Gaslighting and Reigniting Fear

Today I am thankful of confirmation that my ex is behind the stalking. 

Last October, CO-PEP (the Colorado Parents Employment Project) sued me to drop my ex's child support.  They claimed that he was in an alcohol rehab program and could only make $12 an hour. They also wrote that he would be forbidden from working for a period of 8 to 27 months.

After spending nearly $4,000 on legal fees, I reluctantly agreed because...well...the court date that was set up would cause me to lose my temp job.

I don't get child support.

I need to work.

So I signed an agreement dropping his child support for a period ranging from 8 months to 27 months.

Of course...he got a job right away.  I know he's making far more than $12 an hour.

According to our divorce agreement, every May we are supposed to trade paycheck stubs and tax records.  Last month, I sent him an email reminding him of this and asking how he'd like to exchange information.

He ignored it.

That's okay.

That's what I expected.

At least I cannot be held in contempt because I'm trying to follow our agreement.

*******

Today I received a text asking me to drive the kids to a movie theater tomorrow so he could watch a movie with them and wait to take them home.  The last time I did that for him....well...it was a disaster.  He said he wanted three hours so I scheduled an eye exam with a dilation to keep me busy while I waited.

I had to get a teenager to pick them up from the theater because he changed his mind.  I was still at the eye appointment.

There was another time he played that game in June of last year.  He wanted to meet me in public to drop off documents, I waited.  He didn't show up.  I went home and he sent an angry text because I wasn't there.

It's annoying.  I was waiting for a plumber at the house.  I really wanted to get my kitchen sink fixed.

I don't want to do that again.  I don't want to be put in a position of being his on call taxi driver ever again.  It eats up entire days.

It would be nice if he would go to mediation and we could come up with a static visitation agreement that he would honor.  Right now, he has 50/50 custody and is supposed to get them Friday through Sunday.

Of course, that has never happened.

He hasn't seen the kids in over 18 months.

I called him to see what he wanted.

He doesn't want to honor the visitation agreement we have.  He doesn't know what he wants.

After that conversation, I am absolutely terrified of letting him near the kids or myself.

I'm calling lawyers now.

*****

So.....

I reminded him of the email and of the divorce agreement.  I told him that we are supposed to share pay check stubs and tax records.  He argued, yet again, that CO-PEP superseded the family court and that they knew where he lived and worked.

I corrected him again.  I told him it would be a shame if he was found in contempt a second time because he misunderstood CO-PEP's role.  This time I may not argue to keep him out of jail.

At this point, he told me NO.  He is not going to share his paycheck stubs because (get this) he doesn't want me to know where he is working: He claims that I will stalk him at work in an effort to get him fired.

I asked when I had ever done such a thing.

He's done stuff like that.  I haven't.

He would be found unexpectedly waiting for me outside of post-grad classes.  His sister, her boyfriend, a cousin and his uncle harassed me at work and in public.  An old friend of his harassed me when I volunteered at the DA's office, he was looking at a murder charge and wanted me to play in his case file.  I asked to be transferred rather than get caught up in his game.  I cannot fathom how he knew I volunteered there because my name is phonetically incredibly common.

These toxic people watched me.  They harassed my former professors.  They harassed my colleagues.  They harassed me. They called my landlord and bosses with gossip.  I was evicted once because my landlord wanted the calls to stop; they were taking up too much of her receptionist's time.  My Christian boss asked me to find another job after a woman called him telling him I had an abortion (that I did not have).

I was fortunate that my next boss ignored the bullshit.

My ex and his family have harassed me.  When have I done any thing like that?

He didn't give me a straight answer at first.

He asked why I didn't have photos of the stalker.  Well....during our marriage I had a hard time accessing money to buy cameras and nice cell phones.  For a few years after the divorce, he didn't follow the agreement and I couldn't access the money that was court ordered to me.

I had a cheap flip phone most of that time. It didn't have a camera.  I had an Android for a little while but it was consistently hacked so much that it was unusable.  I went back to a cheap flip phone.

Going low tech seemed to solve the hacking problem.

Besides, I didn't know when to expect the stalking so I didn't know when to be sure to pack a camera. Whenever I saw Shannon, Doug or other members of his family I had the instinct to run rather than stick around and take photos.

That is when he told me that I made up the stalking incidents in a bid to get him fired from his $50,000 tax auditor job back in 2015.

What the holy hell?

I never called his employer.  I never told any one outside of my family and the police.  The police  didn't do anything except point out that the incidents happen when my ex isn't around and that this points directly at him being behind it.  The motive was to ensure that I wasn't seeing another man (even though the stalking occurred well after our divorce was final).

My ex stated that because he wasn't around during the stalking incidents, it was proof that I was making it up.

He began referring to the July day in 2015 when someone banged on the front door, blew smoke through a living room window, turned on our garden hose and then cut it.

Within a few days, the dolls that graced my garden were slashed.  Days later, I found ashes and burn marks on our porch.

My ex was, supposedly, in California.

He had a camera installed in the front room near a window that piped our activities onto his cell phone.  I called to see if he had footage of the window so I could take it to the police.

I didn't try to get him fired.

He claims my phone call is the reason he was fired eight weeks later.

And no....he claimed that he did not have footage of whatever occurred outside of that window.  Of course he didn't.  If he did, why would he share?  It's obvious to me now what the game is.

And, yeah....even yesterday he tried blaming people I dated in the past.  

Sigh...

I admit that I was incredibly stupid to let him put a camera in the living room that recorded to his cell phone.  I thought that would engender trust and that he'd know I wasn't up to any funny business.  I thought that if I gave him that tiny bit of control, the stalking outside of the home would stop.

I thought it would prove who the stalker truly was. 

Now I don't know what to think.

I really don't.

The children were with me that day.

We've had to hire therapists to deal with the fall out. 

The stalking is well documented.

I fear it isn't over yet.

The unjustified anger scares me.  I fear it will fuel more rage based harassment.

Or maybe it is just a game to prevent him from having to pay a fair amount of child support.  If he scares me, I'll drop the issue.

There is probably a method to his madness.

This is why I need a lawyer. 

*****

Perhaps I should probably talk to the people who were with me during stalking incidents.  One of them is a psychiatrist.  I'm sure he'll tell me I'm not imagining things.  I have friends and family who have seen the creepy crap.  I have neighbors who intervened.  I know I'm not imagining things.

My ex sounded scarily angry.

He said that I had a way of making people believe things that are not true.

I am now concerned about his mental health.

I will hire a new lawyer on Monday.

There goes my retirement savings.

*******
It would appear that he is not stuck in an inpatient program that he cannot leave.

It appears that he is making money but doesn't want to be forthcoming about the information. Any effort to be fair will only lead to me being gaslit and harassed.

It appears that I've been tricked.

I am not sure if I am safe right now.

He is blaming me for the messes in his life.

He is angry at me.

An angry ex with a propensity for stalking can be a scary thing.

I need to move.

When I wrote last winter asking what he wanted for visitation, he basically told me he didn't care.  It would be nice to have some idea of what to expect rather than being asked to drop things with less that a day's notice.

I'm busy.  I work two jobs.  I am a student (retaking the post-grad classes that I had to stop due to the stalking).

I can't afford to drop everything without notice.

*******

Oh and my ex told me that he checks out his sister's former boyfriend's Facebook page.  His name was Doug.  Doug was one of the idiots who would hassle me in public.  It took me two years to figure out who he was.

He was the one who grabbed me when I left lunch with my high school sweetheart.  Doug was the one who menaced the billing lady at my office and blocked me in the driveway one March day.

If he's watching Doug. This makes me wonder if he stalks the Facebook pages of other people.

This is why I don't use Facebook anymore.

I fear the stalking picking up.

I'll try to collect my thoughts.

If I turn up dead, I am hoping my friends, family and neighbors tell the cops that my ex was being bizarre.

This isn't the first time he's accused me of crazy crap.  In 2015, he ran around telling people that I broke his nose.

I never broke his nose.

I don't even think he's ever broken his nose.

In 1993, he told his family that I wouldn't let him attend college.  I was helping him get financial aid.  In 2012, after years of harassment over the subject, he admitted lying to them because his mother was hassling him for not being enrolled and he wanted her to "shut up." The sick thing about that is that he already had a B.S. in Accounting and his family did not know.

Those are the kind of lies that his family uses as an excuse to harass me.  He's told a lot of whoppers but the lies just get worse and worse as time goes by.  

*****
I am not in a position to play taxi driver to my ex and our kids.  I've asked him to think about what he wants and to come up with a more static visitation schedule.  I don't want him only seeing the kids on Father's Day.

I'm almost afraid of what would happen if I met him in a parking lot with the kids.  Maybe I should talk to the police about exchanging the kids at the police station.

I asked my ex to start calling the kids in order to rebuild the relationship.  I also asked him to go to mediation.

We'll see what happens.

If this guy is this angry and blames me for everything that has gone wrong in his life, it brings back a lot of fear for me especially given his propensity for stalking.

I'm pretty sure that the stalking and harassment were born out of anger.

Much of that anger was due to the lies he told people about me.

I'm not exactly sure that we are safe.

Love ya lots,

S.

Edit: I posted a little bit about the situation and shared it with my friends on Facebook just in case I wind up in the news as a decedent.  My psychiatrist buddy contacted me to put me in touch with a police officer who offers self-defense classes.  He was there during a stalking incident in a coffee shop in 2009.

I'm still going to have to sell my stuff to fund a lawyer.  This is insane.