Today I am thankful for the realization that bullies have always been my biggest life challenge.
It's not the bullies that are the exact challenge - it is keeping my presence of mind in the face of bullying.
I was a child when I swore off magick.
Do you remember that story about the Monkey's Paw?
That did it for me. I come from a long line of relatives who engaged in sorcery and superstition.
I wanted no part of it.
Then the universe had to put my feet to the fire.
My Step-father was kind of a bully. He was also fairly stupid. He drank and he liked to play with guns.
Fortunately, when he was lucid, he taught me about gun safety. This helped on those occasions when I had to walk the weapon to the authorities.
Man, his pistol was a pretty little thing. It was a silver Smith and Wesson six shooter with a pearlescent handle.
It was beautiful. I loved the smell of the gun grease.
The last time I saw it was 1980 when I walked it to the fire department after my step-dad brandished it at me. My uncle was the fire chief and I think he took it "for safe keeping."
It was loaded but, hey....it was safer in my hands than in the hands of a drunk.
When one is stupid and likes to drink, one tends to take himself out of the equation. He did this by playing Russian Roulette in 1986. Unfortunately, it was three and a half years after he beat my mother to death.
I didn't curse him. I could. I didn't.
In 1987, I was raped by a friend of my sister (and the rapist was also a neighbor of the uncle noted above). I was truly tempted to curse the holy shit out of him.
In speaking to a street pastor, I didn't harm him. He said God would take care of sinners.
I saw this ass again at a friend's gig in 2004. He still had the same eyes but he was older, wrinkled and walked with a horrible limp. He tried to hit on an older lady and she pushed him away.
I guess the universe took care of him.
****
I gave in when the stalking scared me. It had gone on for years. There was a day when a little old lady was threatened. I still held back.
I held back until my kids were threatened. Someone broke in the house, nothing was taken. The events were happening a couple of times a week. The frequency scared me.
The cops refused to take any report. They claimed my ex was behind it (turns out he was). They also stated I could get a restraining order: One can't get a permanent restraining order without a police report. In the context of a looming divorce, a temporary restraining order looks like a game.
So....one day, eighteen months after our divorce was final, I lit a black candle asking that the stalker be forced to stop.
My father-in-law died the next day of cancer. His death was unexpected.
I thought it was coincidence. He was in his seventies. He wasn't very healthy. His favorite foods were beer and cigarettes.
The stalking slowed down for a couple of months before starting up again with a vengeance. I noticed an older woman who resembled my middle daughter following me around town. She'd point her laptop at me. She'd point her phone at me.
I literally caught her breaking into the house.
I lit another black candle.
This woman turned out to be my sister-in-law Shannon. She died of cancer within three days.
Now, I started to think it was less of a coincidence and more of a cautionary tale.
I swore off magick again.
Things didn't get any better. In fact the stalking got worse.
Things were hacked. People would drive to my property and block the garage. They'd block my car in the street. Strangers would run up to me in front of the house demanding information about my relationship with my ex-husband. There was a fire set on my porch. Hoses were cut.
It was strange.
Two years after our divorce was final, I noticed that all the scary stuff happened when my ex was out of town. After a while, I realized it was him.
His refusing to fully move out of my house was a clue, too. He'd act very weird when I'd ask him to pack up. He'd tell me that he gave his sister a key to my house. He'd tell me he asked his cousin to find my high school boyfriend and returns the things he had given me in my youth.
He'd hit the wall.
He'd make choking motions at me.
He'd block my path.
He'd sit on the floor and pound his fists into the carpet like a toddler.
I became terrified of him.
I lit another candle and prayed that the stalking would stop in a way that didn't kill anyone.
This one creeped me out.
I put the spent wax in a brown paper bag and set it on the dash of my car so that I could drive it far away and dispose of it. I forgot about it for a couple of hours.
When I went outside to drive the wax to a trash can far away, I noticed that it melted onto the rug of my car. The wax resembled a face.
It resembled the face of my ex.
That started a whole other slew of crap. I started to interview lawyers. Other people intercepted the calls pretending to be me. I will never forget that lawyer saying that she'd already talked to me. It wasn't me. I still can't figure out how he managed that little party trick.
He knew things about people who surrounded me that I wasn't comfortable with so I just hid from people. I stopped doing work I loved. I took a job in a call center (because he promised he'd move out when I got a real job).
Of course it would take at least two more years, several eviction notices and a contempt citation for him to move out of my house.
I don't know what to think. I realize I will never truly know what when on. I do believe, deep down, that he was telling his families stories about me that led to the harassment.
He betrayed me over and over. It put me in danger. I should have divorced him when the physical abuse on the part of his family started just ninety days into our marriage.
Sigh......
I've sworn off magick. It is far easier to learn to protect oneself in the mundane world that it is to play superstitious games and hope for the best.
My step father, my rapist and my ex-husband are bullies.
I hate bullies.
Bullies are a fact of life.
*****
My gun toting neighbor is a bully. He's the guy that would pull his gun out and wave it at people parking in front of my house.
I let these people park in front of my house with the belief that they'd scare Mike's family away.
These guys were bikers. They told me, one day, that they chased a morbidly obese Hispanic man from my yard.
I think it was Doug (my sister-in-law's boyfriend). He harassed me for several months after Shannon's death.
My gun-toting neighbor had the bikers evicted because they had too many cars.
He won't show ME his gun. I have chewed him a new arse because he is the reason people like me have to fight for the second amendment. He claims to have a permit. That doesn't give him the right to threaten people on my property.
He's a short, balding guy who had to stand on a log just to be eye to eye with me. He's probably got an inferiority complex due to his height.
I called our PAR officer when another neighbor told me he was threatened with a gun and too afraid of my gun-toting neighbor to call the cops. Of course, the local cops don't care.
They didn't care about the stalking. Why would I think they cared to know what was going on in the neighborhood?
There really is no point to having a PAR officer is there if he doesn't listen.
Yeah....they'll only care if I fight their next tax hike.
It turns out that my neighbor had an unregistered side business and invited his clients to park in front of my house. He also parks on his rock lawn (which borders my property). If people park in front of my house, we are blocking the exit from his rock lawn.
A 100% rock lawn is against city code and parking on rocks is also against city code....but whatever.
Libertarians don't rat out their neighbors.
Someone must be calling on him because other people in the neighborhood tell me his pissed off at me because he's been cited for his bad behavior.
He thinks I'm the culprit.
He likes to strew trash and tires around the front yard. It's just a cry for attention.
I'm not going to give it to him.
The caller wasn't me. I don't want to waste tax dollars by creating the need for the city to hire another code enforcement officer.
A couple of months ago he threatened our exterminator.
He literally threatened to shoot our exterminator. So...I ended the contract with my exterminator and told his company that his life wasn't worth it.
Which, of course, means that I have to take care of the wasp nests that border the property line.
The gun-toting lunatic has young children. I don't want them stung.
Shame.....if only the professional could do his job, they'd be okay.
Whatever.......
The problem is that this guy goes off like a threatening firework whenever we are in our yard.
Sigh....
The other day, my teenagers were doing yard work.
They were mowing and weed whacking.
The gun toting lunatic was screaming at them.
They couldn't hear a word. They could see him glaring at them. They should see his expressions. He appeared to be shouting.
I wasn't home.
My concern is that he was threatening to shoot them like he'd done to so many adults around my home.
So....I'm going to have to go outside right now and finish the job.
I'm tempted.......
I'm tempted to hot foot him.
I'm actually tempted to do far worse......but I'm trying to talk myself out of it.
Even if there is nothing to magick, the show itself could freak someone like that out.
Maybe I just need to hang pentagrams in my trees.
******
That is why I say that bullies are my biggest life challenge. They bring out the worst in me; be they corrupt bureaucrats, freaky in-laws, abusive exes or even mentally ill neighbors.
I could go so much further.
There are so many ways to get an asshat to move.
There are so many ways to get a person who threatens others with a gun arrested (all I need to do is move the security cameras). Idiots get away with threatening people because most people are afraid to piss them off so they don't go to the authorities.
I don't trust the police. I rely on a higher authority.
I think that the higher authority is bringing bullies on my path to test my principles. I mean.....what am I willing to do to stay safe in the face of annoying jerks?
The trick is to figure out how to get this guy to chill out without going too far. I'm above their pettiness, right?
I should be.
Well....I'm off use go spray RoundUP around the perimeter. I hate the stuff but it's quieter than the weed whacker. If the gun toting idiot doesn't hear me, maybe he won't brandish his gun at me.
If you see that I'm using crossbow arrows to brace my windows shut at night.....um....it didn't go very well. If I have crossbow arrows to spare, it means I went to Cabela's to prepare for the worst.
Wish me luck!
Love ya,
S.