Criminally Insane

What could drive a person to do such things? An unfortunate series of events? Is it like the sitcoms where one wacky mistake leads the protagonist to the next wacky mistake while they lack any and all agency to turn the tides on their own and they’re just carried along on that current until they finally crash into their opportunity to explain it all and be forgiven? Sarah kept waiting for her wacky explanation. She was always so sure one was just around the corner. It had to be. There had to be a reasonable explanation for everything that occurred because no one, even a crazy person, would orchestrate something so nonsensical and elaborate and not have a point. What was the point? Where was the punchline?

I would encourage her to feel this way, tell her that that soon everything would all make sense, dangle that carrot. I loved watching her eyes widen while she would get a little breathless reading some hint I had posted that I was about to show up and answer the riddle for her. She was ready to forgive, ready to set up a Slip ‘n Slide and coast right on over that redemption arc. Oh, Sarah.

I would feed her all kinds of potential possibilities, some real, some imagined, all relatively horrible; I’m a narcissistic sociopath (obviously) and I’m planning to murder her for my own sadistic enjoyment, she’s being gang stalked by the government and they’ve planted V2K communications in her skull and her perception that I’m stalking her is just some weird kind of interference, some other guy is actually stalking her and I’m only involved because I’m trying to clandestinely protect her from the true evil villain, there’s a group of internet trolls obsessed with trying to get her to kill herself, I’m a chick with a dick and I’m infatuated with trying to make a skin suit out of her… The possibilities are dizzying.

She became fixated on untangling criminal motivations. She started listening to dozens of true crime podcasts, horribly gruesome stuff, rape, serial killers, stalkers (clearly). Normally she had been a sound sleeper, but she started having issues. She stopped sleeping with her windows open because all she could do was picture me climbing through them with rope, duct tape and an ice pick. She watched all the Bundy and Dhamer documentaries and began to conflate my behaviors with their methods. I’m not going to lie, it was delightful to watch, but in retrospect I do have some regrets about burning those neural pathways in her brain that leap straight from the likes of the BTK killer to little ol’ me. 

She spent a lot of time looking for ways to hobble me, aside from the obvious ones that weren’t working (cops, lawyers, cyber detectives). She wrote to a lot of these podcasts trying to see if she could pique the interests of any investigative journalist who wanted to catch a perp real time. They could all smell her desperation, a looney “victim” wanting to use their resources to further her he-said-she-said drama and get revenge on some poor schlub that probably didn’t deserve it or even know she existed. Most didn’t even bother answering her emails, but she did manage to get on one low-rate pod about stalking. She got her 45 minutes in the limelight to tell her delusions of romance story. Dear lord, woman.

I felt sorry for her. It was pathetic to watch. She obviously has no idea how to pitch her pain for profit. I could see her writing and rewriting her trauma from different angles, trying to anticipate how she would need to tell it to grab the interest of whatever style of investigator or lawyer she happened to be writing to without sounding delusional. That’s the part that really worked in my favor; misogyny and victim shaming are real, and they are awesome. There’s already an aura of crazy floating around any woman in distress… needy, attention seeking, hysterical! I was not even slightly nervous that anything would come from the hundreds of emails and calls she was laboring over. Hahaha. I almost wanted to give her some lessons because she was just such a mess. I was embarrassed for her. In the end she was so exhausted she just gave up and melted into a big lump of learned helplessness. 

Entertaining to say the least, but I expect more from the women I choose to give my attention to. I gave her some blog post pep talks on how she can keep reaching for her dreams and learn to be a better person. I liked to give her links to philosophers I’m reading and send a lot of the better inspirational memes to keep her spirits up. She always gave me tons of unsolicited advice about my depression, annoying, so I like to remind her that just like she was always pushing me to evolve, I was there pushing her too! Rooting her on to be the best she could be in life. Loving her from afar! Even if we can never be together, I feel confident that the trials and tests I’ve subjected her to have made her the strong woman she is today. I take credit for that, even if she doesn’t want to give me thanks. It’s ok, I love you unconditionally, Sarah, I'm happy I could be the catalyst for making you a better person.