I am in the middle of the "most common feeling" that I think isn't talked about but is experienced by all of the victims of this crime. Sometimes you get this when you are accosted by the police for no reason. Sometimes it happens when your money is gone. Sometimes it happens when, for no apparent reason, a friend turns his back on you. Sometimes it's when you are in the middle of a robbery or rape that the police refuse to investigate. Mostly this is the feeling that you get when you are in the middle of some kind of emotional family problem. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, makes Lori and Brian feel better than when a victim of this crime has their family, friends and co-workers not understanding the kind of pain you are going through, yet you are hearing the siblings revel in it. It's a kind of numbness that only you feel and can't share. It's the kind of disconnect from society that only we can understand. It's lonely, helpless, sad, hurtful and never ending. It builds over time too.
You get to a place, like me, where the facade doesn't match the feeling that you have inside. You are a shell of a person. A body without a feeling in it. I couldn't even properly cry for C.J. because I know what comes after that...the mental bludgeoning of your feelings. The complete obliteration of your human side. It's the beat down of your positivity and hope to the point where you think that this will never end. Lori knows that.
I don't go to church any longer because you can't pray away her opinions and her rude statements about church and God. Her belief system is constantly challenging yours. There isn't any way to describe what this is, but I believe it is the desensitizing of a victim to pain and suffering. Joy and happiness left a long time ago. It is the actual "stupefying of your intelligence" to the point where you have to drop your level of intellect to the level of Lori and Brian for them to understand how much you can't stand either one of them. I use to call it "auto-stupid" when I would hear her constant idiotic sayings and ways that she talks. I would turn on my mental "auto-stupid" button and just react on her lowly drug addicted five year old level. Why go any higher? She's not going to understand it...and it does you no good to try to educate her because she can't and won't learn. She's on drugs that allow her to ramble for years without having a conscious thought. She has six people, six brains, thinking for her at all times. Sometimes even the victims do all the thinking for her.
I am at a point where I know better than to think of solutions to problems because that is what human beings do. To her, I am not a human being, I am a toy. A slave. Not worthy of consideration. I think that is what I get from my own team too. I am not a real person, I'm just someone that this happened to and I have no recourse without them. It isn't the truth, but it is a way to survive.
Numb is where I live. I've lived there since I was about 10 or 11 years old. I've never really been happy. I've never really been free. I don't have a life that allows me to be a human being. I am simply a drone with artificial intelligence that adapts. I grew from an 11 year old to an adult on my first day of high school. There was a small chance that I could still be a kid when I walked into school my first day, but Lori stole that opportunity just like any predator that had caused a problem would. Why let the entire family heal, when she could go after the little one?
I've never been happy. I don't know what that really feels like. You might not believe that, but how could anyone truly be happy with no less than fifty people following you since your first year of college? They would go everywhere. Not to mention she'd already infected me with HIV. There wasn't a chance for happiness...there was a small chance for survival...a very small chance. What I am is a shell of a human being with lots of experiences that didn't feel. I don't really know how I feel because I have to bury all of those feelings to protect myself. I don't know what it feels to be positive though I am for everyone else. I am the best friend I could be to every one of my friends, but you don't see me with any now. Now what I am is old. I am a shell of an old man. I've been numbed to the point where usual emotions don't come easily any longer. I can't afford for them to.
The death of my pet. The only "person" that couldn't hear Lori or be contacted by her, if I kept him safe, is a much bigger loss than I can tell you about. He relied on me and I relied upon him. There was no way to explain to anyone in my family what this means, or meant to me. They don't support me because, although they know Lori is a pest, they don't understand that she is a sociopath liar killer. They don't know that the bullet that came through my window in San Diego came from her brother at her order. They don't know what happened to my brother in law outside of the "accepted" solution. They don't know that what they think my problems are, are not drug related. It's Lori's drug problem that I suffer from, not mine. I haven't used a drug in ten years or more.
I don't really talk to people anymore. I don't want to know them. I can't make friends because Lori is so jealous she'll hurt them. I don't date online because I could get hurt, or killed. I don't really do much of anything but work and go home.
Numb is what it is like. I don't know how to explain it. She's screaming right now, but the truth is I don't hear anything but screaming. It's like living next to her aunt, she use to scream so much I never even heard it any longer. Who knows what she was screaming about? I don't. It wasn't my business. I'm sure it was personal.
It doesn't do any good to get mad because nobody takes me seriously anyway. My own team will see my anger and write it off the second I get mad. It's not worth it. I operate in between the lines of happy and mad...never any further up or down. That infuriates Lori. I don't live in the full spectrum of life. I live in red, blue and yellow...that's all the color I have.
That's what it is like when you are a victim and she has a topic to chew on and spit at you.
