Event Horizon

I don't know how to do this life. I really don't. Right now, I feel fully insane, spinning and spinning and running and fighting and soaring and falling

and hiding.

Right now, I'm hiding. The kids and I have been hiding out from him since Monday. You see, Monday evening, he broke into my house. Again. That was at least the second time he's done it, I found out. I didn't know he'd done it at all until he did it again when our daughter was home alone. He thought we were all gone. She heard banging noises at the garage door and thought it was maybe the storm, but then it became apparent that someone was breaking into our house. She didn't know it was her dad. He's been trespassed from our property and also has a protective order against him and has no business whatsoever being there at all, let alone breaking in through the garage door. (We've since discovered he likely broke in through the laundry room window, which is right by the garage door.)

She ran and hid in my bedroom closet. My baby girl sat there, terrified and huddled in my closet, all alone and thinking that a stranger was breaking into our home. She heard him walking around, going through our things. She heard him opening drawers and unzipping bags. Then he started digging through my closet and she saw it was her dad. This didn't make her feel much better. He reached out to grab her and she ran out the front door and down the street in the cold and rain, barefoot. She ran until she couldn't run anymore, and he was chasing her. He had parked his car around the corner and was chasing her on foot. She ran to the neighbor's and started banging on the door. When he saw her do that he stopped chasing.

I was at a trauma recovery support group meeting (don't miss the potential irony there) and received a call from the neighbor across the street who had seen him chasing her. Then my daughter called to let me know what happened, that she was safe at the neighbor's, and I called the police and got to her as quickly as I could.

I know it's at least the second time he's broken into our home because on Sunday he returned some of my personal, intimate items to me, including two of my bras, my slip, and a pair of my red high heels. He claimed the items had shown up on his front porch in a box along with some of his own intimate items. I found this very strange and didn't believe him, but wondered how he had gained access to these items, because I knew they had been in my home recently. I shrugged it off as there were more pressing matters to attend to, such as whether or not to report him for continuing to violate the protective order.

I don't wonder whether to report him any more.

Now I know that, at least twice and probably more than that, he has broken into my home and gone through my things. He has taken, not the TV or computer or anything of value, but my underwear. He is officially a creepy stalker sociopath, and I officially know it for sure, now.

This is not happy-making.

But, let me start from the beginning-ish.

Last Saturday, I did something very stupid. I tried to go to the kite festival with him and the kids. Stupid, stupid, stupid. After about 15 minutes, I knew it was a mistake and tried to leave so he could have his time with them. He kept wanting to talk for "just 2 more minutes" which turned into 20, then 30, then an hour, then me literally running across the kite festival grounds to get away from him and hiding behind a cop car. He chased me. He found me. He kept obsessively talking at me while I took deep breaths and tried to manage the multiple anxiety attacks that were triggered by his behavior. Yes, I told him over and over to leave me alone. Yes, I told him over and over that he was triggering anxiety attacks in me. Yes, I told him over and over he needed to be spending time with the kids and he was wasting away his time with them by being obsessed with me. Of course, he heard not a word.

Stupid. Stupid me, stupid him. Stupid life. Stupid.

The rest of the weekend was a disaster as well. He wanted to have the kids but they really wanted me to take them to the school activities that were happening, and trying to cooperate, coordinate, or compromise with him is like trying to communicate with a fish. A deaf, mute, dead fish that got sucked up by a vacuum and is spinning around and around. Wait, maybe I'm the dead fish having been beaten to death by his obsessive, circular communication. Either way, it's loud and disgusting and dizzying.

So that day's stupid attempt at softening boundaries opened the floodgates to his rantings and ravings and refusing to leave me alone. Again. He stalked me at my home. He stalked me at my church. I hid in the bishop's office for the whole hour of Sunday school as he paced the halls waiting for me to appear. I had a posse of priesthood holders distract him and escort me to Relief Society, then make sure I was able to leave without him accosting me. I'm not exaggerating or kidding. I couldn't even go to my church meetings.

When I picked up the kids from him that afternoon (they were at his house sick while he was chasing me around the church for hours and begged me to come get them early) he gave my underwear and high heels back with a "warning" that "someone" was accessing my home "somehow." Ick, he's creepy. Look up sociopath. His picture should be next to the definition. He meets each and every criteria in every way.

Then Monday he broke into my house. I called the police. He got arrested and bailed out. He showed up at the kids' school Tuesday to try and take them, but I kept them out of school for their safety that day, and glad I did so. He called the school and left strange messages, he called and texted me over and over, showed up at my house some more, was arrested three times (almost four) for violating the protective order, then got pulled over and arrested for having drugs and a loaded weapon, all within three days.

He has officially lost it and I am officially afraid of him. I bought another gun.

We haven't slept at our home for six nights. Two of those nights we spent in a government-sponsored safe house. The rest were spent at friends' and family members' homes. We still don't feel safe at our home, but we have to go back eventually. We have school. We have a life. He can't be able to take that from us. But he still blames me for all of it. He claims my lawyer and I are conspiring with the police to ruin his life, reputation, and keep the kids from him. He claims he broke into our home because he thought our daughter was a burglar and wanted to catch the bad guy. (More recently, I heard he claims he knew she was home and just wanted to check on her. Lie after lie after lie.) He just happened to park around the corner and take five minutes breaking into a home that had supposedly already been broken into. Seriously, psychopath. Chronic liar, delusional, creepy stalker. No joke. Oh, how I wish I was joking. How I wish this was not my real life.

I'm mad and afraid and traumatized and so are the kids. A thousand what-ifs course through my head at any given moment. I check vehicles in parking lots to make sure his isn't there, too. I yo-yo from depressed to hyper-vigilant and then to angry and determined. One minute I want to run away and take the kids and hide out forever. The next I'm pissed and hope he does show up and threaten us again, because I'll be packing.

How do the kids and I heal from trauma when IT NEVER STOPS HAPPENING?

I'm so, so tired. I'm a thousand years old.

And even still, underneath it all, I know I will never give up. I have a friend who says beautiful things to me and this is the most recent beautiful thing he said:

"You won't fail because you don't know how to break. There won't be a day when you shut down and leave your kids defenseless because things got too hard...You can bear a thousand wounds and scars, and they'll all hurt, but they can't really touch your core. So go ahead and feel despair, feel old and tired. It's all expected. But we both know that in the morning, you're going to get up and fight a little more. Fact is that a person who will do that is going to get their happily ever after, one way or another."

I am choosing to believe my friend. I will fight. I will win. I will conquer.

I will take all that is trying to destroy me and create something so powerful and beautiful and brilliant that any destructive force that comes my way will be annihilated and only feed my energy more. I have reached my event horizon. I have imploded. And now I will transcend time and space and conquer anything that comes into my path. The adversary will face the consequences of what I choose to create from his attempts to destroy.

Watch me grow stronger. Watch me create. Watch me soar. Watch me make myself believe I can and find my happily ever after.
Right this very moment, I don't believe it, but I will. I have to.

I never give up. I don't know how.