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Note: This page is written for my own healing; my hope is that there may also be something of service to each of you visiting here as well. Second note: Names changed to protect both the innocent and the guilty. Third note: Jessie, Andy & Brit - scroll down until you see your hair color, where a note to you awaits. Dear Carla S. MA, LMFT, I am writing to you regarding my journey of surviving 7 years of abuse by your client, Kerri C. I know, all too well, that unless 1). a person has experienced this particularly insidious type of abuse first hand, or 2). has spent much time in the study of the psychology of both this type of abuser and their victims, one has a very small percent of a chance of recognizing that there actually WAS abuse that took place. If you are in neither of those two categories, you will, most likely (like others untrained or inexperienced) pathologize me, rather than recognize what has taken place, and as such there will be nothing I can say of use to you here. If you are aware of the disorder of which I speak, what follows might be of interest. I have no idea what you do or do not actually know about Kerri, about the true nature of the relationship she and I had, or the trail of broken women (each of her ex lovers, and possibly a number of friendships as well) she leaves behind her. I suppose it might be true that by chance each of her girlfriends "went crazy", and thus she had to move on, but still, would it not be worth examining the possibility that the common denominator, Kerri herself, might be party to the creation of the wreckage she leaves in her wake? Could it be of note that she makes certain that there are no traces of her ex partners anywhere to be seen in her current life? Could it be worthy of note that anyone who does not see Kerri as she wishes to be seen is rejected from her life, and becomes someone she can only speak poorly of? When I met you, I immediately liked you; the aura you presented was one of intelligence and kindness. Over the years, I came to admire your work through the stories Kerri would share (almost like a young child, Kerri would eagerly tell me your responses to various things discussed in her therapy with you). That said, of course I know little of who you really are, what your training is, how much you know about the client who sits in your office every other week… and so I find myself troubled. I do know that you are bound to uphold therapist-patient confidentiality, and in no way do I wish to invade that sacred space – I am NOT asking you to share anything of your work with Kerri. I simply need to voice my feelings as a part of my own recovery, and in so doing, I would be pleased if some of what I say may be of use to you and, ultimately, to her potential healing (though, sadly, I am of the mind that based on her particular issue this may not be a possibility in this lifetime for her). Almost 8 years ago, I fell for this person that would utterly change my views of humanity, myself, and everything I know in this world and beyond – and not for the better. But I am ahead of myself before I even begin here. . . After a few months of being in relationship with Kerri, even though I was originally attracted to her, I began to question whether I could remain with her. In spite of my concerns, there seemed SO MANY things that were so very compatible, and I was in the midst of reclaiming my lesbian identity (which was immeasurably healing for me), and we had a lot of fun (even though Kerri’s outbursts of rage when things did not go her way were becoming more frequent and more disconcerting to me). In the 8th month of our relationship I wrote in my journal that there were too many incompatibilities and deeply troubling aspects to this person I loved - strange and seemingly off balance aspects of Kerri - for me to remain in relationship with her. Not the least of these was that I am a communicator, and she, it seemed, could only communicate if prompted, guided, and coddled while being assisted to find her words. I loved her, somehow, but the work of being in relationship with her was taking my energy from work, other friendships and even my family. In a conversation with her shortly after I realized and wrote the above mentioned journal entry, Kerri lashed out in her (by then familiar) disdain-filled rage, abruptly changing the topic and saying she was not ok with the fact that I often knew before she did what she was feeling. (Indeed, I did on several occasions ask if she was angry when I noticed her steaming about something – not to condemn her, but intending to open space for her to share - she would deny this, saying she was NOT angry. And then, later, in her discomfort with my sensing her anger[1], she would confess that she WAS angry, but did not know how to know this. She could not recognize her own feelings. And again she reiterated that it made her mad that I knew before she did. I (fool that I was) offered this: Fair enough, I said, you are younger, I have spent a lifetime doing deep personal work, intuitive work, it IS what I do for work, so I am sometimes good at knowing what is going on – I get that this could be frustrating or unnerving - how about I give you time to find your own way; I will simply TURN OFF MY INTUITION around you, and you can tell me what you feel, when you know and if you want to. This gave Kerri great relief. I felt it was a sane and decent thing to offer, for I was trusting that Kerri was a sane and decent human being, who simply needed some growing up time. (I am sure you recall there is a fair age gap between us.) And so I did what I said I would. This, it turns out, was the single most destructive decision (other than to date Kerri in the first place) I have ever, in my entire life, made (and I have made some doozies). I do not blame Kerri for this, I own that it was I who freely made that very wrong move. However, it IS Kerri who used and abused that wrong move (my willing state of obliviousness on that level) to do to me exactly what she did to her last two girlfriends – to initiate what in all three cases amounted to perpetration of a long, drawn out and horrifically destructive form of emotional abuse . . . and this is what I am uncertain as to your level of awareness around. If you are aware of who and what Kerri is, none of this will come as a surprise. If you have not been, then it is my hope that something of what I say might be of service in your seeking more learning on the topic – of the situation Kerri is struggling with, and, perhaps more importantly, the signs and symptoms presenting in victims of the type of abuse Kerri is inflicting. (Many, many therapists, it strangely enough turns out, have no training in this and thus end up participating in various forms – by accident and ignorance, not intentionally – in victim shaming, further confusion for victims and ultimately incorrect diagnosis of these victims’ illnesses.) Here is what I think some possibilities are:
Of course there are other potential scenarios, but these are the ones that stand out for me at this time. If I am correct and you do know what Kerri struggles with, then you know that in the vast majority of cases (maybe 100%), the nature of the beast is such that healing will not – cannot - take place. This means one thing: SHE MUST KEEP MOVING ON, KEEP CONSUMING SUPPLY, AND KEEP SHITTING US OUT THE BACK END AS SHE GOES. People with this issue will tell their story in such a way as to deny having anything to do with the havoc they wreak on other’s lives, and while Kerri may never act out physically her explosive temper, and she may not be physically raping bodies, she is most certainly SOUL-raping the women she uses to keep her hollow sense of self jacked up to the ideal of a person she creates of her self and that she wishes she were. While I do not, as mentioned above, think Kerri has been physically violent - she was not with me - I did have fear of her that I could not explain. I am now aware that this was because my “body-knowing” was intuitively on, even while I mentally denied my intuition “for her sake”. Crazy, I know, I can hardly get my brain around the fact that I was able to keep myself in the dark so long, now that I am on the other side of it; part of the reason it is so hard to accept is that the way she harms those she professes to love is, by any regular human terms, UTTERLY and UNFATHOMABLY horrific. But her issue is not, by any means, “regular”. There were several months of the deepest emotional horror I have ever known (and, having spent time in some ravaged areas of West and Southern Africa, having advocated for wrongly accused on death row, having supported many women through their healing child sexual abuse (including First Nations women who endured the horrors of the sexually, physically and culturally abusive Indian Boarding Schools), being a hospice chaplain to those facing death, being support for prisoners, as well as living through many of my own deep traumas, I have known a lot of types of human horror in my life) before I came, by chance, upon a trail that would lead me to the realization that I have been, for 7 years, the victim of this very particular and insidious type of abuse. I am not going to name it, for it is not my job to do so, but will assume that you know what I am talking about, and that if you do not, you will find your way to it when the time is right. There IS a name for what Kerri is, there IS a name for the type of abuse she inflicts, and there are names for the specific stages of this form of abuse. I was both shocked and healed to learn that Kerri, her words, behavior and unexpected disappearance from our relationship are so bizarrely and precisely TEXTBOOK for this type of issue and abuse; perpetrators of this form of abuse fit a mold, almost as if they learned their behavior and speech from the same book. The abuse they inflict is dramatic, traumatic, causes PTSD, C-PTSD, alteration of brain chemistry, and wreaks utter havoc upon the lives of victims. If you know of what I speak, then you are aware that many victims of this type of abuse do not ever fully recover (again, in part because so few therapists are trained to recognize the issue, and even fewer to recognize the signs and symptoms of victims of this type of abuse), others will recover but only after years, even decades, of incredibly difficult work. Talk therapy alone will not heal victims. I, myself, am extremely grateful that I have more tools than most, have managed to maintain excellent self-care and kept good people around me in the face of my own suicidal wishes as I uncover the layers of horror, the recognition of which are the only road to whatever healing is possible. The journey feels eternally long to me, though I know now from much work with others who help to heal this crap and also those who have been through it, that I am mending much quicker than expected. One of the difficult aspects of the healing process (and the rest of ones life afterwards) is that, the vast majority of people who have NOT been through this themselves will not understand the depth of the ruination of a soul caused by this type of abuser. To date, in fact, ALL the healing professionals I have interviewed, worked with or read the writings of, who work with this issue, have been victims of it; it seems one of the only ways to heal is to become something of an expert on this topic which so few people know about. Strangely, this subject is suddenly spreading as victims and helping professionals (and also some less-well-equipped and thus less dependable folks, which makes discernment a necessity when researching online) speak out, write about, and post online - - most posts and books of any use on the subject have come out only in the past year or two. (Perhaps the #MeToo movement has given us all license to speak up, or perhaps the current social climate of our world has just opened some kind of space and the need to speak about what seems currently to be a rampant disease...) Another terribly difficult aspect is that because of the nature of the issue that holds the abuser hostage, victims best plan of action, as noted previously in a footnote and that deserves reiteration here, is to offer abusers (and the people around them who are still under their spell) NOTHING. No sharing of the hurt they have caused, no sharing of any new joy in ones life, no confrontation, no kind forgiveness – NOTHING. For any energy whatsoever going toward the abuser only causes an inflation of their cause. For victims of any abuse, SPEAKING OUT is of utmost importance. But if speaking out feeds the abuser (as in the case of this particular sort of abuse), the victim sabotages their own purpose by speaking out. Any chance that the abuser might get wind of a poem, a book written, a speech given, a workshop etc. only “feeds” them. A victim naming the abuse, or abuser’s issue, also risks the abuser’s projection back onto them (victim) and/or bad mouthing by not only the abuser themselves but their “flying monkeys” (a lay term referring to those people around the abuser who have bought the abuser’s reversed/projected story about who is “the problem” in the relationship[3] - likening them to the Wicked Witch of the West’s team of monkeys who are enthralled with her power and will follow her lead). All in all, speaking up is more dangerous than remaining silent, though the silence is yet another slow soul-suck of the victim’s life force. And worst of all, in most cases, the ONLY people who will know that the abuser is abusing is the abused. People on the outside will simply see what the abuser wishes them to see, which is usually a charming, charismatic, good listener, who is compassionate, generous, self assured. It will be the abused who is seen as the problem… but if one knows what to look for, one will see. . .(more on this later.) And so victims are silenced, and our healing is immeasurably slowed by this. It is for this reason that I have, after months of keeping myself from doing so, decided to write to you. This is a way of speaking out, yet not making myself quite as vulnerable to backlash. Kerri could take this as “supply” (and no doubt will, if she gets wind of it), but at this point she no longer exists to me. At a point in my healing, I will be strong enough (or so it is my intention to be) to weather whatever backlash may come, and I will share what I need to share with whatever segment of this universe and in whatever manner I wish. But for now, you, Carla, are my gateway. Irrational as it may be logistically, there is emotional intelligence in my writing this. I began this letter when I realized that I feel furious and betrayed by you, as a fellow human being – from this perspective it is unconscionable that you would allow Kerri to rob me of so much, so many years of my life, not to mention lost work and time with family and lost friendships[4], sanity, and basic human trust. You may be the only person other than myself, Jessie and Andy who knows who/what Kerri really is. No offense to sharks - I studied them and love them dearly - but people with Kerri’s issue are truly the sharks of the human world – as I mentioned before – like sharks, they must keep moving, and like sharks, they must keep consuming “supply” (supply being the overly compassionate humans they need to feed off of in order to maintain their story of who they are, so as not to have to look deeply within[5]), and they must keep shitting those people out when they (the abuser) have fed long enough off of them and have left them (the victims) the useless dishrags they (the abuser) can feel righteous about dumping…because who wouldn’t leave that pile of mess? That diminished person, that insecure, confused, disheveled emotional heap of a human… “WTF happened to them? They weren’t that way when we got together. They are a mess. I “deserve” more than this… yeah, see? Even my friends can see it – I need someone new. . .” says the shark who bit the head off the beautiful fish and now asks why they are so ugly and headless and why there is blood in the water… I am frustrated that we have a system that does not allow you to take steps to warn the victims of clients you can clearly see are dangerous. I do not actually hold you responsible (in that I know you cannot actually do anything other than keep confidence), though my human heart holds you – from an emotional standpoint – responsible, because in terms of simply being a kind and generous segment of humanity how could you stand by and do nothing when you know harm is being done? (Again, unless you, too, are clueless and under Kerri’s spell… which, if true, I cannot fault you for, for no one is exempt when it comes to these particularly intelligent type of abusers[6].) I imagine Kerri has told you her version of the story very differently from the way I experience it. (This might be true for any couple breaking up, but the stories will have particularly disparate trajectories in cases of this kind.) Let me first state that I do understand how Kerri became what she is – I know an enormous amount about her childhood, and from every standpoint her parents and story fits the profile for being a petri dish for the formation of children who grow up to become the type of abuser that Kerri has become. So, from my “biggest” self I do not hold her responsible for that; her childhood was atrocious (perhaps some of her blaming the destruction of the souls of her ex girlfriends on their horrible childhood abuse was her way of forgiving herself for having become what she has become?), and it is also true that each of her siblings fits the profile as well, some manifesting with Kerri’s issues, some with the other of the two issues that usually evolve out of such a dangerous mix of warped parenting. So, again, in the biggest picture, Kerri was done to in the ways she was, and survived the way she could. Sadly, her survival tactics left her the dangerous person she is, and there is little likelihood of that ever changing. That said, for my healing, while I do not wish to hold on to blame of anyone in my life, and while I do take 100 % responsibility for my own life and healing, I must hold her accountable for her actions and inactions in our relationship. The very long letter I wrote (but did not, obviously, send) to you back in November, after I finally learned - through the most diabolical, Machiavellian, calculated cruelty I have ever experienced in/from any human being (and remember I have worked with prison inmates, murders, child molesters), what far to much of the world already knew – that Kerri was interested in an other woman, had long ago left me but neglected to tell me, that she had been lying to me basically the entirety of our 7 years together (some lying was consciously done, some unconsciously). but BEFORE I had learned what her illness was/is. That letter was over 17 pages long; it was a “short version” of what Kerri had been doing, my utter confusion and bewilderment, basically it contained all THE DETAILS. Lucky for both you and I, I wrote that one as a catharsis, and not one to be shared. I will not tell you the whole story (unless such time arises as you wish to hear it, or unless you one day read my book. . .) I must make a note here, that the trauma Kerri perpetrated on me was NOT her desire to move on to someone else - that was, as I will reiterate, painful, but expected. . . I will discuss this further as we go. Suffice it to say, that those who have heard the story can barely fathom that it is true, that any person could or would do the things that Kerri does (except those who have experienced this same type of abuse). What Kerri took from me cannot be measured in any form; over the years with her, I lost my love of life, my friends, my life trajectory, connection to my family, my friends, my career(s), my sense of hope, my sense of self, trust in other people, the universe, in reality, in ANYTHING, including myself, and ultimately my desire to live. I take full responsibility for healing all this, and am, bit by bit, doing so. AND I hold Kerri responsible for her behavior. Her lies. Her calculated cruelty. Her deliberate gas lighting of me and the other women she has called her partners. Her enlisting others in the lies and attempts to make her women feel and appear crazy. I actually now believe, based on a number of things she said and did – and did not say and do – over the years, that Kerri KNOWS her diagnosis. I believe she is aware at least on some level, of what she is, and what she is doing. Before I was enlightened as to her true nature, when I was unsure as to whether I could keep my commitment with myself to go on living (in spite of my reverent pact with myself and a few people close to me who were checking in on me, to SURVIVE, I found myself with utterly no will to go on in a world that made so little sense to me, and could see no reason for hope in a world in which there is the existence of people who do such things and live as Kerri does), I attempted to reach out to Kerri to get some closure (this was before I understood that it is common knowledge among those who work in this area that there will never be closure with a person living with Kerri’s issue), and to make a plan to return the remainder of her belongings. She, true to form, cut me off, saying “we should have no contact” (she could not, of course, face any mirror in which she might glimpse her real self, the actual effect she has on people. Her way of dealing with any expression – from me or the other women she has harmed – is to repeat like a mantra the phrase “we just see things differently” – never mind that what is at stake is not hers to “see” – such as how an other person feels…) I discussed this at length with those near me, and for several weeks thought about what do to with her things. They were literally making me sick. Two of my confidants said “after what she did, just throw her stuff in the street!” I could not bring myself to do it; it is not my nature to do such things. I remain friends with every person I ever dated – I know well how to grow through pain and come out on the other side in a civilized manner. People with no communication skills throw out their ex’s things, not me. I still believed that somehow I must be wrong about Kerri, and she would return to me and apologize and remember how she had cried and begged to remain friends with me no matter what happened in our break up. We would find closure together and go on our ways, as we had planned for so long. My maiden’s heart kept a watch from the tower. But the false prince never rode over the hill. Kerri had no home for me to drop her things at. I could not contact her. Nor did I want her anywhere near my home or our little dog whom she had abandoned and who had only just begun NOT watching at the door day in and day out for her. I tried to imagine driving her things to her sister, Rowen’s house, 12 hours away in New Mexico, but Rowen had been instrumental in the unfathomably horrible gas lighting of me at her home, and that was WAY too much energy to put towards the project. I thought about dumping the stuff on a street in San Diego and telling a friend of hers where it was. But her friends were not my friends anymore. I wanted to SCREAM. I wanted to die. I could not get out of bed, except to feed and let the dogs out. Finally, at the intense urging of those who love me, I just needed to be rid of Kerri’s things. I gathered my strength, took them to the goodwill, and away they went. I cried for three days, because WHO DOES THAT? No part of the me I had known all my life would give someone’s things away. But then no part of the old me, really, existed anymore. From a person who believed in healing and the innate goodness in humanity, and one who would argue well for the non-existence of “evil” (yes, there are bad deeds, but they are done by wounded people who, given enough time, space and compassion, can heal.. or so every part of me believed), I had become a person who understood hatred (and was horrified by this fact) and who now fully believes that evil exists… So it was me: I did that. I gave the remainder of her things away. And miracle of miracles, I then began, for the first time in months, to BREATHE. I focused with a fierceness on my healing. I had good people tag teaming a stay in the house with me for weeks while I felt at risk. I saw mental health professionals (still am), attended workshops, made myself eat meals and take vitamins, utilized the many good alternative and shamanic healing modalities I have access to, got my thesis changed to embrace and focus on what I am going through (no small task, but luckily I have a team of amazing professors who went to bat for me), and have, now, come some good way from where I was. But let's go back in time for a moment: It was the day before All Saints, Hallows Eve, Samhain, my Witches New Year, that I fell upon the floor gasping for breath in the realization that the Kerri I thought I knew was not who I thought she was. It was revealed to me then, after weeks of begging Kerri to tell me WHAT was going on, WHY she was stonewalling me, HOW could she look me in the eyes and say she loved me and then just NOT RESPOND when I spoke to her, and finally, begged her to tell me if there was someone she was interested in, (as she had promised multiple times she would do, so I would not have to wonder and be the “jealous wife” as we went through our “conscious uncoupling”, after she had sworn under oath of my sacred pipe – the smoking of which represents “NO UNTRUTH SHALL PASS BETWEEN US”, and which I had asked her repeatedly whether she felt she could uphold – MY SACRED PIPE – not only did she lie to me, on so many levels you cannot even imagine, but she lied in the presence of all that is Holy to me, and was, supposedly, to her as well. I found myself from the depth of my bone marrow asking WHO DOES SUCH A THING?? -- but I now know what I did not at that time: People with Kerri’s disorder do this. They all do it. ) After I spent a whole precious day, $60 in dog care, $50 in gas to drive the majority – a huge load - of her stuff to her storage locker and she never responded to my texts, never said thank you, ignored me altogether, actually… This was, again, before I knew anything was going on other than thinking I was going insane because for weeks and presently I could not stop crying for “no reason” – and finally, at my begging and begging her to speak, she had said out of the blue that she might be “ready to date” but would not say more than that, Kerri was still saying she “still loved me” and there was “no one she was interested in”… and so I was left to wonder WFT was wrong with me! But I did know things were messed up. I knew by then that we were sinking, though I did not understand why or how, and decided it was time to get her off of my phone account. We had both agreed that was for me to do, since it was my account. . . Something very odd had been happening; for weeks before all this, Kerri had been getting the most bizarre number of texts all day and all night. She had been keeping her phone on her body, rather than leaving it on the table like we always used to. She said it was work, that Winston, the Silverback gorilla (whom she knew I loved) was sick again. And again. Weekend after weekend. . . And this was why she was texting work so much… I expressed worry about Winston. I believed her. It was a LOT of texts, so many that a few times I lightheartedly asked if there was someone she was interested in. One time in Santa Fe after days of her being literally glued to her phone day and night (texting madly right next to me in bed, but covering her phone as she did so and all the while ignoring me when I spoke, literally as if I were not in the room, did not exist – I would become angry and say so, but no response. I then began crying and felt like a fool - - no response. Something was very, very wrong. At one point she said, “Ok, I wont withhold touch from you”…I asked “since when did you decide to “withhold touch” from me and what is that about? As far as I knew, I had done nothing to earn such behavior…she had no answer, simply became silent again. “WHAT is going on Kerri? Are you just done with me? If so, PLEASE JUST SAY SO.”. . . this was when she turned to me, hands on my shoulders, and said “Nothing is wrong, Maya, I still love you. There is no one else.” Ok, thought I, I am just going insane and being needy…), I asked her if we could talk. She said sure but would not look up from her phone as we walked. I asked her to put the phone down for ONE minute. She looked strangely at me for a moment in a pause, then blurted out “Its just BRIT.” And went back to texting with one eye on me, and one on the phone. I said, “oh, well say hi to Brit for me” (her old roommate, whom I know, is named Brit). She would not. Then she blurted again, but this time with the weirdest rage “I DON’T FEEL I SHOULD HAVE TO SHOW YOU MY TEXTS!!” I said “Whoa! Kerri! I wasn’t even THINKING of asking to see your texts, let alone did I actually ask! Why would I do such a thing? What is going on?” “NOTHING!” Said she. And on and on. I will not bore you with the lies upon lies that I, still foolishly giving her the benefit of the doubt because WHO on EARTH would do this, this calculated lying on and on for so long and in such a complex manner, and enlisting others in the lies? Certainly not my chivalrous, caring, kind, generous, honest beyond all others, “like a dude but better cuz I’m not”, butch love of the past 7 years…. (of course in looking back now with my intuition returned to me and in tact, I can see so clearly the many layered, many years of deceit, and not just around other women, but at the time, I was blind.) She actively wanted me to feel crazy – this is part of the pathology I now understand, but at the time I could not could not could not get my brain around this being the truth. Could not by any portion of my being believe that anyone, let alone she, could even conceive of such calculated cruelty. (Still, it wakes me in the night with sweating, beating heart and breathlessness - NOT from the loss of my partner, but from the shock that a person - a person I let so deeply into my life - could even DO such things.) …So, the reveal for me was that night of October 30th; when I opened that fateful phone bill. Bear in mind I had never opened it before, because there was no reason to - I am on “autopay”, a fixed monthly amount. But open it I did, and there it was. . . I have never seen anything like it; every text, every photo that went back and forth between she and one phone number. (She was sending the girl photos that I had taken of her over the past weeks…pictures on my phone that I had taken because I love her, which she asked me to send to her. . . “just so she could have them on her phone”. . . She even went through my pictures after our trip to the NM Balloon Festival, picking out those that “people at work” were “going to love”. She said the phrase so many times that at one point I asked her “WHO at work?” “Just PEOPLE, Maya. William. William loves Star Wars”. So I let it go, even though my bones knew something was not right.) Back to that phone bill…. Kerri had, over the month(s), been telling me repeatedly that she was NOT texting any more than usual. It was not the case, but again I dismissed her fibbing and went about my business. However, the depth of those particular lies, along with plenty of others, was displayed before me in bold face type upon the viewing of that phone bill: There were - in just one month – are you ready to join me in shock – OVER 6,000 TEXTS. This is an actual number, not an exaggeration. Let me put this in perspective – printed out, single spaced, that comes out as 247 PAGES of phone bill for ONE MONTH. ALL OF THESE TEXTS, with the exception of a very few texts to me and her sister and some work people, WERE TO THE SAME PHONE NUMBER. Briefly, I share the story of my intuition when I was at the storage delivering Kerri’s stuff, earlier that same day: When I opened Kerri’s storage unit (I had been listed by her at the front desk as “her cousin”, a bit of a shock in and of itself), I was intuitively hit by a name. I had heard, over and over, for no reason I could register, the name “Brit” in my ear. I could not understand why. Sitting in my car, afterward, I felt so weak I could not drive. I said out loud “No, Kerri cant be interested in our friend Brit, can she?!” and in that moment, I saw an image in front of me of really matted, frizzy, unhealthily bleached blond hair. (At the time, still under the belief that Kerri was a regular human being, it would never have occurred to me that the three things in a person she had spent years telling me she would NEVER date, and which she found utterly disgusting, ridiculous and unprofessional - blonds, Millennials, and co-workers - were actually EXACTLY what she was courting. So bizarre I still shake my head to type it. She had mentioned these – literally venomously spoken - views so many times I actually stopped her several times to say "but Kerri, what if you fell in love with someone at work, or with blond hair? Would you shun that person just because of your weird prejudice?" She shook it off and changed the subject. If only I had had my intuition turned on back then. If only.) Even with my somewhat intensely accurate intuition in the rest of my life, I was still in so much denial – would not could not entertain the idea that my lover of all these years who had begged me to trust her, reiterated over and over that she was the most chivalrous and honest person I would ever meet, could be anything other than this (I had asked so many times, and so many times Kerri replied with outrage and disdain that I would ever consider her less than honest – how could I? Had she “ever lied to me!?” she would ask… No. Or so I thought. I mean I could not prove any lie – so I just thought I was going mad. A crazy drippy confused old lady – as I now know she worked hard to set me up to believe I was…) so, at the time, the name and image coming to me made utterly NO sense. I gathered my self and drove home, but could not get the name or the image out of my head. But some part of me was beginning to open up - - and the phone bill blasted the lid off. Once I was able to catch a bit of my lost breath, I Goolged that phone number (a number now drilled into my head, it appeared so many times on my screen - and saw a girl – yes, a girl the listing showed as about my daughter’s age – with the exact, dead-looking, hyper-bleached hair I had seen in the image my intuition sent me, and, of course, the name Brit. So – I shall share what the cliff I dropped off of was: yes, I was sad to be loosing the love of my life (or so I thought and experienced her to be at that time), and there was the inevitable humiliation of the new one being a child and my having to feel like the old granny, but honestly Carla, these things (that might otherwise have been terrible) were like cupcakes compared to the revelation that the person I had come to trust most in the world could not only lie but had been plotting my demise for months, perhaps years. (I do not imagine you have been privy to all of what Kerri has plotted and planned, for she would be mortified and terrified of being abandoned by you if you knew - - but perhaps you were privy to some of it?? And yes, again, from the perspective of human to human I feel anger towards you.) And not only for myself, but on behalf of each of her other girlfriends, to whom she did the exact same thing. Kerri knew, has always known about me, that HONESTY and INTEGRITY are the things I hold highest in my heart. That lying, for me, for so many reasons in my past, is the single most painful, most damaging thing a person can do to another. She knew this and yet she actively chose not only to SWEAR beyond swearing, in sacred ceremony, even when I asked her several times if she could and would really be able to uphold truth - and offered no judgment if she felt she could not and would prefer to just break up cold like some people do - (again, some part of my denied intuition must have known she could not – why else would I have asked so many times and offered her so many escapes from such integrity?) So many times I asked if she really felt it were true that she would and could tell the truth. She swore before the Great Spirit, before the Angels, Ancestors and the sacred home I had (I now see WAY too generously) offered her a place in any time for the rest of our lives, even if we ended up with other people – which, by the way, she assured me over and over again we would not; I had “ruined her for other women” she would not be ready to date by our meetup in a year from the ceremony, she loved me…. but KERRI ABSOLUTELY 110% KNEW WHAT SHE WAS DOING. She CHOSE to do me harm in a deliberate and Machiavellian manner. If she has convinced you otherwise, then you, too, have been duped, and I can back myself up, if you do not yet realize the truth. It was that day that before Hallows I discovered the truth. Here it is, now, the night before Spring Equinox that I write this letter to you (Happy Birth Day, Kerri). I am at another gateway, an other shift, another layer of change within myself. My now beloved saying (Face Everything, Burn and Rise Up) carries me; I have FACED EVERYTHING, have BURNED, and now begin the part of the journey that is RISING UP. Phoenix is my conductor, my co-pilot, my new co-pirate. My pirating ancestors want me to pirate back from her all she has taken. But from my new vantage point, I see clearly that there is nothing to want nor any thing of value to be taken from her hollow form. Nor will there be any amends made by her to me – her kind is not able. Best-case scenario is that I proceed with eliminating every particle of evidence of her existence from my life, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I am well on my way. I have had a funeral for the lover I thought I once had, for the person for whom I had changed my career, for whom I had planned a birthday ticket to Baja and for whom I had been stalking an engagement ring; that person, it turns out, died. She died traumatically and tragically in a house fire – the fire of her lies, the fire of my body’s burning, the fire of the burning of the façade she created, imposed upon me and which I fell in love with because I was not properly shielded. The house of The Holy Phoenix took my love, and I, with my many good friends and family members returned to and supporting me (all of whom felt the horror of Kerri taking over my life but who had no words to describe this as she presented so well her false face), held a funeral for my burned, fairy-tale lover. I have mourned the loss of that falsity, and of my maidenhood, finally given to her prince. Alas, the fairy tales of ages do no service to empathic princesses nor damsels in distress the world over; the stories serve naught but to prime us for those who need unchecked adoration to survive, diabolically selfish princes, princes who, ultimately, must, like the Evil Bluebeard, take off our heads, turn us upside down, and tell the next one laying in the bridal bed below that that dripping sound overhead is a figment of their imagination. WHAT TO DO WHEN THE PRINCE TURNS OUT TO BE BLUEBEARD?? Damsels, trust ye NOT any knave professing to be your "rescuer", for a real prince has no need of such ruinous behaviors; he will, instead, bow in honor of your own strength to lift yourself. And so, Caela, while there is no rational or legally justifiable reason for my anger at you, there is a heart space from which it is worthy of expression. Do I wish beyond wishing that you had, somehow, alerted me years ago? Yes. But that is not what took place (for reasons I cannot dispute). It is, finally, enough for me to get to share these words after the fact, whether you ever see them or not. As a fellow human on planet Earth, I wish you well. As a fellow helping professional, I honor your work. As a fellow woman, I pray that you find a way to assist your client - for the sake of the souls of the women she will otherwise take down throughout her life. Warmly as Always, Maya (More, following the footnotes below...) FOOTNOTES: [1] Kerri equated anger with “bad” and with potential abandonment – one of her first responses when there was something amiss between us and I would ask her about it – only seeking to share and thus mend whatever it might be – was “I'M NOT MAD AT YOU, MAYA!!!”, as if being angry was somehow a death sentence for a relationship. I engaged her in many conversations in which I reassured her that whatever the truth may have been in other parts of her life, for me, expressing anger in a relationship was a path to HEALING. She never really seemed to understand this concept, though she learned to give it lip service. [2] As I am fairly certain you are aware, one of the most pivotal aspects of any abuse victim’s healing, is speaking out, reclaiming one’s voice, re-inhabiting one’s truth and sharing that out loud, especially when deliberate silencing or isolation was a part of the abuse itself. The problem, in the case of victims of the type of abuse Kerri is perpetrating, is that all wisdom around this says that for victims to share any part of their experience – a vulnerability in the sharing of the deepest and most wretched pain; an empowerment in sharing the volcanic rage, a delight in sharing steps of healing. . . ANY of this actually does the victim harm, for it FEEDS the perpetrator, due to the way this type of perpetrator perceives and takes in energy – ANY energy – from the victim; these perpetrators take any energy from the victim as affirmation of their power. Victims may also find their words projected back onto them or used as ammunition by the perpetrators to turn others against their victims and garner a more secure position for themselves as the poor victim of all these many people who keep harming them (their past lovers, etc.) Thus, victims of this type of abuse find themselves trapped in an ever-inward spiral of isolation and hopelessness. I post this letter as a fight-back for myself and my healing. [3] In Kerri’s case, she told me that her first girlfriend, Jessie, was “crazy”. She just “went crazy” she “went catatonic” and was “insanely jealous for no reason”. It was “because of her childhood abuse – she had a horrible family, and sexual abuse”. Kerri also told me that her second girlfriend, Andy, was totally normal when they met, but then “for no reason, she became a pot head”. And Andy was “an insanely jealous person, for no reason. She thought I was flirting with my friend Coby, isn’t that insane!?” And this, too, in Kerri’s story, was because of the horrible childhood sexual abuse in Andy’s past. And I? I bought the whole thing. I saw what Kerri wanted me to see – her story of who she wanted to be (and who, obviously, I wanted her to be)… but this story was not who she really was. And neither were those women who she said they were. I realized this like a burst of powerful confirmation one night in the early stages of learning what actually took place between Kerri and I. I realized it when I remembered her telling me these things – in each case, I had briefly mentioned to her this fact (that I am about to reveal to you), and each time, she brushed it off and changed the subject or made me laugh about something and we moved on. She worked very hard in our relationship never to talk about her ex girlfriends unless it was to say something derogatory about them. What I realized, was that Jessie was not insanely jealous “for no reason”. Nor was Andy. The reason I know this is that it was me, ME who was the person Kerri was flirting up a storm with WHILE STILL INVOLVED WITH EACH OF THEM. She may have begun discussing breaking up with each, but she remained with them (living in their shared home for sure, most likely continuing discussions about their relationships…) she had not left them yet because she was not yet sure enough that she had her new “supply” anchored in; me. In the case of Jessie, Kerri realized that I was not going to leave my marriage for her. But Kerri wanted Jessie to know, so she left a trail and Jessie read an email between Kerri and I. This gave Kerri fuel for her story about how crazy Jessie was. She told me horrible things about J, but I was not interested back then, I was busy raising my kids and felt a bit like K was stalking me so I asked her to stop emailing, which she did. And here is the crazy thing: Jessie, whom I knew, blurted out to me “Kerri is a (Kerri’s disorder), and she will do the exact same thing to you that she did to me!!” I did not really listen to what Jessie said, I simply responded with “no, she won’t, because I am not having a relationship with her.” I then conveniently forgot what Jessie had said, and would not have believed it even if I had remembered it once I WAS in a relationship with Kerri this decade+ later – because I was in stage 1 of the abuse, and in that stage, nothing could have seemed more perfect and wonderful and right and good than Kerri (which is, of course, exactly what she, as all of this type of abuser does, needed me to believe.) Andy was wrong – Kerri was NOT flirting with Cody. But Andy was 110% correct, intuitively – Kerri was flirting - - with ME. …And on her way to cruising in to make me her next girlfriend. In looking back, I feel like such an idiot, such a target. Kerri’s wooing of me was as calculated as her decimation and discarding of me. (And I can hardly believe such words would ever come out of my mouth, yet I have learned the truth in them, and so I must own them if I am to heal.) Ultimately, the fact that Kerri did this to two other women before me, and that it was I who was her new “supply” in both cases, was an eye opening gift on my path of healing. It has been incredibly difficult to accept that Kerri is what she is, and did what she did - - still to this day I go into periods of denial, for I so wish it were not true. But having seen the others stories played out in real time makes it impossible to stay in denial for long. This has speeded my recovery. [4] I don’t suppose you were aware that Kerri enlisted her sister, Rowen (and perhaps – likely - others in her family) in her gas lighting of me – Rowen, whom I had thought was my good friend and confidant – was in on the horrific lies and intent to make me feel crazy for god knows how long. And Kerri’s were not just lies by omission – there were little white lies – then black lies, then big bold black ones, and finally lies not only to my face but into my heart…with her hands on my shoulders, staring deeply into my eyes (with what I now recognize as that vacant and terrifying empty stare, which I used to deny, just making myself refocus on her beautiful words and beautiful eyes…what was that scary void in there? Now I know, it all easily makes sense now that I understand who/what she really is. But sooo confusing in earlier stages of the abuse when I could not comprehend that she was what she is ). Horrific. Fascinating. Such a mystery I had to unravel. Am still unraveling. I actually changed my thesis project for my MDiv. to the subject of Kerri’s illness and victim’s recovery from it. This is part of my survival. [5] And did you know – do you - how Kerri uses therapy? She uses it – you – for more “supply” for her story of herself as “good”. It was baffling to see this when she would come home from therapy and say things like “Carla thinks I am amazing because I did (x, y, or z)” or “Carla is so proud of me because (fill in the blank)” or, if she was feeling I was not giving her enough “ooey gooey love” – her words for a kind of adoration she needed regularly – she might say “Carla is really in awe of us, Maya, for doing so well at (“conscious uncoupling” was one she liked to talk about – though in real time, she was utterly clueless about what conscious uncoupling really is.) At one point I tried to gently say “you know, the point of counseling is not to get your therapist to tell you that you are a “good girl” – though I did not say it quite that crassly. And did you know how much she did NOT tell you? Whenever a real issue came up, one that touched some alien and deep part of her, I would gently and kindly suggest that perhaps that was something to take to Carla … and what would Kerri’s response be? She would completely explode! “THAT IS NONE OF CARLA’S BUSINESS! I DON’T HAVE TO TELL HER ANYTHING I DON’T WANT TO!” Of course you don’t, beloved. But if you DO want to heal this (x, y or z issue), bringing it to Carla is one way you can get the support that could help you look at this stuff. She would then break down further, crying things like “I am so broken. I know you are going to want to leave me…” looking at me like a puppy pleading for reassurance that she was “good”. . . [6] I had been beating myself up with feeling so stupid for letting this happen to me. It was so difficult to understand how I, with all of my extensive and wide ranging training in the human psyche, could have been so duped… yet this past month I was graced with attendance at a workshop for mental health professionals around dealing with clients/patients who have faced life-breaking abandonment. At this workshop I encountered others who are victims of this exact same type of abuse (it is actually quite extraordinary how similar the words and behaviors of these abusers are!); victims of this kind of abuse are psychologists, a medical doctors, clergy – all intelligent, articulate, self observant, deeply and widely awake human beings. This fact, in and of itself, was immeasurably healing for me, for I got to see that anyone can end up a target. (I do, in case you wonder, understand that these abusers do not abuse in a vacuum – they must have an extremely empathic or HSP/highly sensitive person who either has early childhood wounds that have lead to issues of very low self esteem, extreme codependency, or even a mild codependency which, in my case, lead to a willingness to forgo one’s intuition for the supposed good of ones partner’s growing sense of self…) What to do When the Prince turns out to be Bluebeard?? Ahhh. For the answer to this, you will have to read my soon to be finished thesis, my upcoming book and attend my art/poetry exhibition and workshops for survivors of this very specific type of abuse. (Anyone reading this who is interested, please feel welcome to use our contact page to get in touch.) And now, I open a door; I speak out to the beautiful, powerful Other Women who survived – or will survive – the nightmare of abuse by Kerri; |
AuthorI SURVIVED A SERIAL BAMBOOZLER Archives
July 2020
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