create this persona that they have in their heads of me. That was created by them. A lot of it may be due to past experience with me, as the issue seems to be with people who have known me 25 years or longer, so they are locked in to a version of me from long ago. But people are not static. We change over time. None of us are the same people we were in our early to mid 20s.
You’d think that with age would come wisdom to that fact. I don’t expect people to remain the same as when I first met them. They change over time. It would be a tragedy if people didn’t adapt, grow and hopefully, improve with age.
Maybe all these people are having a midlife-crisis. I have no idea. But it’s freaking annoying. I don’t need that kind of drama.
I’m just not interested in trying to live up to their unrealistic expectations anymore, I haven’t been for a while. I’m too old for this crap. I don’t have to tolerate this mindset and I won’t.
Yeah, it gets lonely sometimes, but this quote holds true:
“I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone.” – Lance Clayton from the movie World’s Greatest Dad, portrayed by Robin Williams.
Essays From the Edge of Existence 
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