March 10, 2009 – Tuesday
TALKING OF STALKING…Fear, Fans & Folly
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
I’m not a celebrity and I’ve never been seriously stalked. I have compassion on those who have, it must be really creepy, and a violation to one’s sanctity and personal space. To say nothing of the truly demented stalkers who actually assassinate celebrities such as John Lennon, Kennedy etc.
Stalking has gone to a whole new level since the advent of the internet. There is a facility that lets you know who viewed your page/website/photos etc and it was head wrecking to the point that the social network creators removed the application. Ignorance in some cases is bliss.
I just watched a movie made in 1990 featuring James Caan as a famous writer and Kathy Bates as a demented fan, written by the brilliant Stephen King. MISERY it was called.
As a ‘lay-person’ I could tell that it was written by a celebrity and the perspective leaned in that direction, epitomising man’s fear of being trapped and chained down and disabled by the female species. Ironically the very woman who did this to the writer in the movie also inspired him to his greatest work and his first real shot at the dreamed of Pulitzer Prize. Except she HURT him and wanted to KILL him too! And he was so sobered by his hostage experience that literary prizes seemed irrelevant by the time he arrived at their threshold. Bravo!
Another clue to the perspective of the movie is that the celebrity never put a foot wrong (haha), his only apparent shortcoming throughout the movie being that he allowed one of his heroines to be killed off in his books. He was the consummate gentleman throughout, although the penultimate scenes were pretty grim. Kathy Bates character on the other hand…..
I cannot give insight into the celebrity’s stalking experiences, perceived or real, but can perhaps shed some light on the other side, being female (!), having had mental health issues and having dabbled around the fringes of that sad pastime in days gone by….
Why would I do such a thing?
Why would I ‘expose’ even minuscule traits and behaviours in my life which are taboo and unsavoury?
It is well documented that people who have suffered trauma, particularly in childhood, lose a sense of appropriate boundaries and sometimes over-expose their own life experiences in an exaggerated need and desire to be heard. My life’s mantra however could be FREEDOM’S JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE….
My life ran its chaotic and glorious cycle for half a century and finally parked itself unceremoniously a year or two ago in poverty, loneliness and the opposite of everything I dreamed of…fame fortune recognition love etc. I met a man who loved me unconditionally in full knowledge of all my insanity and addictions and His name is Jesus.
I won’t wax religious in this article, but suffice it to say there is something stunningly powerful about that EXPERIENCE of total divine unconditional love that is life affirming and life changing. Nothing matters any more. Nothing is important in any kind of devastating way and the masks fall off one by one.
It’s from that place of divine security and confidence that I write and speak in hopes of shedding light both on the phenomena common to me and other unfortunates, and the solution, the healing, the path to freedom.
If along the way the more fortunate gain insight, great. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God, just some more overtly, obviously and publicly than others.
Stalking is actually not an exclusively female domain at all. The climax no pun intended of male stalking is often rape and or assault or murder…a female stalker is usually more pathetic and statistically less dangerous.
Briefly, I fit a profile in terms of being a survivor of childhood abuse and neglect. My personality split from repeated unresolved trauma, violence, fear and violation. I used to recurrantly fantasise about silence and invisibility…one of my favourites was to imagine myself buried to the neck where I could observe but not be seen or noticed. Similarly imagining myself watching life as observing goldfish in a bowl yet always myself absent in the body. I had near death experiences twice when my spirit actually left my body and I observed myself from a distance, a few feet above my body. This is common in near death and on one occasion I was medically documented as having ‘died’ from pneumonia and fever.
Just as blind people develop an over-heightened sense of hearing, taste, smell etc. as compensation, I read a huge amount of fiction and feasted on fantasy and romance emanating from early Hollywood glory and my mind and imagination developed phenomenally to the point of being considered gifted brilliant and an enigma…because I could not speak my truth. Or felt I was not heard. In fact I was taken to speech therapists at the age of almost 3 because of delayed speech so maybe this ‘lost in space’ experience preceded trauma I don’t know.
Let me gallop on to my most ‘out-there’ stalking offence and tone back from there…let me not manipulate myself or the reader into minimising my delusion, rather expose then explain…
Well, perhaps a humourous one first. I had a boyfriend on and off for 25 years from the age of 19. Although I worked in a high-powered job at the time in a merchent bank in Knightsbridge, I felt as always unworthy of him, and somehow a fraud in all the circles we moved in. He was a diplomat with the German Embassy. We dated seriously for about a year or so, but try as he might, he could not convince me of my place beside him. With hindsight and the larger picture I’m glad we didn’t marry for I am more of an artist than ambassador’s wife but that was by the by…
I could not accept his love much as I craved it, and was always playing cat and mouse, trying to induce more proof, or find fault to reinforce and validate my life experience of pain. He finally gave up on me as a potential life partner. I had left London to go to University in Warwickshire…I had gotten myself jobs in Argentina and Venezuela, I had dated a wealthy Lebanese playboy…all vain attempts to get him to propose to me and declare undying love.
Years later he told me the love had always been there… I just could not receive it or act on it or reciprocate it in any deep meaningful way… because of my relationship insanity and insistence on doing dramatic geographicals rather than BEING STILL!
On one of my periodic attempts to resuscitate what we had I travelled to Bonn in Germany to surprise him at work, their equivalent of the Foreign Office. We had been talking lovingly on the phone for a few months and expressing how much we longed to see each other, so I took matters into my own hands. Wish I hadn’t with hindsight, because he had forgotten to mention he had a lady shacked up with him! But I digress…
I turned up at the Foreign Office, suitcase on wheels, dressed bizarrely almost identically to my erstwhile lover, tartan slacks, burberry raincoats, very Sloane and reminiscent of our London days. When H got over his shock at seeing me, we had a hurried lunch together, washed down with WAY too much alcohol by me, and then I innocently said give me your apartment keys darling and I’ll wait for you at home. I hadn’t eaten for two days with nerves and excitement, and the travel weariness and wine indulgence were telling on me. For the reason explained above but unknown to me at the time, H could not possibly agree to the keys thing until he could remove his live in lady and all trace of her….or ME! My subsequent farcical charade together with my unannounced arrival made the decision for him.
He suggested I sight-see for the afternoon and meet him back at the Foreign Office at 5, he had important meetings he could not miss. Sight-seeing bored me and a couple more glasses of wine on my still nervous empty stomach saw me craving sleep in a definitely supine position.
I headed back to H’s office building where my suitcase was. I asked for him but he was in meetings of a do not disturb except-for-fire calibre, so I then asked for the rest room. I went down to the basement, lined with offices, and after ‘powdering my nose’ I decided I just HAD to find somewhere to lie down until five, regardless of the consequences! I poked my head in several empty but unlocked, private offices, finally lighting on one that looked friendly…it had a lovely old Guinness picture on the wall and I thought Oh good, an Irish German I can surely rest here! I was like bloody Goldilocks trying out the beds of the 3 bears only this caused an international incident!
I had not thought of the level of security in such an institution of a building, my every movement was showing up on security cameras, and to even the bravehearts my wandering was suspicious. As I finally lay my head down on the plushly-carpeted floor of the Irish friendly office ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE! Security rushed in, screaming at me in German and barking orders along the lines of stand up hands up whatever, my fluent German was being sorely tested and my tired brain was alcohol fuddled…
I started laughing which I often do in the most inappropriate situations, and finally convinced them to check with reception, that my suitcase really was there, and that I really was a DEAR friend of H.F. and could he please be extricated from his meeting to verify my identity.
He duly arrived with his boss, and the head of security…news of the strange intruder was flying around the building. He did indeed identify and extricate me but as I sobered up I was haunted by the look of horror on his face, and farce aside, I realised I had really compromised his professional standing at work. One of those ‘moments of shame’ usually the morning after the night before, but in this case after a long journey, a boozy lunch, and a crazy impulse to turn up unannounced. I went off and stayed with relations instead, and the promised phone call from H, on that occasion, never came. Devastation. ONLY hilarious with hindsight.
Werner Erhard, human development and psychology guru, coined a phrase something along the lines of UPSET IS A FUNCTION OF THWARTED EXPECTATIONS….I had a picture in my mind of how I would be received, what would happen and so on, and most of my preconceived notions in the area of romance involved some version of walking hand in hand into the sunset. I was emotionally stunted and immature because of sexual abuse in my early teenage years. I was actually a virgin until the age of 19, and known as a ‘prick-tease’ all through High School because I wanted to ‘engage’ yet was terrified to….
My lack of self-confidence and self-worth…my fear that ran most of my life…excluded me from normal things like PLANNING TOGETHER a reunion, even if it were me flying to him…I always wanted the element of surprise on my side as an advantage, not thinking highly enough of myself in the event of possible rejection, or lowly enough of him, whoever the him might be, in terms of undisclosed live-in lovers! Often , supposed female stalkers, are in fact spurned or badly treated ex’s and we all know HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED!
I watched and enjoyed Fatal Attraction too, the bunny boiler…must watch it again, can’t remember all the details, but pretty sure it had male ‘victim’ writers too! Musn’t fall over into feminist victim mode though, this is HONESTY talking here! And Single White Female…that was another good movie, and I HAVE had experience of women friends emulating my life to the point of trying to steal it…my life in the good times anyway! Little did they knew the suffered anguish under the surface, the battle scars inflicted and earned before the glory days.
On a more serious note though, I ‘wasted’ 7 years of my life living in a fantasy world about a man, and culminating in moving across the Atlantic to set up home minutes from him on a houseboat in Sausalito California just like him. Now even to me THAT WAS CREEPY AND INSANE.
It probably didn’t bother W.E. nearly as much as it did me. He was a relationships guru, a brilliant student of many paths to enlightenment including scientology, zen buddhism, trancendental meditation and all that other good stuff of the 70’s and 80’s. He was probably alienated himself as a child to have such brilliant insight into the workings of the human psyche.
He fell spectacularly, shortly after my conversion to christianity of a daily supernatural kind, and my abandonment of my fruitless quest to ‘marry him’. He was indicted on some scandalous charge of sleeping with his daughter or some such, although this charge was later disproved.
He apparently during his glory years had at least a half dozen a year sad cases like me declaring undying love for him in absentia and pursueing him as a mate, often prompted by ‘the voice of God’. Par for the course in his line of business, which attracted vulnerable damaged people as well as ambitious high-flyers who recognised a communications technology that produced spectacular results. I still admire and incorporate his work.
I met him maybe three times. I received generic letters of acknowledgement from him after doing impressive work in his company. I displayed myself as dynamic, brave and accomplished in all areas of my life with the exception of love relationships. Having failed again at an attempted reconciliation with my German diplomat back in 1985, I decided in my pain that W.E. really was THE ONE and set about working 3 or 4 jobs for an intense 3 months in London to earn enough to emigrate to California.
I arrived on my 28th birthday, stayed the first night in a motel in Marin County, with nothing but a couple thousand bucks and the address of an acquaintance of a friend…
Stalkers are often resourceful, intelligent and determined above and beyond…and even catch a lucky break here and there…within 3 weeks I had found a houseboat to rent just around the corner from the luxurious million dollar one owned and occupied by my prey. I had a job in an Irish-American restaurant, and within no time at all, was volunteering in the San Francisco head office of W’s international corporation. I drove his mother home from seminars in my little Fiat Spider convertible. I even started a weekend business on the bay of selling flowers coffee and Sunday papers to the wealthy, eccentric houseboat community, in the hopes of ‘bumping into’ my would-be lover. Great fun along the way, BUT INSANE.
On two occasions the corporation tried to get me to recant my devotion to W.E…..in threat of suspending me from active duty. I was very successful at inter acting with the public, and made a difference in a lot of lives during my years of service. I spent 20,000 dollars along the way too, but I don’t believe I was taken advantage of in that respect, every penny was worth spending on the human development technology and I would have spent it without the monumental crush and transference. I was so fluent and accomplished in some ways that even peers of the C.E.O. thought I might just succeed in my quest, whacky though I was.
Finally I was put out of a 5 day residential course with ROBOCOP actor leading, in Los Angeles, on Day 4, because I would not back down on my STAND of what was gonna happen between W and me. That was a good move on their part, and should have been done years before. Shocking as it is to be cut off from the object of one’s supposed desire, it is the necessary thing to starve the craving, a bit like an alcoholic needing total abstention at least for the period of recovery. I had written letters to W. weekly since my arrival in California with my protestations of love and visions of OUR future…they were always generically answered impersonally…W thanks you for your letter and wishes you well in your life or some such. In the insanity of love addiction I could make a period or a comma full of delicious import and meaning. Like women swooning to girlfriends HE SAID HELLO! But did you see the look in his eyes??
God this IS embarassing as I go over details. And perhaps ALL celebrities or pseudo-celebrities will give me a very wide berth from now on!! But you know what….that’s ok! Well, not really…of course I want to be loved like all human beings…but ultimately those worth having in my life will be there. AND I AM STILL LOVED!
I got ‘born again’ shortly after that tragic debacle above. I slowly realised the insanity of what I had been doing. Having an absent ‘lover’ had given me the excuse not to inter act with the many suitors knocking on my door during my beautiful 20’s. I always told them I was ‘committed’…the only committed in reality should have been into an institution..or at the very least, therapy and medication…
I had also dabbled a lot in the occult in my search for the meaning of life…I read the rune stones and tarot cards with apparent great accuracy for others, and I regularly consulted psychics and fortune tellers of all disciplines throughout Europe and North America.
Stupidly over almost 7 years they had apparently egged me on into this insane pursuit of a man I neither knew nor ultimately wanted…they gave me his star sign his age his location his career his family background…I think one even gave me his name. All I can deduce from that, is that firstly, running your life based on horoscopes no matter how enlightened is stupid, and two, of course there are some accurate snippets in there because the powers of the Kingdom of Darkness have access to earthly information in an imitation of the way God and Angels do…the difference is they use those snippets FOR DESTRUCTION rather than salvation…nine truths to get you hooked, then BANG the joker in the pack. I wasted 7 precious years with my particular joker.
Sometimes simply cutting a stalker off from their prey is too traumatic and can lead to heightened, more desperate activity, or possibly suicide/murder. Coupled with the disconnection, there should be psychological and spiritual intervention, counselling etc.
A RECOMMENDED ACTION IN A HOSTAGE OR DANGEROUS SITUATION IS TO HAVE THE STALKER TALK ABOUT THEIR OWN LIVES AND SPECIFICALLY STRENGTHS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS…as they realise even a glimmer of their own worth, that can shed light on the insanity of their actions. I actually escaped a dangerous situation myself once by getting my drunken would be attacker to talk on his passionate subject of gundogs and training…by the time he realised he had been side-tracked I was back in the safety of the city lights with a note to self to give hitch-hiking a miss for a while.
And to men who play with fire, needlessly courting danger with women they have no intention of BEING with or STAYING with or even inter acting with in any way other than sexually or financially…I would offer the old Northern saying YOU DON’T GET ‘OWT FA N’OWT!
Nothing is for nothing, and flattery and lies might come back to bite you in your larger than life arse!
Another word of advice for possible victims is DO NOT BOAST on public forums, particularly on the internet. Men often do that, in a little boy ego kind of way, but if you promote yourself as rich, powerful and available you are gonna get some gold diggers and stalkers flying to your self-ignited flame like moths to a candle. Those who are truly wealthy accomplished and influential could keep a lower profile, despite the media machine convincing us that we are what we have and how we are perceived… I heard a lovely saying recently, possibly also emanating from those dry, sardonic Northerners in England, along the lines of
THE LONGER IT TAKES SOMEONE TO TELL YOU WHO THEY ARE, THE LESS THEY HAVE PROBABLY ACCOMPLISHED.
As a single parent of 3 gorgeous and remarkably well-adjusted children, 22, 14 and 11, I must add a post script that I DO UNASHAMEDLY check their Bebo sites/ mobile phones etc once or twice a year. As a parent I do not buy the politically correct version of parenting where one knocks on the teenage door and awaits permission to enter, where one would not dream of breaching privacy lines in terms of mail bebo an messages etc…this may be an unpopular stance, but I believe it is my job to keep my kids safe and if they slip off the path into experimenting inappropriately with drugs, alcohol , pornography, the opposite sex etc or are being bullied or peer pressured about anything I WANT TO KNOW!
I did a bebo check with my 14 year old yesterday together on his page, and afterwards we chatted about BOTH quitting smoking (for goodness sake, he’s 14!! But I started even younger) and we talked about different girls and how they present themselves on public networking forums. No guilt no shame no secrets.
They say we are all as sick as our best-kept secrets. Us adults that is. Before anyone decides to read this in a spirit of ‘sick fuck glad I’m ok,’ maybe just do a heart check on your OWN darker secrets. We all have them.
THANK GOD FOR JESUS!!!
As for now…I am sober and well, just about to launch an attack on hopefully my LAST ADDICTION which is cigarettes. I am seeing a clinical psychologist to nail down the DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER thing, D.I.D. or multiple personality disorder as it once was unfavourably called. I’ll medicate in stressful times in my life, but not as a death sentence. I make forays into the world of male/female relationships and sometimes even think I have met the REAL ONE…
I can stoop to snooping like a jealous girlfriend, intelligence and envy are a deadly combination, but speaking from experience, THAT IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM STALKING…
I am well enough to write an objective and dispassionate article….well enough to laugh at my own past tragedies…well enough to hope to share my life good and bad in a determination that my insignificant existence should somehow MAKE A DIFFERENCE…
and maybe even well enough to get in the ring again with a brave soul who wants to kill dragons to rescue an adorable PRINCESS..
.ahh…romance, THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF!
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ANGELA POWER HAS A BACHELOR’S DEGREE IN LITERATURE; IS A PUBLISHED JOURNALIST, WRITER AND POET; AND MOTHER OF THREE. SHE IS CURRENTLY LIVING AND WORKING IN RURAL IRELAND.
Being ‘born-again’ is simple, not spooky or cultish…I was raised a catholic and always loved God, but needed a personal encounter and relationship with JESUS to make that love real in my life in a way that HEALS. Simply ask Jesus to come into your life, admit you are not perfect and have often fallen short, thank God that Jesus paid the price for you for every time that happened…he WAS crucified on a cross and WAS RAISED FROM THE DEAD!!! then TELL SOMEONE!
That’s you all suited an booted for heaven, not just up there, but heaven on earth too.
Suggestions: Read the Bible. Find a Spirit-filled, lively church. Watch GOD TV or similar..Get baptised in the Holy Spirit and seek the gift of praying in other tongues…
it’s an adventure…ENJOY!
and leave me a comment! (COPYRIGHT 2009)