You Should See Someone

I had no Healthcare. I had been under my ex-husband’s policy, but they viciously took that away like so many other things when I wasn’t even in court. I was never allowed to use his. Mostly he had me covered in case of something catastrophic, not because he cared, but because he didn’t want to be wiped out financially, I started to uncomfortably realize as the years went by. It’s extremely painful to come to terms with how much he lied about all these years. 30yrs is a long time to be with someone and to know today it was all a lie. It’s been extremely difficult to put my life back together while also dealing with the continual attacks by police and all his friends and family. Finding out my family was involved has also been devastating. It made sense at the time, but as the years went by like everything else became just another weapon. I know now he and his friends made trouble at places I worked, so I went without healthcare so many times and learned to find other ways to take care of my health.

Nothing seemed to matter each time I was arrested and accused of a number of things, none of which I knew until I attended court and was given the “papers.” I would ask as I learned as things went along what to try and say to the police to secure my rights and be helpful, but it never mattered. There always seemed to be a running joke about me. I was often in shock they would call me a prostitute or insinuate that I was “mentally ill.” It was all so shocking that I was often rendered mute. Where did they get these things? It was so overwhelming that I often was at a loss for words, which is what I look back at and see was done on purpose. I have the word for it now—triggered.

I always asked for police reports and got nowhere. I was down to the police station numerous times in the 5 years since this started—for a while just about every month. It was always awful the way I was treated. The arrests were constant as were the times in court where I was barely spoken to and pronounced guilty, hurried out, rescheduled, or sent to jail told I didn’t understand, which was all a bunch of lies. When I was able to get them mostly a few when this all first started I was again shocked at the bold-faced lies written about the “alleged incident,” always accompanied by me needing a “mental health evaluation” by Judge Lorman someone who considers sexual assault victims “crazy,” which I was accused of all the time.

This time was no different. I had crossed the busy intersection at the wrong time, which got me the disorderly conduct charge. I failed to see the truck barreling down the curved street to the lights where I stood crossing, but it was right at the curve where it was hard to see. He yelled something about getting out of the way and I cursed back, more of a defensive reflex about almost being hit rather than any aggression towards him really. I knew it wasn’t his fault my car was taken and my wanting to protest was the result of this going on for so long now. I had a “new car” I thought, why was this happening? I was forced to walk all the time now—it was awful, but I was told being I was a “prostitute” that I was walking the streets because of my “poor choices,” along with “shacking up” with “boyfriends.” Which were all lies, but it just kept getting crazier and crazier how these lies kept forming to create this reality of me that was so not me it took my breath away. While others were perfectly fine repeating these lies as if they had gone on right from the start. I was to learn that was exactly what they were all doing.

I had just been jay-walking, which got me the disorderly conduct charge. I was then followed up the street and arrested where police claimed after I had been disorderly that I had resisted. To hear them tell it was another surreal saga. Drunk, yelling, fighting with officers at the “5 corners.” I was to learn the 5 corners was now where there were so much drug traffic and prostitution and this was very important that I had been arrested there. It proved once again that I was a prostitute and “harassing police officers” allegations made continuously after sexually assaulted by one. Inmates and guards at the jail remarked numerous times that it was at the “5 corners!” as if this proved I was a prostitute. This didn’t last all that long. After being jailed with women who actually were prostitutes or involved with prostitution it seemed stupid to call me one, but guards and their “friends” tried to nonetheless. All part of the elaborate smear campaign that had been planned a long time ago and was horribly taking over my life. All had been setup when I first married that I had a “psychotic break,” and had one at the end of the marriage—all lies.

The whole ordeal was another surreal nightmare. Each time I “explained” myself it resulted in the same—rolled eyes, dismissed insinuations I was “crazy,” and making everything up. In the same way, I learned when studying domestic abuse that explaining rarely worked with an abuser. Over the years I learned not to explain, but this was only part of what was happening. I felt pulled into the same dynamic now with this group of police that followed me around everywhere and the court system here that continually acted like my abusive spouse. It would take me some time to finally have the words for the other awful abuses I suffered things such as; economic abuse, gaslighting, and coercive control that continues as I write this. The post-separation abuse non-stop and getting more extreme and violent—Death threats, more attacks, and assaults.

The first police report I got after a long arduous process with the person at the front counter was that my ex-husband was “pursuing a divorce.” I sat dumbfounded as he had just assured me before we moved into his Aunt’s house we had taken care of the last 20yrs that we were finally ready to retire and the house would be ours for all the years of hard work and taking care of her. We were going to continue to care for her there. I was also bringing him back and forth for eye surgery oftentimes every day to Albany NY for checkups. It was difficult taking him to Albany and trying to move and clean the house. The house had not been cleaned in years and stocked with an accumulation of stuff that a mentally ill woman would hoard. She had hoarded quite a bit and I spent months cleaning it all, taking it all to the attic because by this time she still wasn’t sure if she would live in her home and we would continue to take care of her or if she would get a smaller place or even move into an assisted living residence.

In the beginning, affectionate jokes would be made about her saving things like old string, tape, plastic baggies. Odd things people didn’t save, but it was thought of as her being thrifty. It was only years later after her numerous “spells” manic fits, and morbid depressions I would come to see was her mental illness. She had been “ill” the entire time of our 20yr marriage, but it was always dismissed as her just being a little different, like the different types of dishes she would make for holidays. Most of us cooked and baked, but she would bring odd things that often went uneaten. Adding different ingredients that just didn’t go together or if they did were just off. Talking about her illness just got you one of those “looks” the kind that says we just don’t talk about those things. I remember the first time I challenged that thinking and was told I needed to see a Priest. My mother-in-law thought I had been asking too many questions about money. We had only been married a few years and had been talking of buying the Lakehouse his Aunt had for sale.

“You should see someone,” she sternly told me on the phone when I questioned why she and her sisters were involved in my finances. We had all just come from the Lakehouse in question and things were tense. Another misunderstanding resulting in me not understanding “asking too many questions.” My mother-in-law called to tell me my sister-in-law would not be visiting me anymore. She had already abruptly left the Lakehouse when I questioned why she was so angry. Her daughters had been playing with my new puppy and when I cautioned them about him being a pup and not wanting him to puppy bite and break their little skin, I was called into the camp and told in no uncertain terms it was not my place to “discipline my inlaws children.” I wasn’t sure why they were not referred to as my nieces, but after that, I was never called Aunt by any of them. All sorts of excuses were made over the years, but now I finally know the truth—I was never going to be acknowledged as their Aunt.

I did go to see someone, “seeing someone” was not a big deal because I thought Talk Therapy was kinda cool, some of my favorite artists had been to see someone. I was being shamed about it, but I didn’t feel it would all be used against me at the time. I made an appointment at the local hospital. I wanted to finally put to rest this idea that I was making a big deal out of our finances. I believed myself a modern woman, having a career, planning for retirement, starting a small financial portfolio, but somehow this ran counter to my new marriage in ways I would learn later would make me homeless, destitute, and in shock from the financial schemes they all had set up and planned from the beginning. They all pretended they had nothing and my asking about the finances wasn’t what someone in my place did. As long as I stay married, they didn’t see a big deal, after all, we were Mr. and Mrs.

The stereotypes started early; being from a broken home, talking about money, and certainly asking about how our money was connected to theirs was frowned upon as somehow crude, money-grubbing, and bespoke of marrying for money and they certainly didn’t have any money. I was to learn as the marriage went along these were all lies that I was forced to accept from the beginning because they all pretended the lawyers that represented them were also looking out for my best interests, like our financial planner who at the end threatened arrest when I asked for copies of tax returns and bullied me over the phone that “he worked for my husband, not me.” I had no idea at the time that my money alone would be accrued in such a way because of working all the time, my frugality, and doing so well that it alone would amount to a substantial amount including; paying off the mortgages, buying two new cars, paying half of all the repairs, investments, home improvements and rental business we built, basically paying 50/50 for everything even taking turns whenever we went out for dinner.

“If you want me to pay me to be your friend, you can keep coming, but you don’t need any long-term therapy,” Peg said. “You’re fine,” she went on, you just need to get along with your new inlaws and learn about going forward with what you want. We discussed how traditional they were and that I would just have to learn to deal with them. They were part of the package in marrying my husband, she said. I was happy and determined with my new career as a Graphic Designer and Peg didn’t see a problem. Being married takes time and money is usually something people argue about periodically. I was to learn recently this was not what supposedly went on that I had in fact had a “psychotic break,” and another one recently, all lies, but nonetheless was being used to deny me all my assets in the brutal divorce that unfolded. That this was justification to make me homeless, something shocking after doing nothing but working building a career, and working on all these properties to semi-retire at 50, something that everyone at the police station and the courts was making fun of. It was fine for my ex-husband to be retiring but not me. I had no idea why. The classism I had suffered as a child and teen was now rearing its ugly head but I had no idea of the violence being unleashed in my life.

Even if I did have mental health issues, which I could very well have had with all the abuse, why would you force a woman alone to the streets with no place to live? There were so many options that could have been worked out, but this is what the courts were choosing to do. As I got involved in learning about what I was going to do, I started to see there were other places having problems with cops treating the mentally ill with such disregard often ending in violence, which was the case with me. The assaults, robberies, arrests were adding up, but each time I tried to defend myself or get a decent lawyer it was denied. Everything was going along according to some nightmare plan my ex and his friends and my Heroin Addicted cousin had set up a long time ago and this was the way to make me the scapegoat for all they had done, while also stealing what amounted to major assets I had worked tirelessly for and now denied. I wasn’t mentally ill and God had spared me this, my heart broke thinking of women that were. I was having panic attacks and seizures from trying to incorporate these conflicting realities things like; me being a prostitute, needing to go to a homeless shelter, nothing belonging to me, needing to go on DSS as a disabled person, needing Meds and all the other lies viciously hurled at me from people that refused to see me from the start of the marriage. They all picked fights and refused to come even for holidays, it all made sense now as they all started showing up making horrible accusations about me and my life and most especially my finances. I knew now all the abuse made sense. All the odd fights over the years, all the comments that didn’t make sense but that others seemed to be part of. It was all set up this way from the start.

examples of my logos when I first went online in 2011 for my studio work. so much was stolen by the people that wanted to destroy my business and did, but these are a few of the logos—there were others too that had similar looks with different little flower icons.