Closure

Closure.

    So l had a stalker. Apparently for six months before he staged his big moment. The stalker was someone I had known as a child. We played in the same neighborhood in similar circles of friends. An odd series of events brought us back together and we started dating casually. We dated for eight months casually and broke up. The break up was not huge and dramatic it was mostly your standard fare. Six months later and a few what the hell was that moments and I was pulling up at my house in a panic at night watching police swarm my house and the debris that was my garage and car. 

And here is where all momentum to write this blog post ceases. 

     My stalker had planned his grand moment during a time when he thought I was home with my son. Last minute changes of plans and both my son and I were out of the house. He drove through my closed garage door with his vehicle. Shoving my car out the back wall of the house and across the yard. His plan was when I approached the car he would cut his own throat and make me choose to use my medical training and save him putting myself at risk of being stabbed or watch him die. All while potentially my son watched. Prior to making his run at my home and implementing his plan he taped a note to my door blaming me for whatever was going to happen next. Thankfully no one but my dogs were home and his plan was not a complete success. The police approached his car and he began stabbing himself in the chest and legs over and over before cutting his own throat multiple times. He fought the police. Tried to drive around for another run. Was tazed and dragged out by his hair. By the time I returned home he was already at the local hospital. My house and yard looked like a tornado had hit it. Blood was spattered all over his car in my back yard. Huge divots and tires tracks crisscrossed crazily through the yard. My house door was ripped off the frame and shattered glass littered my home. Police seeking to protect had breached my door and searched the house tracking shattered glass and twisted metal through the house. 

      This was the closest in my life I have some to snapping. I mean literally losing my shit, starting to scream and not stop until the tranquilizers took effect. I remember after the initial reaction seeing every moment as if I was watching it through a one way mirror in my head. Tucked away in a safe place.. Removed and cold. It’s funny, even writing this now I am getting shocky. I am suddenly cold and shaky. I have no attention span and the urge to walk away. The urge is to stop and back off but now is the time to finish this.

      Slowly the police finished their investigation. The totaled cars were towed off. One by one the crowd drifted away. I sat alone on my couch in the dark staring at nothing for hours. I had a concept of time passing but no motivation or will to move. Time dripped slowly and the sun started to rise. I had a small panic attack about what I was going to tell my son when I picked him up from my parents. He had seen enough monsters in his short 6 years. I have no desire to add to it. Once I calmed down again I dragged out the vacuum and started vacuuming up the glass. Again I lost it when I got to my sons room. The mental image of heavy black boots rushing into his room guns drawn expecting the worst terrorized me anew. My dogs still traumatized and never more than six inches from me after all of this provided some support as I sat down on the floor of his room and wept. 

       Slowly day by day things started to become clearer. The job of putting things back to rights again became a full time job. I stayed indoors to avoid people and watched the steady passage of gawkers drive by as a local radio station had aired the story. I took brief trips to the yard to start trying to gather my things that had been blasted out of the house. Kind hearted neighbors walked slowly across my destroyed lawn trying to offer support and usually leaving me in tears and feeling ashamed. My stalker was released from the hospital and the mental health ward and bailed out. A thin stapled packet of paper the only things keeping him from coming back. For a long time afterward I slept armed. I had multiple night terrors a night. When I wasn’t waking up coming to full fighting mode I woke up and stood at the windows at night watching the street. I added locks. Added Alarms. Devised simple systems to make me feel somewhat safer. I gathered my son and all of our pets into my room at night and locked the bedroom door. I planned escape routes.  I tried to make sense of it all. I survived an abusive marriage got out and this was my first relationship after. He was supposed to be safe. He was someone I knew from childhood and polar opposite to my ex-husband. Many of the people I spoke to about what had happened made jokes that I just need to avoid dating, I obviously can’t pick a good one, and there MUST be something wrong with me. All of the under lying messages said My fault. My bad. I am the damaged one. Something is wrong with me. It took a long time to turn that around. And I did. I no longer see it that way. 

     Over time the night terrors decreased. The hyper vigilance eased back. I began to thaw out and become more present in my world. I won’t lie and say I was completely recovered. I still have things that retrigger me. I have accepted that I will probably always have that to a degree. Slowly with time my house became Home again. It took nine months to get back to solid ground. But none of that is really the point of this. It’s the back story. 

The point of this is Closure.

       Brad. My stalkers name is Brad. He was a grade behind me in school. Whip smart, sarcastic, artistic and introspective. He is the youngest of three children in a blended home. He is an amazing musician.  We grew up playing king of the hill and flashlight tag. He worked for a restaurant down the way from my work in high school. When I was younger I had insomnia and would occasionally take walks during the full moon. Brad would watch for me and walk with me to make sure I was safe. He was a good man. Which is why I started dating him. Things didn’t work out and it ended. And something in him broke. Something in him became very twisted and dark. I can’t imagine a scenario where doing what he did..cutting yourself that much, is a positive alternative to what he was feeling. I can only define that as a version of hell I would never want to visit. That this was what he viewed as his only recourse is chilling. I am chilled by the hatred and destruction that he brought to my doorstep. With a single text sent as he started his attack that read “This is all your fault, My Love.” It turns my stomach to hear love twisted and warped so far to become such hatred. For that I pity him. 

     Brad is human. Something in him was so broken this seemed like a rational path for him. Something in him decided that crashing through a house, stabbing himself over and over was preferable to living another day. That is hell. That is pain. And horror. And terror turned inward.  I pity him and I forgive him. No we will never hang out and talk it out over a beer. No we are not cool. No I don't want anything to do with him in my life. Which is why I am writing all of this here. Time has made me able to see the man behind the monster. To make sense of the little boy I knew and what he changed into. I am closing the book on the man I knew as a child. I am saying good bye to the childhood memories, and the modern ones both good and bad and wishing him love and light in his life.

It’s time for closure.