The second time I saw the white “laser lines” was on a sunny Saturday morning. Kitty was staring intensely and curiously at them too. Okay, so now she’s seeing them too, I thought. Hmmm. I had my arms wrapped around her to keep her in place, and every time a white line would flash down from the ceiling she would try and jump towards it, her eyes wide and locked on it.
When I finally got up after a little bit I walked over to that area to see if I could stand in the middle of it. It seemed that once I was standing in the middle of it I couldn’t see them anymore, let alone feel anything. Ha, see, figures. Trick of the eye, I thought.
Only thing is, the white lines never went away. In fact….they only got progressively stronger as time went on. And it didn’t matter whether it was daylight either, the sun didn’t affect being able to see them. There they were…bright white, almost laser looking white lines, shooting silently and rapidly down from my ceiling, and moving off to the left. By the end, before we moved out, they would be filling my room all hours of the day or night, this constant presence. And it got to the point where I could stand in the middle of it and actually still see them, unlike the first time I tried that. But I couldn’t come into contact with them, they seemed to pass right through me. It was three dimensional, definitely. They would be in front of me, going through me in my lap, on the side of me, behind me, just completely surrounding me and filling the room.
Most of the time though I just tuned them out. I learned to not to notice them because the whole thing creeped me out. I mean, what the hell are they? I’d think. What does it mean?! And since there was never an answer, I therefore didn’t want to be giving it any more thought than I had to.
Shortly after I had an experience one night where I was in bed, the room lit by candlelight, and something just felt so horribly wrong that I was scared shitless. I mean, full of complete terror. I lay there by the candlelight, looking around, seeing if I could see something, listening for any unusual sounds.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Dead silence. Nothing bumping around. Nothing rustling about. No sparklies. No white lines. Absolutely nothing going on…….AT all, for once. Which was actually a clue in itself, and a bit alarming. Almost a little like the way everything gets before a tornado strikes. And the birds fall silent. And the air is completely still and heavy and quiet.
The feeling wouldn’t go away. It was just complete terror. I didn’t want to be in my room, but out of curiosity, I was frozen in place. Waiting. To see what was going to happen. Was it that “It” thing? I figured it must be.
Kitty was trying to sleep on the floor at the foot of the bed, under the overhang of the bed. And I say “trying” because I heard her yelp, like something did something to her. She leapt up and raced out of my room frightened, into the living room. Which was a first. Never heard her yelp and dash out of the room like that before.
I looked around the room, trying to see what scared her, or what came into contact with her.
Nothing. That I could see anyway. But it was probably in plain view to her.
After about five minutes Kitty came back, tentatively, and tried to resume her spot at the foot of the bed. I tried to drift off into sleep, but the feeling of terror was too strong.
I heard her yelp again, louder, and she raced out of the room again. This time, going for Joe’s room. Except his door was closed, so there was nowhere she could go other than the living room. So she started slamming her body against his door, over and over, in absolute panic, trying to get him to open it.
!!!!!!
I lay there, listening to her do this, another first. I’d never seen her do something like that, and have never seen her do it since. I’ve also never experienced such an absolute feeling of terror before when I was awake. Only in a nightmare. But that’s what my life was at that point – A waking nightmare, in all aspects, in every way. I looked all around my room for the source of this panic, and my feelings of terror. But I still couldn’t hear, OR see anything. Nothing. It was bizarre.
Eventually I fell into a light sleep, keeping myself on guard. I would’ve liked to fall into a normal deep sleep, but my brain wouldn’t let me. Nothing ended up happening, I was very shocked. With my cat yelping and me feeling all that terror I thought we were going to get a repeat of “That Night” again. But no. And so another tired day the next morning, going to work without a good night’s rest.
Then came the night me and Joe were discussing things, and the subject of “HOW” these things were coming into my room came up. He decided to tell me finally, what he knew that morning of my attack.
“Basically, it’s like this: You have an entrance. And you have an exit. The entrance is over there, above your door. And the exit is over there. In the corner by your radio.”
Once again, I couldn’t believe it. I had never told him about my experience when I was doing my “Out Beasties Out” meditation, when I’d heard rustling, like someone getting up, and moving across the room and leaving through the corner of my room where my radio was. It had thrown me off, making me think, what was THAT all about? What, it can just get up and leave wherever it wants to? Can just walk through a wall and bail?
No, they can’t just do that. They can only leave where there’s a “door,” an exit. And I had one. Where the radio was. Joe just told me that. Once again, confirming something before I had even told him.
“How do you know? Can you see the entrance and exit?”
“Yes.”
“What do they look like?”
He tried to think of the best way to describe it. “It sort of looks like static, like what you’d see on T.V. But there’s a ring around it.”
“You can see that?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you see it right now?”
He looked over to the corner of my room by my radio. There was silence for a few seconds.
“Yeaaah…but it’s not constant. It comes and goes. It’s there one moment, then it’s not, then it’s there again, then it’s not. It fades in and out. There’s one in the corner of the living room too. That’s why shit blows through my room and exits through the living room.”
I looked over at the corner too, tried to see what he saw. I never was able to see it, with the ring and that whole thing. The most I could see was maybe, possibly, some faint static-y looking stuff, like T.V. static, same as what he said. But that’s it.
“What about above my door?” I asked.
He looked up at it, at the vaulted ceiling area above the doorway, his face growing apprehensive.
“Ohhhh yeaaah.”
“What does it look like? Does it look different?”
“No, not really. It looks like static, with a ring around it.”
He told me about how he’d seen it that morning of the attack, and he’d known then exactly how that It thing had gotten into my room.
“The thing is though, you ripped the exit first, before the entrance.”
I didn’t understand how it could be done backwards like that, but he insisted it could. He insisted I’d ripped the exit first, from sitting there stewing in one spot, day after day, after day…
“But that doesn’t make any sense. How can you have an exit first??? You need an entrance for something to come in, before it can leave…”
“No you don’t,” he looked at me like, duh. “You ripped an exit first. And when you ripped an exit, that means that these things can now blow through and leave, they have a way out…so then the entrance opens up.”
My sleeping habits were getting extremely whacked out by this time, now that my room was in full swing. For starters, my energy level was drastically drained, which was a whole other issue in itself, aside from my sleep schedule. I would be fine during the day at work, pumped up and full of energy, continuing through the bus ride home. I’d have this mental list of things I wanted to do, feeling like I could take on the world. Then literally, the second I walked through the front door into our apartment it was like ssssssssssssss….all the air being let out of me. It felt like you were walking around underwater in that place. I’d make it into my room, and whatever ideas I’d had in my head earlier about things I wanted to do were tossed out the window. I’d just become a lump. No energy, no drive, no anything. If I didn’t flat out just crawl into bed and crash out when getting home then I was going to be at 10 pm at the latest. On average though it was 8:30, 9, 9:30. That’s really bad. There were even a few times that I was so drained and wiped out after being in the apartment for a bit that I’d crash out on my floor, and never even make it to the bed, just passed out right there in front of the radio. I had books I wanted to read that weren’t getting read, writing I wanted to do that wasn’t getting done, art that wasn’t getting created. It took everything out of me existing in that place.
I tried to fight it though, I began doing workouts, inspired by Joe, and I didn’t realize until after I moved out that it was like having lead weights on me when I’d do my workout. Like someone was standing on my back when I’d be trying to do my pushups, or pushing me back down when I’d be trying to do my sit ups. Like trying to do it underwater.
I was also becoming a bit of a lush too on top of it. My whole life sucked in every way that was possible. No money, no car, working at the worst place I’ve ever worked in my life, trapped indefinitely in this hell hole called Rancho, stuck in an apartment with whacked out shit happening nonstop. No end in sight AT all to any of this mess. Just on and on and on, forever and ever. So red wine was my new best friend. There were piles of empty wine bottles slowly building up under the kitchen sink. Life had become a surreal nightmare for me. None of it felt real. It was like a slow motion movie, dragging endlessly onwards. So I was hitting the bottle all the time, and passing out by 8:30 or 9, try to drown it out and let my life pass me by until I could get out of this situation. But even if I wasn’t drinking, I was still passing out, by 8:30 or 9, which is how I know there was a literal energy drain phenomenon happening in that place. With the laser light show of white lines silently zipping downwards from the ceiling and moving off to the side.
Another thing was that for the life of me I couldn’t get a feeling for what the near future was going to bring. And previously I could always put the mental feelers out and know how things were going to go, good or bad, know which way things were going to turn. It was like the future didn’t exist. It was the most bizarre feeling for me. My mental feelers are something I use every day, just as much as I use my vision, hearing, my sense of touch and smell. It’s constantly going, reading people, knowing the outcomes of situations so I can already plan around it – or one-up people with my knowledge if they plan to try to pull the rug out from under me.
Not anymore though. Now I had zero sense of the future. The only thing I had any feel for was that M___ was going to fire me after the New Year. I just knew that to be a fact, and even wrote it in my journal, nonchalantly. Yeah, I know they’re just waiting til after the New Year to give me the boot….Even despite the fact that M___ had put out a superficial offer a few weeks back for me to come spend Christmas with her and her family, I knew it. At the time she made that offer I just looked at her thinking in my head, What?? You’re going to FIRE me after the first of the year. Whatever. But that’s how those types of woman in those circles operate – phony AF. Pretend to “be your friend”….then do a rapid 180. Because it was never genuine to begin with. Nothing is sincere with them. They don’t know how to be true humans.
[ NOTE: And they did try to fire me actually, as soon as the new year was over, exactly as I foresaw. But since I already knew I was prepared, and had another job lined up and a resignation note typed up. But more on that later. What I will say about it all though, which ties into the description I provided earlier about this place, was how the firing came immediately after the Christmas party. M___, along with women from two other departments and myself had been discussing the organization of the party the week before, when M___ turned to me and blurted out suddenly out of nowhere with this fake “sad” face, “…..And don’t worry, we’ll dress you for the party.”
I just stared back at her, puzzled. I dressed nicely on a normal basis, otherwise I wouldn’t have been allowed to work there. But they knew that I wasn’t rich like them, and assumed of COURSE I wouldn’t have anything dressy to wear to the party…I mean, of COURSE. (fake sad face.) I just stared back at her, blank and puzzled. “I’m fine, I don’t need any clothes. I have something to wear.” And I showed up wearing my nice form fitting, sleeveless, thigh length red and black velvet-y dress with expensive black strappy heels from Macy’s, knocking it out of the park. Getting smiles and “Nice!” looks of approval and nods from a few of the husbands, and looking better than more than a few of those women. Right after that….fired. Coincidence? “It’s just not working out……” Really? The agents love me, to the point where more than one wanted me to work for them personally for side gigs, including in their own homes, including with their own children, yet, “it’s just not working out”? um hm. right. Considering that pretty much the only reason I was there was to serve the agents means, they were the only opinion that truly mattered with regards to feedback on my job performance. And they had spoken. And it was nothing but positive. If it was truly a case of “this isn’t working out….” then they would have gotten rid of me long ago.
So the timing on it all was beyond eye rollingly obvious. So it was more like, she and her clique of mean girl office women wanted to view me and treat me as Cinderella, but I showed them I wasn’t…then even upstaged a few of them.
For normal women this wouldn’t be a thing, but as I realized years later, this was a different breed of women. The rich and elite, operating with different rules and expectations. At the time though I didn’t get it, as mentioned earlier. Only after gaining a bit more experience with the world of the rich and snooty did I begin to grasp what some of the issues really were with that place. But it all ended up working out, as I already had another gig lined up, as mentioned.]
So yeah, that was the only “future” thing I could get a grip on with my mental feelers. Getting “fired.” Anything beyond getting the boot from the job was beyond me. I was clueless. And it was kind of like being naked and vulnerable.
And like I said, my sleeping pattern was also being disrupted by the random acts of paranormal popping up here and there. Like the time I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night, feeling like something was there in the room with me. I was laying on my left side, face mashed into the pillow, my right eye popping open. I watched as this black circle thing, rimmed in white, drifted down from the “entrance” above my door. Kitty was lying next to me, paws tucked under her, and I glanced at her and found that she was tensely watching this thing too. So I wasn’t imagining it. I slowly put my arm around her, to keep her from jumping away, to keep her close to me, and I found myself saying over and over, No kitty, don’t look at it, no, no, PLEASE no, please don’t look at it, please, no, look over here, look over here, no, no, look over here, please, no, no…trying to pull her into to me, physically turning her body away from it. I felt like if I could get her to turn away from it, it would mean it wasn’t really there. Childish, I know. But the more I tried to turn her away from it, the more it made her crane her neck to keep her eyes locked on this thing, her body tense. There was no telling Kitty not to do something that she wanted to do, she was extremely willful and sentient, definitely had her own mind just like a person, and there was definitely no making her not look at something paranormal related. She was NOT liking this thing, whatever it was. The look on her face wasn’t of curiosity and intrigue, just a tense wide-eyed, locked stare. Almost as if she was frozen, not sure what to do.
And whatever it was, this black circle thing rimmed in white, was in the air now, next to my bed…dancing, almost….back and forth, left to right, in a an upside down “V” shape. over and up, and down…back over and up, and down…herky jerky movement. This black circle rimmed in white…Dancing, back and fourth…watching me, and Kitty.
I squinted my eyes shut, gripping onto Kitty. I don’t remember anything after that. So I don’t have a conclusion to this story. What it did next, how long this went on for, where did it go, and just how this situation ended in general.
And another incident…jolted awake again, feeling like something was in the room with me, yet again. I was on my side, my head to the right, facing my closet, as usual. Left eye mashed into the pillow, right eye flying open in panic, yanking me out of my sleep, in mid-dream. I’d fallen asleep with my purple Christmas lights on this time, so the room had a less sinister lighting effect going on. And this time, instead of some black circle rimmed in white, dancing from side to side, it was a shapeless bluish green glittering static-y looking thing. Hovering in the air, in front of my closet. It didn’t dance back and forth like the other one, it just remained there, relatively motionless, save for the subtle changes in shape. Just imagine the static on your television, and imagine it with color…sparkly blueish green color.
It was absolutely beautiful, whatever it was. I lay there on my side, with my cat, once again, watching this. Riveted. It didn’t scare me as much as the other one did. But I didn’t exactly get up to go check it out, either. I lay there, frozen in place, watching this thing for a bit, repeatedly wondering, Am I really seeing this? Is this real? Is this really happening?? Until I pulled the covers over my head, only allowing my nose to stick out a little. And I went back to sleep. ( Note: I would wind up seeing this thing one more time in life. Two years later, in my studio apartment in Fort Lauderdale. Woke up in the middle of the night to find the same sparkly blueish green static thing in front of my front door. Goes to show that time and distance means nothing with these phenomena. So whatever this was, it wasn’t about the localized “vortex” apartment itself in Rancho Santa Margarita. It was about me, personally, and it had followed me 3,000 miles.)
And waking up yet again, feeling like somebody was right there, looking at me…I was on my back this time, having a really aggro dream where I was kicking somebody’s butt. Full of rage and frustration, getting it all out in my dreams, since I wasn’t able to during my waking hours. And at the point in my dream where I was done going aggro and was walking home, my eyes flew open, startled, once again yanking me out mid-dream because the feeling of “somebody” being in the room with me was so strong. When my eyes flew open, I saw a big black circle shaped thing, with zig zaggy edges, right up close to me, almost like a huge eye leaning in. Like it had been fascinated and curious, watching me, attracted by my aggro dream and my resulting intense energy. That was the vibe I got from it – curiosity. Nothing malicious or bad, at all. (Though there is the more likely possibility that this thing was manipulating me somehow to create this negative dream that it could feed on.) The diameter of it when it was right up on me was about a foot around. But as soon as I opened my eyes, it jumped back, like it was startled. It shrunk up in size, getting smaller and smaller, as it retreated back and away from me, until it shrunk and disappeared altogether.
That’s it!!! I thought. I’m staying UNDER THE COVERS FROM HERE ON IN. I refused to sleep any other way. And until the day I moved out, I slept with the covers pulled over my head, covering my eyes and face, so I would never have another incident of waking up suddenly in the middle of the night and seeing some crazy something or other, in the room, watching me, staring at me, hovering, jerking back and forth, and back and forth, or doing whatever. I couldn’t deal with it anymore, it was too much. Too stressful.
Sometime after I saw the black circle thing, rimmed in white, I thought to mention it to Joe. See what he thought of the whole thing.
As soon as I started describing it, “…it was like those black circles you see when you’re at the theater, watching a movie…black, rimmed in white…” that’s when his eyes started bugging out.
“What?! It was a black circle….rimmed in white…” he stated back, loudly and slowly, sounding panicked. I wasn’t used to getting a reaction from him when I talked about anything that happened to me. He was usually so blase.
“Uh, yeah…Why?”
“Did it sort of move back and forth like this…” he imitated the herky jerky upside down V-shaped movement with his hands.
I hadn’t told him about that. In fact, if he hadn’t mentioned it, I would’ve forgotten that detail.
“Yeah! It did!! How did you know?!”
“Because, I’ve seen that thing in my room too. Do you know what that is?? It’s that thing. The one that attacked us. Basically, it was checking up on you, that’s what it was doing.”
“NO….” I said, panicked, and incredulous.
“YES. Trust me. I’ve seen it in my room too. It comes by from time to time, to check up on things. That is not good if you saw that in your room Carissa, it’s not good…” He looked panicked and worried. That was really unusual for him. Now I was getting panicked.
“Oh my god…Shit…What if it comes back?!?”
“Then kill it.” Deadpan.
That was always his response whenever I’d say that. So kill it.
“Whatever! I can’t kill it!! I’m not strong enough. I don’t have the capability…”
“Yeah you do.” Deadpan, again.
“No I don’t!”
“Yeah you do.”
“NOOO.”
“YEAAAH…”
“Whatever.”
Then there was the night I came home from work, and passed out on my bed. I slept until 11 p.m. or so, when I finally woke up enough to try and contemplate if I should get up…even though it was so late…or just keep on sleeping, straight through the night. hmmm……. And I laid there under the glow of purple Christmas lights, pondering this for a bit. Get up, or sleep, get up, or sleep…nah…I think I’m going to go back to sleep, I finally decided, smiling to myself, sinking further into the bed, stomach down, to get comfy and pass back out again…
…which is when I felt the distinctive feeling of human fingers scritch scratching in the middle of my back. Scritch scritch scritch. It scared the living shit out of me, because of the suddenness of it, and the intensity of it. Very distinct. When I felt those fingers scritch scratching me, I let out a little scream and flew up in the bed, involuntarily swiping like mad at my back and going AH! AH! AH! AH! Jumping all about in my bed, panicked.
I was up now, thank you very much. I got out of bed, glaring around my room, like Grrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!! That was not cool. I could just imagine it giggling to herself, thinking that was funny. Oh, can’t make up your mind about whether to get up or not? Well here you go, lazy butt, what do you think about this?? heeheehee!
I just couldn’t shake the memory though of how that felt, the distinctive touch of FINGERS, actually digging in, with light pressure. Like there was a real person there, only, they were invisible.
I was up for almost the rest of the night, refusing to go back to bed until after 3:30 am. I figured it wouldn’t do anything else to me, because again, it wasn’t malicious. But then again, how do I really know? What if it was tired of not being noticed, and this was going to be its new thing now…Touching and poking and scritch scratching, and just doing all sorts of stuff to get noticed? That scared me. I grabbed my Sony Discman, and a book, and hid out in the laundry room all night, and did some writing, to kill time. There was nowhere I could go. I had no car. I was completely trapped. As usual. Another night, without a decent sleep. As usual.
I just remember going to work during one of these nights where I only had like two hours of sleep or something, and my co-worker C___ talking about how he’d only had two hours of sleep, saying he didn’t go to bed until 4 am. Having no idea of course, that I was in the same boat. But I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t say, Oh yeah, me too…I didn’t go to bed until like 3:30, or 4. Because invariably, that would lead to the next question……Really? Why? What were you doing? since we were work friends, and talked about stuff. And what was I supposed to say to that?
Time for a little sidetrack detour: C__ was my boss M___’s son….and absolutely nothing like her. Same age as me at the time, 25, also born in ’74, same as me, an Aries/Scorpio year of the Tiger. Perfect match for my Scorpio/Virgo/Leo Tiger. Super cool and interesting. And single. Not one of those “ridiculously attractive” guys or anything, but definitely cute, and his personality and energy made him completely captivating. It helped too that he was half Mexican (his dad and mom were divorced, and now she was married to another hyper successful real estate agent, working as a team), which made him NOT look like his mother (who was all white, and also happened to look like an alien-human hybrid, complete with the blue eyes and tiny, thin-lipped mouth. One of the weirdest looking women I’ve ever seen.)
I had a type, and it was typically brunette guys with brown eyes, often something ethnic/mixed…which he was. And he was a musician, playing guitar. Over and over in life I attract in or have actually dated musicians, but in particular, guitarists. Always guitarists. Such a pattern, it’s ridiculous. (even my 90’s cartoon crush – Trent Lane, from Daria – fit the profile. ha My ex Gary that I was with in ’95 was basically the real life version of Trent, but several years before “Daria” even aired. Was Asian, so he looked similar to him, same coloring, with the black hair, dressed like him, played guitar. And even though he was super smart and very interesting….was also an unmotivated lazy potato, always flopped out on his bed, just like in that pic I linked to, unemployed and still living at his mom’s. Which is why it didn’t last.) But…that’s been the pattern.
C__ is a whole story in itself, another huge issue about what went wrong with this place causing so much intense energy generation from me during this entire time period. He started a few months after I did. And from the first moment we met/spoke, when he came up to my desk at about 4:50 p.m. and initiated a chat about something, it was like mutual googly eyed love at first sight. Both of us with mesmerized grins and eyes, something very rare for me. His personality was extremely charismatic, engaging and nice. I mean, hello…..Aries (sun) Scorpio (moon), year of the Tiger….. He was also a smart guy, the sort whose mind is always going, thinking of things and full of creative energy and ideas………more of my type. I only go for the smart ones with personality. I was so taken with him that I purposely missed the last bus of the evening at 5:05 just to keep talking, since he didn’t seem to want the conversation to end. By that point we were just talking about all kinds of random non work related things. As long as he kept it going I’d keep rolling with it. The conversation went on for about 45 minutes. Wound up walking the two miles home, but not minding at all.
His mom M___, aka the Big Boss Lady who was in charge of the whole branch, the one who didn’t speak to me for almost the first full three months I worked there other than her terse “good mornings” with no eye contact, only started talking to me once he became smitten.
“C__ talks about you all the time,” she told me in her office one morning with a coy smile, mentioning this factoid out of nowhere. This was during an out-in-left-field meeting – the first one-on-one meeting we’d ever had since I started – and where she did an abrupt 180 with me. Again, apparently only after C__ wouldn’t stop talking about me. “It’s always Carissa this, and Carissa that.” More coy smile. Totally fueling the fire. So only after he became smitten did she even give me the time of day.
Meanwhile C__ had issues, finding himself aimless in life, no direction, having moved back into his mom and stepdad’s mansion in Coto after traveling around to Australia and NYC. He was now working for her company because he didn’t know what else to do with himself, as he’d lament to me. So there was a huge insecurity/self esteem/masculinity issue happening due to not having any money nor being independent and successful, while living in his Type-A, mega successful mother’s shadow.
So we’d have these moments where we were like googly eyed little kids in love, just hitting it off with amazing chemistry, then he’d pull back….then push forward, back to being googly eyed little kids…..then pull back again. Back and forth, up and down.
One time while having a conversation with another coworker named Alma, the subject of “people dating people they work with” came up, mentioned by Alma, forget the reason why. But C__ immediately mumbled something about how “you can’t eat where you sleep,” or whatever metaphor, Shit where you sleep? Sleep where you shit? that was apparently supposed to relate to our situation as well….while making sure to quickly glance at me, then dodging eyes. But then back to being googly eyed kids later on, then pull back again…..back and forth, up and down. Total mind job of epic proportions, generating enough “loosh” energy to power a small country.
The only time I ever saw him get truly angry and fiery was the time our bully coworker Stephanie tried to interfere with us. I’d come in late due bringing Kitty to the vet (walked to the vet near our apartment, carrying her….no car!) and as I walked through the door I thought fondly about C__, and how I’d missed him and looked forward to seeing him, getting settled in at my computer. Within a minute he came rushing around the corner with a huge smile as if he’d read my mind, excited that I was finally in. Immediately took a seat at the empty desk next to me, stretching out forward towards me across the desk. Our energies in that moment were like excited kids, happy to be around each other, as we began talking and talking about all kinds of things……….until Stephanie burst around the corner. She said something nasty to C__ to get him to stop and go back to work, trying to embarrass/emasculate him.
Stephanie was the daughter of one of the agents, deluding her into thinking she had some kind of power, which included always being rude to me as well. Other than C__ I didn’t have a friend in that joint now that Shannon was long gone. And while it may sound like Stephanie must have been some total hottie to be such an aggressive, confident bully………HARD nope to that. Tall and slightly overweight, always wearing long, shapeless, very unstylish figure hiding clothes for that reason, average “meh” face with a giant, bulbous nose, long fluffy black hair, versus sleek and styled. Yet, total bitch who strutted around completely full of herself. It was really weird. Not what you’d expect, at all. Like, “Girl….?! Do you even know what you look like??!” She didn’t even come close to having the looks to carry off the ego and aggressive, bully attitude she was always putting out. Society programs us that it’s always the good looking girls who become the “mean girls” and bullies. Not really in my experience. More often than not it’s the unattractive, overweight and thus, insecure ones. And it’s exactly why they go around stomping all over others and being loud obnoxious bullies – it’s the only way they can make themselves feel better, more powerful and “in control.” Or outright get attention, since they’re typically bypassed/overlooked in favor of the better looking girls. (Stephanie’s current Linkedin profile pic has massive “CRAZY EYES” going on, like, holy shit level of crazy. Giant grin and psycho bugged out eyes making her look like she’s been jacked up on psych meds for years. But I saw the foundation for it all those years ago.) But in my personal life experience the truly good looking girls have so often been genuinely nice and just super cool. At least to me, anyway. The opposite of bullies. Any of the bully girls I’ve encountered were always ugly, fat, and/or both fat and ugly.
If it wasn’t for her mother then Stephanie wouldn’t be there, because she didn’t have the looks or the work experience/background, being that she was only 20. And that’s just all there was to it.
Stephanie had bullied C__ before about random things, to which he’d just passively let her, never sticking up for himself or pushing back. But this time when her bullying involved C__ and I directly, creating that emasculating interference?………….whoa. O.o Holy shit. Can’t remember exactly what he said, but he pretty much ripped her head off, leaving her speechless, mouth agape. Basically something about It’s not your business! leave us alone! go back to work! I’ll be there when I’m ready!! etc.!! with a few other things!!! and said forcefully/angrily, with conviction, turning the tables and posturing himself above her. He’d totally fucking had it with her in that moment. Nobody there had ever seen that side of him, but that’s what it took. Put her in her place and caused her to retreat back to her office. He continued staring/frowning in her direction for a few more seconds after she left….then turned back to me, starting to smile again, resuming our conversation for ten or fifteen more minutes.
So yeah, I fell hard for him, and it contributed to so much of the problems going on during this time period due to the mind fuckery of it all. The situation couldn’t have been more custom tailored towards me if it had tried, to the point where, in retrospect, it’s ridiculously suspect. :/ Like really? This is the situation going on during my 40 hour a week day job? This custom tailored guy who hits literally every single point on the checklist of what I like in a guy? But with the whole hot and cold, “I like you but we can’t be together” mind fuck? On top of the way all the women in the office behave? Then I’m financially trapped/stuck in our paranormal apartment from hell where I can no longer get any real sleep half the time, scared out of my mind? Complete with Joe’s nonstop criminal mayhem and cop dodging putting me in the line of fire? It was truly the perfect storm of madness converging together. Just more of that “experiencing the Full Safari” thing though. Being up, down, back and forth, and experiencing all sides of it. Experiencing the pain of being in love with somebody that doesn’t work out because of his personal hangups….meanwhile I’ve been on the receiving end of different guys’ interest, but where I didn’t work out for them (and in a few cases….REALLY upset them O.o ) because I’m just flat out not interested. We’ve all gotta go through it at some point, and for whatever the reason.
I personally didn’t care about C__’s lack of direction and success, I was just into him, but I can understand that for a guy those things can cause insecurity, especially for somebody like him who had a streak of sensitivity/self esteem problems going on anyway. (He was always making self deprecating “jokes” about himself with regards to his looks and non ideal life situation.) And especially being that he was completely submerged in the world of the Rich, where money and success is everything, just rubbing it in every day that he was a supposed failure. So I realize that he’s sitting there thinking he’s got nothing to offer…..No game plan, nothing lined up, has to work for his mom, and 25 years old but doesn’t even have his own place. How is he supposed to be out there seriously dating anybody? And a coworker no less….at his mom’s company?
And let’s be real….probably also looking at my situation and realizing it would never fly in his mom’s world. I had the right look and personality (he had a “type” too I came to figure out, and I was it) but I definitely did not have the right background. He obviously knew that I didn’t have a car and was busing/walking it everywhere, he knew the lower to mid-range level apartment complex where I lived, and that I was roommating with my brother to help him, and that unlike even just basic normal people I didn’t have any parents or other family going on in my life. Why? Because we talked. All the time. And he wasn’t stupid – because we talked all the time he managed to piece things together and knew something sketchy was going on with Joe, and that he was up to no good. Not exactly some “honest model citizen.” A couple of times he’d ask frowny questions trying to corner me about some random Joe thing, but I’d just dodge out of it.
My entire background was completely fucked up, very unusual. I wasn’t from some well put together family, living in a nice situation, driving a nice car, with the full on college degree and all those mainstream world niceties. Though I presented very nicely to the world, creating an illusion….thus, the entire reason I was even able to work there in the first place.
So we were both a hot mess, that’s all I can say. Doomed from that first googly eyed, smiley, mesmerized moment we met. I found out later that sometime after I left, he finally just joined the military to get his shit together. He’s now married with kids, like pretty much everybody, but which isn’t something that I myself wanted or came here to do. And I knew that going back into childhood, as early as nine years old. “I’m not here to do what my parents did. I’m not here to have that life.” I talk about this in my “INFJ” article, about the nagging “splinter in the mind” I’ve had since early childhood, this knowing that I’m here to DO SOMETHING, a life mission/destiny, something bigger than just “get married, have kids, the end.”
However, unknown to me at that time I was working here and going through this perfect storm of madness, my true and actual life destiny, the big thing I “came here to do and accomplish” was about to start unfolding only nine months after leaving this place, in September 2001, which I touch on again later. C__ and I never even came close to being on the same life/destiny page, but, there was no way to know it in the middle of it.
But back to the story…..!
And then another night where I was reading in my bed. Until about ten pm., when I suddenly just decided it would be a good idea to get up and go into the kitchen. Get a bite to eat. I always had the uncanny instinct to know when to leave my room, moments before “something” happened. And sure enough, as I’m puttering around the kitchen, I hear a loud crash bang in my doorway. Kitty had followed me out into the kitchen, my little shadow as usual, but she heard it too, and her head jerked towards the noise. She trotted back to my room, to investigate.
I myself just assumed it was Joe, coming out of his room or something. I almost even said, “Hey, Joe??” as I walked back to my room.
When I got there, I was a little confused to find absolutely nothing. No Joe.
I looked around my empty room. At Kitty investigating things, and poking about.
I opened Joe’s door a little and peaked in to his room. He was sound asleep, under the covers.
okey dokey.
I closed his door. The noise had come from my doorway, and as we knew by now, I had an “entrance” over my doorway.
I got my shoes, my book to read, my Discman, and my writing journal. Back to the laundry room. All night. Again. Went to work on like two hours of sleep. Again. Didn’t say a word to anybody because I couldn’t. Again.
And life droned on. And on. And on. The weeks passed by. Mind numbing week after week. The first of the year came, and for the first time in who knows how long, I made a list of resolutions. My life was such a complete and utter mess at that point that I needed some focal points, some goals, try to get myself back on track. And I don’t normally need to do that, but I did now. I was too unfocused and lost and disillusioned. (another reason I could totally relate to and sympathize with what C__ was going through….another reason we hit it off so well….) One of my goals was to get rid of my office day job at _____, and do whatever I could do to get another job. And I didn’t care how far away it was. I lived out in the middle of nowhere, which had been my major impediment in getting a better job all this time. But if I had to take two buses and walk for three miles, I didn’t care, I’d do it. I needed to get out of that toxic environment.
So I started job hunting through the Orange County Register classifieds during New Year’s weekend. Circled the ones that were within the local area, and were what I’d be looking for. I was looking for data entry. Something simple, mindless and easy. Where there would be absolutely no pressure on me, and I was not responsible for anything, a job where I would be left alone, and wouldn’t have to deal with people anymore.
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