Protection

What a fucking weekend.

I clearly upset someone. Or multiple people. What can I say? It’s a life skill.

The state does seem displeased. I didn’t hear from the police today, but some things are beginning to clear up. I was told they probably wouldn’t find anything on my phone that would explain what has been happening. They will where I hid from the hackers on my phone. Metadata is a beautiful thing.  So are stupid people.

I still don’t know whether what I experienced came from Dave, from some government investigation, from something else entirely, or from some combination of those things. That uncertainty is part of what has made this so frightening.

But I keep coming back to Dave.

Once, years ago, I said something about him being jealous. He almost never raised his voice at me, but that time he did. Then he said something that sounded strangely rehearsed, almost like something somebody had told him in therapy.

He said he didn’t get jealous.

“Jealousy leads to obsession.”

I remember that sentence.

Because now I am fairly certain the story he tells about me is that I am crazy, jealous and obsessed with him. Fine. I’ll take a little crazy. I’ve been through enough that I’m not particularly interested in pretending I emerged from it all perfectly normal.

But obsession is more complicated.

For years, Dave had me trapped in a strange little equilibrium. This blog was the only place I had to talk. All the people in my actual life didn’t want to hear about this anymore. They wanted me to move on, stop talking about him, stop talking about what happened.

So I wrote.

And Dave read.

He used to tell me he read everything I wrote. Oddly enough, that may be one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. I kept writing about him. He kept reading about himself. Sometimes I addressed him directly. Mainly calling him names.

It was unhealthy. It was strange. But there was a balance to it. He was still there.And then I filed for a restraining order. That changed something. For the first time, I wasn’t just writing about leaving him behind. I was formally telling him to stay away from me. Not that it mattered. (Hey Dave!)

I broke the unspoken promise.

I walked away. I rejected him.

And if I am right about what has happened since, Dave did not like that very much. He liked believing I was still pathetically in love with him. I think that gave him of control. That the only thing Dave ever wants is control. And he told more than once he had complete control of me and I’ll be damned if he wasn’t right. I know everything, buts always right.

I haven’t been able to move on because I cannot get over what happened to me, and I cannot get over what happened afterward. I cannot get over the destruction of my life and the astonishing lack of response from people and institutions I believed were supposed to care.

I was the victim.

And I broke up with him.

The past couple of months have been fucking sick. I became increasingly isolated. People I normally depended on suddenly seemed unwilling to help me while I was begging them to listen. At the same time, I was finding things on my devices that frightened me and trying to understand what they meant.

Some of what I saw made me wonder whether I was dealing with some kind of government monitoring. Some of it made me think it had to be Dave.

I discovered that Chris Rivers, the person involved in investigating me, works on fraud matters connected to the Attorney General’s Office. Dave, through his position, had statutory obligation involving fraud matters to directly refer to the Attorney General.

Does that mean they knew one another? Vegas is a betting town.

Paranoia strikes deep when counterterrorism units have already taken an interest in you. And if I ever learned that anyone inside government actually helped the man I accuse of raping me torment me afterward, I genuinely do not know what I would do with that knowledge.

For now, it is a question.

A terrifying one.

I need to get the fuck out of here. My sister suggested changing my name. I might. I’ve disappeared myself before.

What scares me most is that I genuinely do know what Dave is capable of. I do know he has graphic fantasies of killing. He has specific graphic fantasies of killing me.

I filed to dismiss my lawsuit without prejudice. In that filing, I said that the only reason I would agree to dismissal with prejudice would be fear of the defendant. Then Cunty McLawyer emailed me stating that I had made a mistake and actually meant to dismiss the case with prejudice.

How the fuck was I supposed to take that?

I spent most of that day crying and shaking on the couch. That is what this litigation has become for me. And then everybody acts confused about why I want out.

If we could go to trial tomorrow? I’m in. Put twelve people in a box and let me tell them what happened.

What I cannot take is another six months of procedural warfare before anybody even begins seriously moving the case toward resolution.

And somehow the suggestion keeps floating around that I am the one dragging this out. I filed in June. I did not receive a response until October. Sure. Totes me.

What makes all of this almost impossible to stomach is the repeated suggestion that I am dangerous. That I am threatening people.

Dave described to me, in graphic detail, his thoughts about killing people. He talked about what he imagined it would feel like. He described violent fantasies.

Yet somehow I became the frightening one. I became the person authorities were watching. And he became the person being protected. That contradiction is something I cannot make peace with.

The police say they are going to talk to me. Good. I will talk. But if the purpose of that conversation is simply to placate me, calm me down or explain why I should stop being angry, it will accomplish the opposite.

I don’t need to be talked out of being angry. I need someone to seriously examine what happened. I need someone to distinguish what can be proven from what cannot.

I need answers.

And, more than anything else, I need to feel like somebody understands that I am asking to be protected too. Because whatever anyone thinks about me, my writing, my anger, my lawsuit or my mouth:

I was the victim.

Someone should have protected me.

Someone still should.