Prisoner of Love

I turned 50 last month and I've never been in love. There are several reasons for it, but the two main reasons are, one, that I didn't love myself, and two, that I was born into a family that was so devoid of kindness and compassion that their love language was gaslighting and manipulation. My childhood was rife with greed and envy masquerading as love. I'm getting better at distinguishing false love from authentic love, but it's been a long journey.

There was one source of true love from my childhood, and that was my grandma, Laverne. Her love for me never waivered - even when I behaved stubbornly, or when dysregulated emotions caused me to lash out. Her love was strong. Her radiance made such an impact that it still sustains me today. My childhood was wicked - it was isolating, lonely, painful, and cold. When I was with my gram the world was beautiful, sunny, abundant with possibility. She made me forget that I was surrounded by venomous snakes. She taught me to be kind to others, even after they'd mistreated me. She would tell me to forgive them because the weight from carrying a grudge clouds our judgement and impacts our outlook on life. She would tell me to mind my words and actions because we never know which way the winds of Karma will blow. She was the only person who saw the real me—not the false version of me that my parent presented to the world. My Gram taught me to pray, not just for myself, but also for those who came against me. I used to plead with God to never take my Gram from me. I offered up myself up instead because I didn't want to live a life without her. As I got older, I stopped believing in God and I stopped praying altogether. If there was a God, then God despised me.

When I went to college, I felt free for the first time. Free from family, free from the physical and metaphorical poverty of my childhood, free from the judgmental stares and whispers from the community around me. I felt free, but I was still shackled to my past through unresolved trauma. Trauma that led me to make bad choices, like experimenting with drugs and alcohol. They dulled the sharp edges of my trauma, and the altered state of mind allowed me to relax and provided a brief reprieve from the perpetual anxiety of my day-to-day existence. I started experimenting with the effects of drugs in high school, but I didn't really get into alcohol until my 20's. I dropped out of Pitt after two years and moved to Orlando. Club-hopping and night life filled my weekends. I drank too much, slept too little, and I was starting to burn out when I got pregnant with my daughter. After she was born, I used drugs a couple times, but I didn't want to be that kind of parent to her. Aside from cannabis, I didn't use drugs outside of my 20's, despite what manipulated photos, and out of context statements my predator parent and copycat sibling presented as evidence so they could slander my name and steal from me. The only crime I committed against these two was to cut ties and walk away. I chose a path of peace. They chose a path of destruction.

I may have steered clear of drug usage after my 20's, but alcohol was a different story. I had an on/off relationship with drinking up until about six years ago. I had periods of absolute sobriety intermingled with periods of flippant, often excessive, social drinking. There were a few dark times when I drank alone isolated at home. The last time was almost the end of me. I chose to heal instead. Like the flip of a switch, once I cut the toxic relationships out of my life, I no longer felt the need to drink in excess, I actually hated the feeling of being drunk, or in an altered state after that. The last few times I went out to have a few drinks and be social, my drinks were dosed with something. Now I don't drink at all.

My ex used to dose my food and drinks to get me to act out of character. He used the videos of me to show the court that I was unfit to handle my inheritance. He and I separated in 2018, but our marriage had been long over by that time. I don't think we even kissed after my son was born in 2011. We just co-existed. He was emotionally and mentally abusive. He was an angry drunk who terrorized his family because he blamed us for everything that was wrong with his life. He was cold and cruel with his temper. Most days we just avoided being in the same room as him. I hadn't known it at the time, but his smear campaign against me had already begun. When we finally separated in 2018, I was working for a corrupt health insurance brokerage in Beaverton, OR. My manager did not like me at all, just because I was so different from her. Her dislike for me was so intense that she recruited a male colleague to pretend to be my friend so that she would be privvy to personal details in my life. The two of them launched their own smear campaign against me. As a group, my family, my manager/male colleague, and my ex and his exceedingly criminal creepy family, recruited everybody out of my life. They drafted people I dated, old friends, people I went to grad school with, people I said hi to, and complete strangers, to smear my name to make sure I was unable to find a job in my field. They stole my identity, destroyed my business reputation before I could even get it off the ground, they hacked my devices (phone/computer), and stole everything that tried to come my way. Currently, they're committing bank fraud, and Key Bank refuses to acknowledge the blatantly obvious fraud that's right in front of their faces. My ex used funds — funds that were meant to pay for my daughter's college tuition — to incentivize people to stalk and harass me. People who allowed themselves to become collateral damage to a group of narcissists who are hell-bent on taking me down simply because I cut ties and went my own way. I don't believe most of them had bad intentions at first, but they were tempted by a demon's offerings and saw the financial incentives as an easy come-up. They're about to realize that those 'gifts' come at a huge cost. They were only pawns used to create distractions so the true monsters could remain hidden and undetected. Now they're implemented in crimes that I know they would never have wanted attached to their reputations, but they chose to take the incentives and create chaos for me and my children. Their greed and desire to take an easy route to financial freedom, has solidified their downfall. I'm sure they'll be shocked to realize the felonies they were enabling and covering up for - Theft, sexual assault, drugging, insurance fraud, bank fraud, identity theft, child abuse, committing perjury, distribution of non-consensual pornographic materials, and murder.

I've forgiven all of these people who have lied on me and come against me. I know that they're victims of their own traumas, addictions, and greed. Despite the chaos that surrounds me, I've found a peaceful calm that I've waited my whole life to feel. They are still taking from me, and stealing from me, but they can't take the peace that I've found. I've been staying at home, living in my halcyon bubble where I relax, meditate, do yoga and hang out with my son. I've been reading my way through a stack of books, listening to the radio since my record player broke, I communicate with my daughter through email, and I rarely turn my phone on anymore.

I'm far from perfect, but I don't deserve any of this. I've made a ton of mistakes, but I've also absorbed the lessons that came with them and corrected course. I haven't done anything to the people that come against me. For a lot of them, I had some sort of love, or respect. I pray that they can heal from their toxic ways - prison would be a respite for most of these criminals.

I've healed a lot of my trauma and severed the chains that bound me to my sordid past. I love the solitude and peace that I've found being isolated, but my son and I deserve to be able to leave home without fear of being followed, or bothered. For now, I've turned everything over for the Most High to sort out and I'm confident that we'll be able to emerge from our protective cocoon very soon.