By OxDrover
I remember when I was a little kid, driving with my parents, sitting in the back seat sans seatbelt (there were no such things in those days) and leaning over the front seat, repeatedly asking my parents, “Are we there yet?” or “How long til we get there?”
Of course there had been no reasonable way for my parents to convey to me “how long” since I didn’t tell time when I was four, so there was no use saying “one hour” because I wouldn’t be able to comprehend what an “hour” was. Time is sort of fluid anyway, relative to what is going on. If you are bored, an hour is forever. If you are interested in something, an hour is very short. To a bored child in the back seat of a car, the trip seems to take forever with no end in sight. The trip is a price to be paid for arriving at the destination.
When I started the journey toward Healing from my prior experiences with the psychopaths in my life and family, I was in pain. I wanted the journey to be over; I wanted to get to being healed quickly. The journey itself didn’t interest me any more than the passing countryside had interested me when I was riding in the back seat of my parents’ car. I was tired of that trip before it even started. I wanted to be there!
Unlike the smooth ride in the backseat of my parents’ car, which required no effort on my part, this journey to Healing required me to steer and power the vehicle. I had to make sure I didn’t run out of fuel, and that the equipment was in order. Some days my tires went flat and I had to get out and fix them. Other days my emotional radiator boiled over and I sat feeling helpless on the side of the road with smoke boiling out from under my hood. Some days I was simply out of gas with no refueling station anywhere in sight as far as the eye could see.
The road to Healing was a terrible road, with huge potholes that seemed to appear out of nowhere, and sometimes my wheels would hit these potholes. My tires would sink to the axle and I would have to get out and dig and dig until I could get enough dirt pushed under them to get the car out. Other times, the road would be slimed with mud and I would skid into the ditches of despair.
From time to time I would see someone else along the road, and occasionally someone would come along when I needed help the most and offer me a very welcome hand.
I became so tired from this journey that I just wondered if I would ever get there. What I really wanted was someone to come along and offer me a magic carpet so I could just fly over all this terrible barren terrain and I could just get there to Healing!
Often times the signposts along the road were unclear and I wasn’t even sure I was even on the right road. Other times, some prankster must have turned the signs around because I would take a turn, certain I was reading the sign correctly, and wind up down a dead end trail with barely enough room to turn my vehicle around. At times like these I felt so utterly alone and stupid for not being more careful and allowing myself to get off the correct road.
One day when I felt that I just couldn’t go on any longer, that it was too much work to keep my old vehicle going with broken springs that seemed to make each rut, each pot hole, and each rock in the road jar my back teeth loose, I discovered I was no longer on the road alone. I looked around me and I saw other people on the road. Where had they come from? Had they been there before and I was too self absorbed, too weighted down with my own woes, to even notice them? I also noticed that some of these people were riding bicycles, some were on scooters, some were walking. Some of the others on the road were on crutches, or in wheel chairs, and some of these people were even crawling.
I looked around at these people and then back at my old vehicle with its rusting fenders, threadbare tires and leaking radiator, but I realized that it was not so “bad” after all. It might not have been a Cadillac, but I wasn’t having to walk or crawl. I realized there were others who were less fortunate than me. I felt shame in myself for being so self absorbed, for not realizing that I didn’t have it “so bad” after all. I recited the old saying about, “I cried because I had no shoes, until I saw a man who had no feet.” I thanked God for my old vehicle.
As I restarted my journey I became acquainted with some of my fellow travelers, and we shared our stories, our pains, and our insights. When we would come to a crossroads that seemed confusing, we would help each other, and if one fell down, the others reached out to him to help him up. Having company on the journey made it seem less lonely. Though there was no magic carpet there to whisk me away to the destination of Healing, it was comforting to have company.
Sometimes I would pause and rest a while with a fellow traveler. As we traveled down the road we would meet new travelers, freshly injured, also seeking Healing. Those of us on the road would call to them to join us in the journey, comforting and supporting each other on the way. Sometimes the newly injured would join us, but other times, those bleeding injured souls would wander off the road or fall in to the abyss and no matter how we would call to them, they would not answer and sorrowfully, we would have to move on down the road toward Healing without them.
No matter how far I traveled it never seemed I was any nearer to Healing than before. As I traveled the road, it became smoother and I was becoming stronger from my struggles to climb the hills, cover the hurdles, get out of the pot holes, but I never saw a sign that said “how long ’til we get there.” I never saw a sign that said, “Healing 50 miles.” I began to wonder if I would ever arrive at Healing. I even asked some of my fellow travelers, “Are we there yet? How long ’til we get there?” No one could answer me. No one could tell me “how long before we get there?”
As I traveled and the road became smoother, and there were even stretches of pavement that I could roll across without the jarring rocks and ruts, and I began to enjoy the journey. I would gaze off into the distance and see mountains and vistas of incredible beauty that filled my heart with joy just to behold. I had passed out of the terrible salt flats of hell and reached a place where there was beauty and joy, and the road was smoother. Even my old vehicle started to run better and give me less trouble, and I found refueling stations on a regular basis and quit forgetting to check the oil and tire pressure, so I didn’t have flats and other problems so often any more.
Along the road I had also seen some changes and growth in my traveling partners. They were becoming stronger and starting to sing as they walked or rode along. Even some of those in wheel chairs were beginning to walk again, and some that had used crutches had thrown them away and were walking straight and strong. It made me happy to see my new friends recovering and getting better and stronger; it made me feel good to feel stronger myself.
At times my new friends and I would talk about our former lives before we started on the Healing road, and sometimes we even missed some of those people we had had to leave behind. Unkind people who had wounded us, yet we loved and missed, but even those memories of our former lives started to change as we sang along the road toward Healing. We started to make new plans and put together new lives.
I would reach milestones from time to time, the milestone of setting boundaries, another one for forgiveness and a milestone for honesty. As I passed each milestone I felt renewed strength and stamina, but I wondered, “When will I get to Healing? When will I be there?”
Then I came to a milestone that said, “Healing is a journey, not a destination.” I realized that there was no end to the Healing Road; it would go on for the rest of my life. It isn’t about getting to some place and being there; it is about enjoying the journey. It is about growth and learning and companionship with others on the same road. It is about comforting others who have fallen, as there were those that comforted you when you fell. It is the shared experiences of seeing the sun shining on the distant mountains, or reassuring each other during a storm. Healing is about life—living life, experiencing life, and sharing life.
Ox…he’s in LF and he knows my screen name. I keep blocking his email accounts and he keeps making new ones. He sent me a mail with details about some of my comments in here (indirectly showing me that I cannot effing hide). My cover is completely blown.
My instinct is to leave here, but I am so sick of backing down and running. I’ve come to trust you guys in the past few days. What do you think I should do? Is this indirect contact since I know he can read these? I really wanted full NC!
Well Panther, since he is reading this right now, he must know that a spath can only manipulate people who don’t know what he is. Since you know EXACTLY what he is, you are now beyond his reach.
If he wants to continue to read here so that he knows what you are up to and how you are feeling, he can do so. But he won’t like how it ends up.
He might like it at first, as you speak about the pain of knowing that you tried to love a spath. But what he will see, is that you will continue to grow, learn, have peace and happiness. Seeing that will just increase his envy and disgust with himself, because his ego-centered perspective prevents him from ever attaining that for himself.
So if he’s a masochist, he can keep coming here. But if he’s a typical spath sadist, he should find a new victim.
Okay, that’s an interesting way of looking at it.
It’s so much easier when it’s not the spath you had to deal with, ya know? But that’s what makes your advice better than what my own scattered brain will come up with. You’re able to be objective about this guy, whereas I just get all flustered and do things that actors always do in horror movies: stupidly investigate noises in dark rooms and then frantically run upstairs.
Thanks for the advice Skylar. I think about your experience all the time, by the way. It didn’t even happen to me, and yet I am stumped by it. I cannot wrap my head around it at all no matter how much spath stuff I read up on. A guy poisons his love and looks her in the eyes at the same time, and then when called out, has the audacity to deny it and ramble on about a campfire under attack. HOLY CRAP!
Okay I’m gonna go chill out.
Last thing, considering that telling an spath NO and LEAVE ME ALONE doesn’t stop them from constantly attempting to contact you, then they are definitely emotional or spiritual rapists. No boundaries.
Oh, yeah, and I was riding my bike today repeating:
I didn’t DO the yo-yo.
I AM the yo-yo.
Ox hit her on the head with your skillet. She’s not getting it!
🙂 That helps me come to my senses when I get confused. Bwaha!
Panther….change your name….and keep details of EVENTS down to a minimum so you will be harder to identify, but don’t leave.
Change your e mail address as well, and that way he can’t send you an e mail, I know it is difficult to have to do all that, but it is part of the fall out. I lost my phone number I’d had for 13 years. It happens. Just go with the flow and don’t let it bother you.
Panther,
my “advice” is not necessarily better than what your brain can come up with. It is lacking the emotional component. It doesn’t take into account how you FEEL about his stalking you on LF. This emotional component is as important as all the other components because it’s at the core of your complaint.
I left it out because, only you can know how much of an emotional hit this is for you. When it gets to be too much, you will withdraw into self-protection. You always have that option.
Mostly, I just wanted to offer you a wider perspective. The spaths aren’t really scary as much as they are disgusting. Our sense of revulsion is as much a protective mechanism as our sense of fear. You run from things that repulse you and spaths certainly do that! I think the reason is because we are aware that anything toxic can be contagious or make us ill.
Often times, when you are forced to live in a toxic environment with spaths, we develop a tolerance for it. That’s what happened to me. I was raised by spaths and with spaths. So when I met an uberspath, it was old hat, seemed familiar and comforting. I didn’t run from the revulsion.
Dear Panther,
That’s too bad this guy found you here. But I wouldn’t sweat it too much or feel any embarrassment. Based on the letters of his that you posted, he clearly has a very low IQ (I taught six grade “Learning Support” for one year, and, trust me, those kids were much better writers than he is!), with nothing significant going on in his Neanderthal mind. So do what makes you feel comfortable, Panther, but I for one, will miss hearing from you–and making fun of him! Indeed, not all spaths are dumb, but yours clearly is! (Though it sounds like he’s actually dumb AND violent–a real winner!)
Either way, best of luck to you. But I think Oxy is right: at the very least, stay around and read, and if you feel threatened, post with a different name. However, like I said, it might be amusing to have a bit more fun at his expense under your current screen name!
C.
Constanine, I just love you dude!
Heh heh — likewise, One/Joy….
Panther – whatever you decide is best we are all behind you.
Wonder if there is any way to block viewing of a wordpress website (which this one is) from a particular IP address?
he’s a moron. what can we say.
don’t answer this on the blog – how did he know you were here? did he hack an email account? does he have a key logger on your computer – either software or hardware? Google keylogger + hardware to get a pic. And there are good free anti-keylogger programs available for free download for browsers. Download one before changing your email address if you think this is the case. Try ‘Keyscrambler’ (most free antikeyloggers only affect protect you browser though, not email or documents.)
And remember the trees! lots of good tech people in the woods.