There is something wrong with the way Laurie thinks, we all know that. Since about 3:30 this morning, I have been kept awake contemplating my next move. I know what I have to do now and it isn't what I had originally planned, but as things go it's the only option that makes any sense to me.
While working on the blog late last night, Laurie started threatening to write my family letters and send them to my parents home. No doubt, she isn't going to be sending them from herself. Likely candidates for the letters she would mail would be from Mrs. Monti or Mrs. Mendenhall. Of course they wouldn't be handwritten and they would be full of lies about my project and would try to make Laurie look like some kind of angel of mercy. This is threatening to me...but at the same time I welcome them.
My father is already aware of the last email from Laurie Johnson that is loaded with aggressive behavior and lies about things that she couldn't possibly know to be true. There is only one person that could be this determined to say such hurtful things and, fortunately for me, she used her mouth to say these things in the past. I know whom Laurie Johnson is, the question now is, "How to put that to my best use."
It's true that this investigation into my own stalking has taken a huge toll on me. I have many issues with the people that I treat as friends, mostly that they have a far different definition of friendship than I do.
Originally this project was supposed to flesh out the persons responsible for torturing myself and Christopher, but it's taken an illogical turn. What should have been an easy partnership for the truth has turned into a power struggle for acclamation. That's not the point of my investigation. I want to know whom stalked me in San Diego, how, exactly that came about, and I want to keep that from happening to Christopher. Now that I know most of the truth, the hard part is disseminating the wrong agenda from the right one. I want to put whomever is responsible for my torture, on every level, in jail. That's the end result. I don't care about movies or books or anything like that any more. I want justice.
My team has lost focus. They emphasize the minutia and ignore the significant pieces of this case. It makes me feel like my last ten years of work mean nothing to them. Although I've explained to them a thousand times that this is about my quest for justice for Christopher and myself, they continue to act as if it is all about them. It isn't. That's someone else's project. They've taken the baby that I made and expect me to be happy when they return the baby to me fully grown and adult. I don't get to participate in the development of my own brainchild. It's just like Laurie does, with just as much dehumanization. That misses the point completely.
Before there was a EHPCPS, a HateLisa or a SaveOurSons, there was me. Thirty years a stalking victim of a woman I truly despise and her brother that can't take his mind off of me. I had no voice, I had no recourse, I had no say in what they did to me until I figured out how to fight back. It took the better part of a decade to put together the right people in the right situation to take away the darkest parts of being staked in this manner. I developed patience, I took a lot of personal hits from people that I respected, I lost a lot of friends, I lost all of my belongings, I resigned a job I truly loved, but I did it with the understanding that a some point, I would get to do what I want to do. Investigate and use the evidence I collected to ruin the lives of the people that ruined mine. It's the only therapeutic way for me to recover from thirty years of stalking. Working on this project keeps me from hurting myself...it's not the loudest voice, but it is much louder than none.
You all don't know what I put into this project. The hours of torture painting signs, buying masking tape with the only dollars I had left, the heat of the Palm Springs' sun as I walked from corner to corner putting up flyers and looking for witnesses to interview, the phone calls I get from victims crazed and confused...the letters I wrote, the library time I researched and all of that came after being shot at and raped by my stalker. The only therapeutic thing I had was in fighting back...it's a survivor's mentality.
I invited others into this project because I thought that they would help me to recover and in return I provided all of them with information that unequivocally saved their asses but cost me a friendship. That's pretty unselfish I'd say. Nobody paid for my gas to go to San Diego for a storage receipt for a locker with Jonathan Mendenhall's name on it. Nobody paid for my airfare to a symposium for me to meet the hardest advocates in the country so that my project would be considered a model for public awareness. Nobody was thinking billboards before I did...nobody but me.
As things go, these invited project team members took over everything. They took the evidence, took the witnesses, took the story and made it all about the people that never hung a sign. Never went on the news. Never wrote a letter. Never watched a single person completely break down because of what Laurie did to them. They wanted the product, but they didn't want me to be a part of it. That's not a compliment, it's a hijacking. Going against my better judgment became the norm. Soon I was getting the coffee and not invited to the boardroom of a company that I built from the pavement up. It would seem that other people's agendas topped the list and the little project that could became the little problem that didn't.
True, I wanted help, but who knew that this new partnership would afford Laurie so many new opportunities to fuck with me even more than before? The people that didn't need the help got it and the poor got poorer. It took the fun out of it for me. Suddenly I got ignored while these Johnny Come Lately got their previously unreported stories priority over my goal. Attention from the right people became so wrong. That's not what I made this for...I made this for understanding, not for under the table. My team has headed off on some kind of glorified tangent and forgot to leave me directions....or did they just not invite me at all?
As an aspiring criminologist, I get nothing of what I want from this project. I would have liked to study for my private investigator credentials, but that didn't happen either. I have to work for a living, write this for you and still try to make it look like there is a point. I don't get to see the evidence. I don't get the access to the data bases. I don't get to give my theories and when I do, I get corrected somewhere else. What my opinion is, no longer matters. It's more like, "well he doesn't really know so we'll do it our way."
So it's like having a nanny raise your baby. I'm supposed to be thrilled with how the baby turns out when it's 18 years old and I get it back. I'm supposed to be proud of the values instilled in it, the manner in which it matured, the way it acts when confronted with a problem and in the end, I get to say I had some kind of part in it's inception. I'm supposed to be happy with the result. I'm not. Part of the healing process, for me, was supposed to come with the education of developing this project so that I could do it again in the future, not so that I can study how someone else did it. This was supposed to be my time to be this person, but that's not to be. A unilateral decision to cut me out of the way, destroyed my therapy session, now I'm a checklist, not a person whom got shot at and raped.
My friends all use to listen to me, now they listen to someone else. I don't get to see Christopher. I don't get to contact the parents of my friends to help them. I don't get to interview witnesses or depose them, I am a paralegal after all, I do know how to prepare interrogatories and depose and interview, but now I just find people and my team takes them away. I don't get any legal action for the threats I receive. I don't get representation if I am arrested. I don't get any kind of positive feedback and someone else gets to do all of the fun things about investigating. Erin Brockovich did this much smarter than I. She did all of the ground work herself...and for that she's respected. I look like I gave birth to a beautiful child then I handed him away for someone else to raise. I didn't put my baby up for adoption, but it was adopted without my consent.
Then I did something else that was stupid. I gave my permission for my team to watch me so that I could be safe...just like the police gave to Laurie. Just like Laurie, my team misused this permission and now they do exactly as they want without any thought to what they do to me. This means my encounters could be monitored with the police and others which was good, but it also meant that everything I do could be scrutinized to the millionth degree. It kept me from being human. My team adopted this, "...yeah he's mad but he usually gets over it so I won't do anything about it" attitude. I became less of a friend and more of a chore. There are more fun things to do than watch me work at night. Additionally, the things that I earned, like my credibility, someone else is now getting paid for. Someone that didn't do anything like I use to do.
I'm just one more crime that Laurie committed. I'm just the dog on the floor that gets table scraps. I brought this team together, but they are the ones that get to take the field. I'm supposed to be cheering for them, but I've lost interest in them too. Any team that can set aside a shooting, a rape, a restraining order and another attempt at my life to look for lost jewelry, has lost its focus. The significant facts of this case get minimized to the point that they are now mundane, unimportant and rote. Even I am tired of retelling the story. It should have been so easy to have kept this from happening, but unilateral decisions tend to be deceptive. Even writing this will be ignored for something more fun.
The story here folks is that a man, since the age of fifteen, was stalked, brutally by a woman and man, siblings and they got away with it. Against all odds, Laurie and Brian managed to nullify my life. They, along with my team, minimized the impact of complete domination of my person, now they are doing it again.
My job is that of advocate informant and my significance will have to play out somewhere else. I wasn't the type of person to screw over my commitments, but my commitment isn't to a heartless team with an undisclosed idea or notion. My commitment is to Christopher's mom, to my family, to the public and to myself. There are other ways to expose this crime and leak information to the public about how it was funded. Who knows what and when. There are people that will be interested in what didn't happen though the law required it. There is a place for this baby's father no matter what my team has to say about it. A promise is only as good as the people that make them. I've delivered with over 3000 posts and millions of words and time.
It's gotten to the point where I feel like my team wants me to make a mistake just so that they can justify leaving me out of my own investigation. It's so much easier for them to say, "well, we were going to do what he wanted, but then he blew it so we didn't." I think that's pretty awful. I think it is disrespectful and I think it's a mistake even though I don't get a say. It's a runaway train right now and I have to stay true to what I know I've done. I've made parents aware of crimes that they didn't report. I've been threatened by the people that committed these crimes against them and I still get no respect. I don't even get a thank you. That's got to make Laurie thrilled.
I've got another plan that makes people responsible for their lack of consideration...I know where I am going now. When you leave a man to starve, he gets hungry...I've made my decision because promises were broken to me. There are other ways to inform the public. There are other people that won't think of just themselves. I may never get to do the "fun things" that this project should have afforded me, but at least I stayed true to my promise for Mrs. Monti. I have to make good on that one.
I need to show my father the last email from Laurie and I need to show that restraining order to Laurie's family. This should have all been done by friends, but they aren't listening to reason...they are listening to themselves.
