How to get away with murder

You’ve tried in so many different ways to stop this. The pleading, the bargaining, the begging, the crying. Trying to reason with me won’t work. You know this by now, but it doesn’t stop you from having your own fantasies. The fantasies where once you understand the whole truth the lingering feeling that there’s a deranged puppet master lurking in the shadows of your life will finally fade. That all is not what it seems and if you only had that missing bit of information the whole puzzle would pop into place. That I will wake from my fog to see the error of my ways, come to you and ask for salvation. That you can get back to what you were doing before me, your ambition, your dreams, your relationships. Don’t be foolish. Your best years are behind you. The damage done is irrevocable. 

When I met you, you were such a young, fresh peach. You had an energy about you that drew others in. But of course, everyone loves a young woman. It’s not hard to see the potential in a supple beauty with a radiant aura of naiveté. Youth is pliable, enthusiastic, optimistic. After over a decade tangled up in my web, stressed and struggling, no one to save you, you’ve lost that illuminating glow you once had. You’re hardened now. Your jaws sag, your eyes sunken, you drink too much, that inviting smile you always offered so easily never reaches your eyes anymore. No one cares about an old woman. No one is going to extend a helping hand only to receive your time worn, wrinkled hand in return. You no longer have anything to offer.

There was a time, before you drove everyone away with your rash behavior and delusional sounding rants, that friends would still offer the promise of some assistance. More often than not, the “help” they offered was just a boomerang heading straight back to you, the onus of solving your problems rests squarely on your own shoulders, as it should be! You are in this alone.

I did enjoy listening to all those suggestions for solving the problem of me… Get a degree in cyber security, go to law school and learn to advocate for yourself, take a creative writing class and write a movie script, pitch it in Hollywood (might as well profit from your trauma). Solutions that would take years in the making. The immediacy of your fears and sense of abandonment seemed to be lost on everyone around you. You only have yourself to blame for that. Had you not been so wrapped up in playing victim you may have seemed more credible and less wild eyed, less repulsive to those around you.

Of course, there were “solutions” you could implement in the here and now; delete every shred of yourself that exists online, never mind that a digital presence is the way people know you’re alive these days. You did that, mostly. It worked well with my isolation plan for you. Then of course there was the fact that I can hear your phone calls. You told your friend that you weren’t even able to discuss your feelings without me interfering and writing twisted versions of them online, painting you as a selfish narcissist who was victimizing me. She said you were giving me your power by discussing your feelings and you should just stop doing that. I loved that. Get offline, live your life like you’re a grey rock, expecting to be able to process your feelings in the privacy of your own home is just one more thing you’re doing wrong. You’re bringing this upon yourself. Everyone saw it my way. Everything in your life now belonged to me.

Then there was your friend who you later described as being the embodiment of “white male privilege” in your eyes (Oooh, you’re so woke). He mansplained to you for an hour how your behavior was all wrong. He told you how you should be feeling and conducting yourself. You told him he had never been stalked or experienced anything similar. He told you he had a recurring dream where there was a man sitting in his closet who wouldn’t leave. Close enough! He concluded his informational speech to you by instructing you to, “Get a cool little pocketknife and live your life.” You told him that was offensive and dismissive on so many levels. Of course, he took umbrage at your displeasure and that was the last time you spoke, ending a relationship that spanned over three decades. I relish all the little details surrounding your misfortunes. Why wouldn’t I, you were trying to destroy me, were you not?

After your third move you managed to start saving some money and decided maybe your only hope of finding help was to pay for it. You found a forensics guy who was supposed to have a good rep. He spent a long time explaining that hacks could take hundreds of hours to find and given that you were only dishing out 3k for $450/hr it was unlikely he would find anything. He was willing to “try.” He billed you for calls where he blustered at length about his chops in the forensics field and even played you some songs on the guitar. I loved that part. He was so excited to have a young woman as a captive audience, imagining you were hanging on his every word. His misguided enthusiasm made him appear rather foolish. Needless to say, your concerns that this guy was a blow hard and never intended to do a proper investigation were warranted. When you called him on it, he exploded, hung up on you and then called back telling you the situation was your fault because you had initially sent me a text message. Your response was. “I don’t care if I was fucking the guy, no one has a right to hack into my phone.” He hung up on you again.

Hahahahaha. Oh dear, I do try not to laugh, but you do see why it’s only the wealthy and connected who ever receive any form of justice in this world… You are not either. I am both. And this is how it’s done.