I am angry. I can't seem to get over how angry I am. I don't have a victim attitude. My friends and my therapist say it so I know I am not just kidding myself. But I am the victim in this situation. I was the one who was yelled at and terrorized. I was the one who lived in fear. I was the one who had to go to court to get a restraining order. I was the one who listened to Tracy threaten the life of my bird. I was the one who watched my 10 pound dog attack Tracy to protect me. I am the victim in this situation.
I know Tracy has some sort of mental illness or something. I know that. I feel for her. I gave her every opportunity to get help. I know it is part of the illness to not want help. I know people should feel sorry for her because now she is homeless. I get it.
But in someways Tracy put herself in this situation. Over the years she never saved barely a penny. The few times she did save any significant amount she always tapped into it and spent it on something. Usually beer and weed. I find it hard to feel sorry for someone who didn't work, lived off me and spent any money she got (made or was given) on beer and weed. Meanwhile I paid for her health insurance, dental work, and kept her in a house with cable, Netflix, and food. A very comfortable lifestyle. I also took her on trips.
I am angry because some folks in my family are feeling bad for Tracy. They feel like Tracy is a victim. Like oh poor Tracy. Screw that! Oh poor Campbell! That is how it should be. I am the victim in this situation.
If I hear one more person in my family say they feel bad for Tracy, I may crack. She still has not picked up her crap and is insisting she wants more items from the house. The 85 boxes of crap just isn't enough for her. Now she wants lamps and furniture. If she is homeless where is she going to put furniture? I know she is not well but it is so hard to deal with when I want to move on with my life. And I have family members telling me "oh poor Tracy". Easy for them to say when they don't have to live with 85 boxes in their house that they have to see every day.
I just want my family to admit that I was the victim in this situation. Not that I want to be a victim. I just want to hear them say Campbell you were a victim of a domestic violence situation. That is all.
more to come...
Showing posts with label mental illness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental illness. Show all posts
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
I AM NOT GOING TO HURT YOUR DAUGHTER
By this point I knew I was in need of help.
Tracy called my mother out of the blue to tell my mother that "I am not going to hurt your daughter." This freaked my mother out since I had not told my mother that anything has been going on. My mother called me scared for my life. Tracy then called my father at midnight one night to ask him a question. She was out of control.
I contacted the attorney my Palm Springs friend told me to. We spoke many times about if I was doing the right thing. If I could go through with it. If I had a strong enough case. What I needed to do. How to keep safe. She sent me the papers I needed to file for a temporary restraining order. It was now on me to fill out the papers.
A vendor came by to fix something and he was completely shocked. He helped us about 10 years ago and he could not believe the change in Tracy. He asked me what was wrong with Tracy. I had warned him before he entered the house that Tracy was being difficult. Boy was she! She stood back and glared at him the whole visit. When I tried to introduce him to her, she said "I am not the one you need to be interested in." When the vendor was done, we went outside and he told me he was shocked by the change in Tracy. He said he worked as an EMT for many years and he can see she has some mental issues that she is not dealing with. He spoke with me a long time and tried to convince me that I need to leave before Tracy becomes violent. He said he saw many cases like this when he was an EMT and they never end well. His advise: Get Out.
He also told me about a support group that his wife went to. That support group didn't seem what I needed but it sparked an idea in my head. I started looking up support groups for gay partners with mental illness. I found a meeting but it was too many days away. I found another meeting with NAMI that was for partners/family members of people with mental illness. I took the bus to the meeting and met some very nice people. So many of them had situations where their loved one hurt them physically. Or they had to put them out of the house. Most were parents with children. There was only one other couple and she was almost done with her husband. He had depression and kept going off his medicine without telling her.
The whole group was supportive. The group supported my decision to get Tracy out of the house before she hurt me. It is not her, it is the disease. They wanted me to come back but since Tracy is gone, I don't see the point.It was the most support I had felt in a long time. My friend Viola is wonderful but I felt like I was wearing her out.
I spent the long Memorial Day weekend finalizing my deposition for the restraining order. I got the dog walker to send a deposition of when she came to pick up the dogs and Tracy was aggressive. She said "who is that? What is she doing here?" in a really aggressive tone. The dog walker was scared to leave me alone with her.
My mother sent in her deposition stating how scared she was when she got the phone call.
I kept adding to my deposition as Tracy kept getting more out of control.
more to come...
Tracy called my mother out of the blue to tell my mother that "I am not going to hurt your daughter." This freaked my mother out since I had not told my mother that anything has been going on. My mother called me scared for my life. Tracy then called my father at midnight one night to ask him a question. She was out of control.
I contacted the attorney my Palm Springs friend told me to. We spoke many times about if I was doing the right thing. If I could go through with it. If I had a strong enough case. What I needed to do. How to keep safe. She sent me the papers I needed to file for a temporary restraining order. It was now on me to fill out the papers.
A vendor came by to fix something and he was completely shocked. He helped us about 10 years ago and he could not believe the change in Tracy. He asked me what was wrong with Tracy. I had warned him before he entered the house that Tracy was being difficult. Boy was she! She stood back and glared at him the whole visit. When I tried to introduce him to her, she said "I am not the one you need to be interested in." When the vendor was done, we went outside and he told me he was shocked by the change in Tracy. He said he worked as an EMT for many years and he can see she has some mental issues that she is not dealing with. He spoke with me a long time and tried to convince me that I need to leave before Tracy becomes violent. He said he saw many cases like this when he was an EMT and they never end well. His advise: Get Out.
He also told me about a support group that his wife went to. That support group didn't seem what I needed but it sparked an idea in my head. I started looking up support groups for gay partners with mental illness. I found a meeting but it was too many days away. I found another meeting with NAMI that was for partners/family members of people with mental illness. I took the bus to the meeting and met some very nice people. So many of them had situations where their loved one hurt them physically. Or they had to put them out of the house. Most were parents with children. There was only one other couple and she was almost done with her husband. He had depression and kept going off his medicine without telling her.
The whole group was supportive. The group supported my decision to get Tracy out of the house before she hurt me. It is not her, it is the disease. They wanted me to come back but since Tracy is gone, I don't see the point.It was the most support I had felt in a long time. My friend Viola is wonderful but I felt like I was wearing her out.
I spent the long Memorial Day weekend finalizing my deposition for the restraining order. I got the dog walker to send a deposition of when she came to pick up the dogs and Tracy was aggressive. She said "who is that? What is she doing here?" in a really aggressive tone. The dog walker was scared to leave me alone with her.
My mother sent in her deposition stating how scared she was when she got the phone call.
I kept adding to my deposition as Tracy kept getting more out of control.
more to come...
Monday, July 13, 2015
YES THIS IS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
On the way home from the vacation on May 4th the flight was delayed. I called Tracy from Palm Springs to let her know the flight was delayed. I called her from the plane to tell her we would be taking off soon. I had a horribly stressful trip home. Took a cab to the house. I walked in and Tracy laid into me. Screaming and yelling. "Why didn't you call me when you landed? Oh yeah, only responsible and respectful people call when they land to let those at home know they landed and are safe." Huh? I came directly home. She knew when we took off. I live 20 minutes from the airport and I didn't dilly dally. You have got to be kidding me. Turns out she said she wanted to have a nice spread ready when I came home to welcome me home but since we were delayed she didn't know when to get it ready. Oh, okay. Nice way to greet someone.
I decided in that instant that there was no way this was ever going to work. I needed to file some papers to get her out of the house. But first I would try to get her to leave on her own. She has some sort of undiagnosed mental illness and I feel compassion and empathy for her but this relationship needs to end before someone gets hurt.
During that week I made it clear to Tracy that we were broken up. Or at least I thought I did. I tried to. I would say we were through and she would act that I never said it. She would then say she wanted to take me out to dinner. It was bizarre. Like living in Groundhog Day. Then she said would should redecorate the bathroom. Change the color to something other than blue. Get rid of the Winnie the Pooh stuff. Huh?!
A week later on Saturday night there was a local party and I wanted to go. Tracy would not go because we were fighting and she said people would see that we were not together. She could not be seen in the same party as me. She said she knew I was going around the neighborhood telling people we were not together. It was so delusional. I assured her that I was not talking about our issues to anyone in the neighborhood. But she would not go. I went on my own and had a good time. When people asked where she was I told them I didn't know.
This began the delusional accusations. She would accuse me of saying things to people, calling people. She thought I had told everyone not to call the home phone number when in reality no one really called the home phone number for me anymore because I was never at home. They all called my cellphone. She was obsessed with the home phone situation. Why did I never get phone calls anymore?
If I said something to someone and that person made an innocent made a comment to Tracy, it became a big issue. Why did you say that to your step-mother? One comment was about Tracy being on drugs. My step-mother asked me if Tracy was taking her medication. I said no. My step-mother then got on the phone with Tracy and told Tracy that she needed to be taking medication. I got an ear full of ranting about how I put my step-mother up to telling Tracy she needed to be medicated. I tried to tell her that my step-mother takes things out of context but Tracy (who knows this) was irrational. She went on about how I told everyone I wanted her on drugs hour upon day upon day. I finally stopped talking to anyone who would talk to Tracy or if I did talk to anyone I had to swear them to secrecy. I had to explain what would happen to me if they told her.
It wasn't jut the yelling. The ranting. The screaming. It was the sleep deprivation because she never slept. The comings and goings. She came and left at all hours in a sneaky way. She would storm upstairs and storm into my room with heels banging and doors slamming at all hours. It didn't matter if I was asleep. It was the obsessive cleaning. It was the anger all the time, then the smiles that were ill. The laughing that was demented. The talking to her self for hours on end, one day for 8 hours straight. It was the not knowing what was coming next but at the same time, the knowing what was coming next. The fear that what was coming next was going to be a knife or a fist. It was the intimidating stance that was too close when I was lying down and defenseless. It was the way the dogs trembled and jumped up on the nightstand. It was all of it.
This is why I agreed to go to couples counseling. Why you ask? I had to keep up the illusion that we were together until I decided what I was going to do. She was looking for anything out of the ordinary to "get me" for.
The next Saturday we were invited to another party. I didn't tell her about it. I went by myself and had a great time.
By this time we had separate lives. I had moved into the upstairs bedroom. Both dogs were sleeping with me. She kept saying I was isolating her from all living things. I said they are dogs. If they wanted to be with you they would be. She stopped taking care of the bird because she said it was my bird so it was my responsibility. She would do things like get in a big argument about how if they are my dogs I had to be home every night to feed them. I would rush home to feed them (once missing a dinner with my parents who were visiting from the East Coast) and get home only to find that she had fed them already. Stating that she could not let them starve.
It was an emotional roller coaster. Everyday it was a struggle to come home. I never knew which Tracy would be there. But I always knew the angry, frustrated, mean Tracy would be moments away. One wrong look, one wrong comment, one wrong anything and mean Tracy would verbally lash out. I learned that keeping my mouth shut was my best offense and defense.
It is amazing how long you can go without talking. How quiet you can be. How small a 5'9" person can become. How a running dialogue in my head saved me. How text messages from a friend made me laugh.
more to come...
I decided in that instant that there was no way this was ever going to work. I needed to file some papers to get her out of the house. But first I would try to get her to leave on her own. She has some sort of undiagnosed mental illness and I feel compassion and empathy for her but this relationship needs to end before someone gets hurt.
During that week I made it clear to Tracy that we were broken up. Or at least I thought I did. I tried to. I would say we were through and she would act that I never said it. She would then say she wanted to take me out to dinner. It was bizarre. Like living in Groundhog Day. Then she said would should redecorate the bathroom. Change the color to something other than blue. Get rid of the Winnie the Pooh stuff. Huh?!
A week later on Saturday night there was a local party and I wanted to go. Tracy would not go because we were fighting and she said people would see that we were not together. She could not be seen in the same party as me. She said she knew I was going around the neighborhood telling people we were not together. It was so delusional. I assured her that I was not talking about our issues to anyone in the neighborhood. But she would not go. I went on my own and had a good time. When people asked where she was I told them I didn't know.
This began the delusional accusations. She would accuse me of saying things to people, calling people. She thought I had told everyone not to call the home phone number when in reality no one really called the home phone number for me anymore because I was never at home. They all called my cellphone. She was obsessed with the home phone situation. Why did I never get phone calls anymore?
If I said something to someone and that person made an innocent made a comment to Tracy, it became a big issue. Why did you say that to your step-mother? One comment was about Tracy being on drugs. My step-mother asked me if Tracy was taking her medication. I said no. My step-mother then got on the phone with Tracy and told Tracy that she needed to be taking medication. I got an ear full of ranting about how I put my step-mother up to telling Tracy she needed to be medicated. I tried to tell her that my step-mother takes things out of context but Tracy (who knows this) was irrational. She went on about how I told everyone I wanted her on drugs hour upon day upon day. I finally stopped talking to anyone who would talk to Tracy or if I did talk to anyone I had to swear them to secrecy. I had to explain what would happen to me if they told her.
It wasn't jut the yelling. The ranting. The screaming. It was the sleep deprivation because she never slept. The comings and goings. She came and left at all hours in a sneaky way. She would storm upstairs and storm into my room with heels banging and doors slamming at all hours. It didn't matter if I was asleep. It was the obsessive cleaning. It was the anger all the time, then the smiles that were ill. The laughing that was demented. The talking to her self for hours on end, one day for 8 hours straight. It was the not knowing what was coming next but at the same time, the knowing what was coming next. The fear that what was coming next was going to be a knife or a fist. It was the intimidating stance that was too close when I was lying down and defenseless. It was the way the dogs trembled and jumped up on the nightstand. It was all of it.
This is why I agreed to go to couples counseling. Why you ask? I had to keep up the illusion that we were together until I decided what I was going to do. She was looking for anything out of the ordinary to "get me" for.
The next Saturday we were invited to another party. I didn't tell her about it. I went by myself and had a great time.
By this time we had separate lives. I had moved into the upstairs bedroom. Both dogs were sleeping with me. She kept saying I was isolating her from all living things. I said they are dogs. If they wanted to be with you they would be. She stopped taking care of the bird because she said it was my bird so it was my responsibility. She would do things like get in a big argument about how if they are my dogs I had to be home every night to feed them. I would rush home to feed them (once missing a dinner with my parents who were visiting from the East Coast) and get home only to find that she had fed them already. Stating that she could not let them starve.
It was an emotional roller coaster. Everyday it was a struggle to come home. I never knew which Tracy would be there. But I always knew the angry, frustrated, mean Tracy would be moments away. One wrong look, one wrong comment, one wrong anything and mean Tracy would verbally lash out. I learned that keeping my mouth shut was my best offense and defense.
It is amazing how long you can go without talking. How quiet you can be. How small a 5'9" person can become. How a running dialogue in my head saved me. How text messages from a friend made me laugh.
more to come...
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