& Sociopathic Traits
Chapter One ( Who I was)
In order to tell this story it’s important to address who I was before Matija Turkalj came into my life.
2015 I decided was to be the best
year of my life. It was my first full year out of college. With a B.A. under my
belt I started working my first full time job. It was a humble cashier position
in a small Pleasanton California convenient store. The job afforded me nothing
more than 10 dollars an hour and the spare time to dream about all the future
held for me. A smile was my natural reaction to any situation. I loved myself,
almost to the point of having a crush on myself. Ego was not apart of my
character but getting to know myself was the most thrilling adventure I could
think of. I was a blessed enough person to have a wonderful home life and was
lucky enough to count on both hands and feet the number of true friends I had.
As extraverted and outgoing as they come, what I loved most about my new job at
the store as well as my part time job working at a local Pleasanton restaurant was
all my customers. I saw the joy in everything (even waking up at 6am for work
every morning). It was the beginning of the year and already I had taken
multiple road trips with longtime friends. I was ready to take flight in the
world and there was nothing and no one who could stop me.
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| Commercial Glazing Concepts |
Chapter Two ( Secrets and Substances )
Over night Matija
and I grew closer and closer. I often times sat and wondered what his ex-
wife’s problem was? How could she let such a wonderful, beautiful man slip
through her hands? Why would she try and control him so much? I concluded that
although there are two sides to every story, Matija had to be right, this woman
must have been terrible to just bail on him the way she did. He was so caring
and amazing to be around. She must have been a fool.
Matija and I spent most of our time
together. It seemed as though we began to develop a strong trust for one another.
We could talk about anything. I told him I hated showing emotions toward anyone
in a romantic way but he continued to make our time together feel safe. He made
it clear that he wanted me to care for him and did his best to show he cared
for me. He frequently complimented me on who I was as a person and would tell
me how happy he was that I was now apart of his life. He’d make it known how
happy he was that I was “ so different from” ex-wife and “ so nurturing”
compared to her as well.
Eventually one night he told me he
needed to confess something to me. He needed to be upfront about the fact that
he was a drug user and that he’s been “doing drugs since 1996”. He told me that
there was no drug he hadn’t tried and that cocaine was his favorite. He sadly
said that his drug use is probably one of the reasons why his ex-wife ran out
on him. He complained that she “ used to think it was cute” before they married,
“then all of a sudden she didn’t think it was cute anymore”. He asked me why
wasn’t I leaving too? Why was I still
there with him now that I knew about his “second life”, as he would often call
it? I told him because I liked him and I was too involved just to walk away
now. I told him drugs were bad and it would behoove him to stop using. Mat knew
I had never even smoked a joint before and that had him convinced I could, as
he put it “ inspire him to stop using ”. I told him I could not change a grown
man, that I was happy to support him if he ever decided to give up his habit
but trying to change someone against their will would never work. Despite my
disclaimer he remained convinced that I was the key to his sobriety. Mat knew
drugs were not part of my world in any way and never had been. The closes I
had come to being around drugs was watching the Johnny Depp Movie “Blow”. Drugs were bad news, but we had gotten so
close and I liked him more than any man I had ever met. The drugs didn’t seem
to be much of a problem for him as one would think. He even told me himself,
drugs didn’t affect him the way they did most people. He appeared very functional,
he wasn’t violent or mean, he never asked for money or strange favors, he seemed
to take good care of himself and was running a company. He wasn’t trying to
force me to do the drugs with him and even used my sobriety as means of inspiration. Sure, I could see how his ex- wife would get
a little fed up with the drug use, but he was still a good man and I couldn’t
see how she’d just willingly leave such a sweet person behind after 10 years of
marriage. Drug use or not he still couldn’t be that bad. Eventually
he became comfortable with the idea of me being around him while he was high.
He never really took the drugs in front of me (other than on that one occasion
when his downstairs neighbor Conor came over at night and they took what he
thought might have been oxi, but wasn’t sure) but I did spend many nights and
days nursing him back to sobriety while he came down from extreme highs. Out of
every drug, cocaine, he’d often remind me was his “favorite”.
As time rolled
on my affection for him grew stronger and stronger just as the marijuana plants
on his back patio grew taller and taller. Mat seemed pleased with the
progression of both situations. I did start to notice what some might describe
as glitches in his personality. At
the most random of moments he would say things like “ I’m really crazy you
know” or “ I think I need a straight jacket”. One night while watching a movie,
out of the clear blue Mat blurted out “ did you know that Las Vegas is the only
place where you can legally fake your death”? I was always taken a back by
these comments but never knew quit how to interpret them. I made up in my mind
that they were just silly random comments and it wasn’t worth giving a second
thought to. The oddness however would continue. He seemed to have this over the
top paranoia toward anything he perceived as homosexual (even if there was
nothing remotely homosexual about it). Anything could set off this alarm. For
example, one of his employee’s (who happened to be male) texted to wish him a
happy Fathers day. Mat seemed appalled by the gesture. “Men don’t do shit like
that, we don’t do shit like wishing each other happy Fathers day, it’s gay” he exclaimed.
As time went on
Matija began to ask about and show signs of wanting to discuss strange sexual
topics. He consistently wanted to know if I had ever experienced 3-way sex. At
first the question was not alarming as I am not shy when it comes to discussing
topics of this nature and also found it natural for him to wonder about my past.
But the question had an odd way of popping up more than what I felt was normal
and so I started to question why was it something he was so curious
about…especially after he told me it was something he had never or ever would
engage in. Eventually he would tell me how he and a friend bought 2 prostitutes
one night and paid them $60 dollars a
piece for oral sex while inside of someone’s car. He frequently spoke about
prostitutes and would often times hint about using a site called Red Book. At one point he admitted to
having used Red Book, telling me he
“ordered a prostitute from there one night” and that he “waited for her to
arrive at his condo but she never showed up”. He would tell me about the
prostitutes he would meet at different drug houses and other questionable
places. He always seemed to want to talk about going to different massage parlors and receiving “ Happy Endings”
(a slang term for hand job). Strip
clubs also seemed to be a main focus for him but he always claimed he had no interest
in the women there and was “ only going to purchase cocaine”. He would tell me
all about some sex club he knew of in San Francisco. I asked him if it was a
place he had been to but he swore the only reason he knew about it was because
a friend told him that it existed. There
were times when he would tell me all these things in a teasing manner and other
times he’d say it in a very matter of fact way. It was becoming impossible for
me to tell whether it was all a joke or not.
At one point I asked if he had ever been tested for STD’s. The question
angered him and he accused me of “being juvenile and of asking juvenile
questions. More
and more the list of secrets that I kept for him grew. Apart from keeping his
drug use a secret, I also kept secret the locations (in Oakland and Hayward) of
where and whom he got his drugs from and with. I became accustom to making
excuses for him to people if and when they wondered why he seemed distant or a
little bent out of sorts. Once his
neighbor asked me why they hadn’t seen him in a while. I simply told them he
had been a little sick and continued on my walk. Other strange things would
come up such as the access Mat had to stolen computer programs that a
mischievous friend of his possesses. Then there was the consistent illegal
activity of one of his employees (who was out on parole) that continued to crop
up. In one stand out incident, it was a case of this employee robbing someone,
then in another shocking case, I was with Mat one night when he received a
phone call from this employee panicked because he had just murdered someone in
a parking lot over a small amount of money. Mat barely seemed fazed by what
happened and his only concern was that the employee had called him right after
committing the crime. A few days later
we found out the man we thought had been killed by Mat’s employee had actually
only been beaten unconscious. I brought it to Matija’s attention that I found
it odd that his employee’s would feel comfortable telling him such things. “Most
people would want to hide wrong doings from their employer not brag about them,”
I warned. Matija almost seemed amused by these types of events and seemed to
purposefully surround himself with these kinds of characters. One minute he would swear it was because he
wanted to help better people that had been on the wrong path in life, the next
it seemed that it was because he enjoyed being in the middle of all the mayhem,
then he’d swear he needed to get away from these kinds of people if he was
going to correct his life. Matija would tell me about his life when he was younger, how he had always had a habit of stealing even as a child, how when he was older he went AWOL from the military. He later told me about how he used to smoke a lot of crack, shrooms and practiced speed balling . He once told me he was smoking so much that during his time as a dog trainer he believed he was actually talking to the dogs. I'd get what seemed to be paranoid phone calls from him late at night telling me that he no longer wanted to run his company "Commercial Glazing Concepts", that he was sick of the business and just wanted to go back to training dogs. I also became alarmed by all the legal and financial trouble he seemed to be having with different clients as he was always looking for a way out of paying people he owed.
I
began to notice how unapologetic he was when it came to his reckless driving.
He once told me “ everyone get’s scared when I drive”. Driving intoxicated on
any substance whether it be drugs or often times alcohol, he never seemed to
turn down an opportunity to get behind the wheel while under the influence.
Later he would tell me that he didn’t even have a driver’s license and had been
driving around all this time while his license had been revoked . When asking
him why, he would not tell me exactly for what but “that he lost them over
something stupid “. I couldn’t figure out why someone who was supposedly so
serious about running a company and making a better life for him self would
continue to tempt fait the way that did. He would often times brag of being so
aware of his surroundings to ever be caught by police. Then later on would tell
me how aggravated he was by past experiences when he had been pulled over. He told
me he “ can’t stand how arrogant cops are. Just because I’m driving home in the
middle of the night a little bit faded they think they have the right to pull
me over”. I tried reminding him it was they’re job to do so. But he just didn’t
seem to see it that way. He always boasted of not being afraid of cops but then
always had a fear that they were on to him.
Matija couldn’t
seem to make up his mind about anything.
He would often speak of how he didn’t want his company anymore and how
he felt stuck. He’d go on about moving away to an island away from all the “
idiots” (idiots was his favorite term for the general public and sometimes to
describe everyone but him) but then would tell me he wanted to move to
somewhere like Oakland so that he could be in the middle of the “chaos”. He, more
than anyone else I had met was constantly screaming about how he didn’t want
drama in his life and yet he seemed to be the one creating all the drama and if
there was none then he was looking for it. Once after resolving a legal
situation he told me he was sad. I asked him why and he said, “ now that it’s
all over there’s no more drama”. I was surprised by this answer. “ “I thought
you didn’t want any drama,” I asked? But he insisted the drama kept things
interesting. I was growing more and more confused. Without realizing, it started to seem as if
he was looking for trouble just so he could scream about wanting out of it.
Matija also became
noticeably hypocritical and judgmental toward everything and everyone. No one
seemed to be safe or spared from his judgments. If something went wrong at work
he would typically find a way to blame it on anyone but himself. At one point
his younger sister who works for him texted him a blunt message telling him “
not to tell her to show up for work early in the morning if he wasn’t going to
show up at all”. Mat almost seemed amused by her frustration saying, “ It’s
good that she’s mad, it builds character”. He then called his best friend Greg
(who also works for him) on the phone and instructed Greg to apologize to his
sister because she was mad at him. Somehow he found away to place all the blame
on Greg. Matija, did later apologize to his sister but only after he realized
he would need her to do him a favor. There were many other incidences where Mat
would blame everything gone wrong on Greg when Greg didn’t seem to have much if
any association to the issue at all. Greg wasn’t the only person Matija would
frequently place blame on. He would relentlessly accuse his mother of being
crazy. Whenever he did something that some could describe as crazy it was
always his mothers fault. He “ would not be so rude and crazy if it weren’t for
her being the rude and crazy person that she is. If it weren’t for my father I
would have no sense at all“. He would continue to blame his ex-wife for
everything going wrong in his life and often time made claims that should could
“barley even handle raising their child” and that his ex always “used him to
pay her car insurance and to take care of their child when she didn’t want to”.
He disapproved of
everything everyone did, even if they were all the same things he did. It was
as if he had special permission to do or say certain things but no one else was
to cross that line. If someone drank, he disapproved, if someone did drugs he
disapproved, if someone drove crazily he disapproved, if someone else made
excuses he disapproved, if someone else was rude or insulting he disapproved,
if someone else were to talk about picking up prostitutes or engage in any type
of promiscuous behavior he would belittle them. He would frequently say “ only
losers pay for pussy”. It’s as if he
disapproved of everything that he was and everything that he did but only when
it came to other people.
Everything someone
did in Matija’s opinion was “ stupid” or “ idiotic” as he would describe it. To
him it was stupid that Greg considered himself a photographer. When our
relationship first started, one of Matija’s friends was in the process of
coming out of the closet. Matija ridiculed him saying he “didn’t feel they could
be friends anymore “ because he “didn’t want to be friends with a gay person” and
he criticized anyone who supported his friend coming out, this included Greg. His
younger brother was “stupid for working at Starbucks”. His brother and his
brother’s girlfriend were stupid for planning to move to Turkey. Mat would complain,
“she was one of those stupid American girls that actually believed she could
make a difference”. Matija would
frequently ridicule his sister (who was around 14 years his junior) saying she
was stupid for loving the former boy band The
Jonas Brothers and that her excitement for them was a perfect example of
how pathetic American youth actually is. I was not even safe from this harsh
ridicule. I would witness him be little almost everyone who was or had ever
been in his life. Even strangers on the street had to stand before his judgment. I once told him I had great admiration for my
superiors at work as I felt my manager and district manager were very good at
their jobs and were great roll models for anyone who was entering the work
force. But to Matija because they were part of a management team that was
associated with a convenient store there could not be anything special about
them. They were just idiots and he bragged that he could do their job better
than they could. I always passed his
critical thoughts and words off as someone who was just serious minded and a
little overly judgmental. In his mind, everyone should be like him. He would
always boast that his plan was to “take over the world”. That seemed to be his
greatest ambition. Everyone else’s dreams, goals, opinions, interest, ambitions
or even accomplishment’s were not worth his respect or acknowledgement.
His dedication to
healing from drugs also became questionable. Matija would have moments of
declaring that the most important thing he could do was to stop using drugs.
Just when you’d believe that he sincerely had plans to stop he’d snap and say
that it was nobody’s business if he was a drug user and that it didn’t affect
him anyways. His mind seemed to always be on drugs and everything was a drug
reference to him. Every place we went reminded him of drugs. He would always
say that so long as nobody knew he was doing it and nobody saw him doing it
then it was not a problem. I once scolded him over the phone for him having
used crystal
meth the night before. I told him that he should stop before he gets a
hold of something deadly. He told me if he died it was just the circumstances.
I tried telling him he should stop for the sake of his child. His only reply was “yeah, but the kid doesn’t
know that I do this shit”. Somehow in his mind that made it okay. There would
be other times when he would tell me he often thought about what would happen
if police ever caught him in a drug house, but for some reason he could not
help going to these places. “I’m drawn to the dark side he would say,” I’m half
angel half devil”. Mat once told me that an odd looking birthmark on his side
was his “ mark of the devil”. I began to notice that he would often times
compare himself to the devil. When a large bump appeared on his forehead he
would tell people it was “ his horn from Satan”. Everything was back and forth with him.
When the Golden State Warriors had their big parade to celebrate their winning
of the NBA championship, Matija invited
me to join him at the celebration. For
the next couple of days he would continuously change his mind about if we were
going or not. The day before the parade I had decided to just forget the idea
of going and go to work as planned. Then I get an urgent text from him saying
that “ WE HAD TO GO TO THE PARADE”. I asked my boss for the day off from work
only to find Matija had changed his mind again. Saying he only sent me the text
because he saw a TV promotion for the event and got caught up in the moment.
Even on the day of the celebration he still couldn’t make up his mind , saying
he needed to take his dog to the groomer. Finally we made it to the Parade at
the last minute. But when we got there Matija decided he wanted to stay instead
of going home. He wanted to call one of his drug friends and as he put it “ do
something stupid” that night. I reminded him he had to get the dog from the
groomers, to which he replied (with what seemed to be his favorite answer) “ I
don’t care”. After much persuading and bargaining with him he agreed that maybe
I was right and he should just go home and stay out of trouble. If only I had
known he was drunk after consuming two Buzz Balls in less than one hour (drinks
which contain about 20 percent alcohol per bottle) I would not have allowed him
to drive us (still on a revoked license) back home. Thankfully we survived the
very frightful event. The
Warriors celebration was hardly the most shocking of his antics. There was
another time when he and I were driving on the freeway together. We’d hit
traffic coming around by the big IKEA in Emeryville. I was driving and Matija
became frantic. For some reason all the traffic seemed to be making him paranoid.
He asked me if he were to get out of the car would I come find him? Seeing as
how we were stuck in traffic on the freeway I was very confused by the
question. He flung the door open, jumped
out of my truck, hopped over the railing, ran down the side of the hill from the
freeway, climbed over the fence to the main road and took off down the street.
I was so speechless (as was everyone else on the freeway) I didn’t know how to
react. 20 minutes later he called me from a liquor store asking me if I wanted
candy? I was still speechless. He hung up and called me back 15 minutes later
from a random KFC asking if I wanted raspberry tea or regular? Still confused I
asked for raspberry. He told me he wasn’t sure where he was but that I needed
to come and find him. So I spent another 20 minutes driving aimlessly around
Emeryville looking for this one KFC. Eventually I found it and he had
absolutely no reaction at all. It was if nothing had happened and it was just a
normal afternoon.
The list of
erratic reactions and paranoia’s of things went on and on. He was also afraid
drones were watching him and often would suggest that his phone was
bugged. As out of control as things seemed
sometimes, his devotion to me never seemed to waiver. Matija was even paranoid
about me taking my asthma medications. He told me it was idiotic to take
medications that doctors prescribed and that I needed to look into natural
medications for my condition. I told him I had no choice, that I have always
had a severe form of asthma and that the medications my doctor gave me are very
helpful. According to him I only thought this way because I was naive,
brainwashed and too lazy to look for other options. But regardless of whatever
differences we had Mat always seemed to want me with him no mater what and continued
to promote the idea that I was a good thing in his life.
Chapter Four -
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not (Mind Games)
Matija and I seemed to have gotten closer than ever. It was a closeness he fought for. It was like he would stop at nothing to ensure I was his and only his at all cost. He was happy I was apart of his life he would tell me and that he needed me to be apart of his life. He would always tell me he loved that I was around because he could tell me things that he couldn’t tell anyone else and do things with me that no one else in his life appreciated. He was always fascinated by me and even began to suggest that I should leave my job and come work for him. From time to time he’d ask if I ever wanted to be married. My answer was always I wasn’t sure if I wanted to marry or not. Every now and then the topic of children would come up. Because we were an interracial couple he’d sweetly ask me if I ever wondered about how our children might look. The joke always was if we had a son he had to be a soccer player. He wanted my opinion on just about everything he did and wanted me with him just about everywhere he went. He would text me 100 times a day and call me 50 times day. He’d call me so much that I started getting in trouble at work for always being on the phone. My guard was up high but day-by-day he found ways to lower it. I always cared about him and eventually despite everything I knew about him my heart opened up to him completely. From day one he treated me as if I was a priority in his life and one of the few things he intended on keeping around. I allowed male friends of mine to read some of his more romantic text to me. I felt in doing this they could tell me if he was sincere or not and if it was safe to trust him or not. They all assured me that his words and actions could only be from a man that was truly serious about a girl. A relationship is something I did not want and had avoided for a while. But at this point I was starting to have a hard time imagining my life without Matija in it. One night while out walking the dogs a speeding car raced past us. Out of fear I jumped behind him. He reached back and held me as close as he could and told me not to be scared and promised he wouldn’t let anything happen to me. Something in the way he said it made me believe him. He wanted my heart and he’d won it. He made it clear that he didn’t want to see anyone else nor did he want me seeing anyone else. He didn’t like knowing that other men had flirted with me and once told a man (that my friend was trying to set me up with) through text that I was already married to him so don’t bother trying to talk to me anymore. When I took a 24 hour trip to L.A. with a friend he relentlessly texted me telling me I was too far away and that I should come back early. On one day in particular he had a panic attack when he couldn’t reach me for 30 minutes. He took it as a sign that I was mad at him when in reality I was in the grocery store. He wanted to know he could reach me at all times (sometimes even at 2 o’clock in the morning) and I did my best to make myself available so he would never have to worry about if I was really there for him or not. I did my best to prove that I was nothing like his ex-wife who “ turned her back on him “. But like with everything else in Matija’s life, things started to feel unstable and the lines between what was real and what was insincere started to blur.
At first he loved
everything that I did but out of nowhere it seemed as if everything about me
became a problem. My giddiness and my ability to not let the serious things in
life bother me; all things he loved about me became things he was now annoyed
by. One minute he was 100 percent for me and the next he was agitated by my presence.
Where he used to say we were just a like, now it became a problem that I was
not even more so like him. He began to reprimand me for the job I had. I
admitted to him it was not the most glamorous job but it was perfect for me
because for the time being I wasn’t looking for a career, all I wanted to do
was save money so that I could travel. He belittled the amount of money I made
saying “ I had to do better “. Where I was once happy with my small job and was
pleased with my progress in saving up for my first over seas vacation, I became
paranoid and frantic about finding another job, one that would impress him
more. I had never been the type of girl to worry about impressing a boy and
yet, here I was doing everything I could to keep Matija happy with me and my
life choices. I kept asking what he deemed as a better job? But it was like
everything I thought of wasn’t good enough. I even mentioned high-powered jobs
like becoming a judge or even the president. “ No” he would scold, “ those are
stupid jobs, you have to think smarter than that”. “ Like me, I have my own company”.
“I like to be around motivated people “ he proclaimed. I thought to myself “
and I like to be around sober people but here I am with you”. I tried to take
the higher road and not say anything. “ You’re a project for me” he said. “I
get sent projects every once in a while. People I need to fix are sent into my
life”. I began to wonder if that’s why he really wanted to spend so much time
with me, so that he could “fix me”. “You need a company like me, that’s the
smart thing to do “ he’d say. I’d try to
explain that not everyone was meant to be a company owner but it was no use.
There were other times during our relationship when I’d receive phone calls
from him in the middle of the night when he was clearly intoxicated (usually on,
alcohol, cocaine or meth) insulting the university I went to. Telling me I was
brainwashed at the school and telling me my bachelors degree was a “piece of
crap nothing degree”. He’d go on about how I wasted my time at that school and
how I’m still doing nothing with my life. How I was no better than his “stupid
little sister who would never grow up because she was too childish and
infatuated with The Jonas Brothers”. Mat
would tell me he was angry with me for not doing better, that I should be more
mature and try to grow up faster before I “ end up like the rest of the idiots
in the world”. I started to feel like in everything I had to be like him and
any other way was the wrong way. I used to leave his house in the morning and
change into my work uniform in the back room when I got to my job. Eventually this came under judgment as well.
The fact that I waited until the last minute to change into my uniform meant
that I was disorganized and of course he disapproved of that. The fact that I
still lived at home begin to bother him too (keep in mind I was only a few
months out of college). To Mat, it meant that I was not focused enough on my
future. All my plans to travel the world and experience life were suddenly talked
about like silly childish dreams. The
fact that I didn’t want to have a child was a negative thing in his eyes. He accused
me of being “selfish” saying I think life is “all about me”. At one point
during a pro choice commercial he told me he felt abortion was sad and couldn’t
believe anyone would actually go through with something like that. He would
initiate unprotected sex, telling me positive thinking would prevent pregnancy,
that if I did become pregnant it was meant to happen, that us having a child
would be nice. Then on any given whim he would become suspicious of me, saying
girls get pregnant on purpose. Mat would say I wanted to be pregnant with his
child because I love Europe and he was European, so in his mind “ I was trying
to have his child”. Angrily he would snap at me telling me he “ never wanted another
child” and that if I did at any point become pregnant “having an abortion would
be the best thing for me to do”.
Matija would throw
hints toward me indicating that he had other girlfriends, then turn right
around and say he never had many women in his life and couldn’t figure out why.
He’d also ramble on about not wanting sex. Saying he’s never been the type of
person to need sex often and that he could go two or more years without it and
that didn’t bother him…yet he continued to frequently visit strip clubs and
speak of prostitutes. Sexually he seemed to be punishing me. All of a sudden I
became a bad person if I wanted any sexual contact with him. He’d even accuse
me of kissing too much. He’d withdraw at any touch and would tell me he had
other things to think about. Everything that went wrong or had been wrong in
his life for long periods of time was slowly becoming my fault. If something
didn’t go right at work it was my fault because “ I needed too much physical
attention “. I internalized that and started to feel as if something was wrong
with me for wanting to share my emotions by saying sweet things to him or
wanting to show my affection in any kind of physical way. He’d tell me it was
better if we didn’t have physical relations too often because it would make him
need to seek it from other people. I also tried expressing my emotions in other
ways but I was to be punished for that as well.
While at first he
was eager to show me as much emotion as possible and made me feel that it was
safe to show those same emotions in return, it was becoming a case of he only
showed those emotions on his own terms. When he chose to show them I had to
receive them…otherwise he’d be offended. If I tried to show emotion back and
for whatever reason he did not want to receive them I was demonized and made to
feel like I was pushing him too hard. This could even be over something as
simple as saying I miss you.
It was never okay when I said it and he’d make me feel like I was a bad person
for saying it. But when he would choose to say it, it’s like I better show
enthusiasm otherwise he’d find other ways to punish me emotionally.
All too often
Matija would suggest that I leave him. Other times he would ask what happens “
when I get tired of his shit the way his ex did and I leave him too “?
Sometimes it almost seemed as if he wanted me to go. Then for any given reason
if he thought that I might leave he would panic. He’d panic if he suspected I
was upset with him. If I was quiet in the car for too long in his mind it was a
sign that I was angry, when really I might be debating in my head if I wanted
Mexican or Japanese food for dinner. Whenever I would question Mat, asking why
did he always have a guilty conscious, he would never answer the question but
instead turn it around and say that it was my fault for being there and putting
up with him.
Not being a mind
reader was also a problem. If Matija felt that I did not interpret his thoughts
the right way I was subject to harsh ridicule and childish forms of resentment.
On one occasion Mat texted saying he was going to take a break from work and go
walk his dog. I decided to take the time
to go visit a friend. A few hours later and I got a bitter phone call from him
asking why I wasn’t with him? I tried to
explain that all he said was he was going to take a break and go for a walk, he
never once asked me to be there. But it was no use. He, for some reason felt
that I should have understood that he wanted me there and since I didn’t, he
punished me by giving me the cold shoulder.
Another time he told me he was going to spend time with his child and
that they would be at the pool until about 5oclock that day. By time 5:30 came
I once again received a harsh phone call from him telling me that his child had
been picked up by his ex-wife and he was upset with me for not being there as
he was planning for us to have dinner around that time. I was cities away at my
friends graduation party. I tried explaining to him that he never told me he
was planning on having me join him for dinner that night. All he did was say
that he was going to be with his child at the pool until 5 pm. I told him I’d
come see him later that night after the party but that I would need him to come
down and open the gate to his apartment complex when I got there. He was so
angry with me he told me that he would not come open the gate for me and that I
should find my own way in. He then acted as if he was too agitated to talk to
me and hung up the phone. I tried calling him back and texting but for hours he
wouldn’t respond. Later that night when I saw him I tried talking to him about
his behavior. He just laughed and said, “ well sometimes I get a little crazy”.
One of the worst
situations had to be when Mat’s condo was foreclosed on. He begged me to use my
day off to go apartment shopping with him. I told him I would go along but that
I had to leave by 4oclock for a medical related appointment I had made months
prior. The whole time he was displeased with everything I did. While in leasing
offices with him I would sit quietly and listen to whatever was being said by
the brokers. He blamed me for making him upset, saying that I was being too serious
and that must have meant I was angry with him. I assured him everything was
fine and that I was only being quiet so that I could pay attention to
everything. He kept insisting it was because I didn’t really want to be with
him. Then he told me he felt uncomfortable that I was there with him because he
was worried that people might think that we were looking for an apartment to
share. I told him it didn’t matter what people thought and that I was only
there to help him. Later on he forgot I had to go at 4 and when I reminded him
he became very bitter and distant saying “I was making excuses not to be there”
with him and that I must have been trying to leave because I was angry with him
for smoking THC (marijuana extract) which he had in his rolled cigarettes. I
tried telling him I didn’t know he had put THC in his cigarettes so I couldn’t
possibly be mad about something that I didn’t even know about. Mat pouted like
a small child, treated me with a cold distance and acted as if he didn’t want
to see me anymore that day even after I told him I’d come see him later on.
That same night I received a call from him asking me to come be with him.
All too often
Matija would blow anything I said out of proportion. Sometimes I’d playfully
tease him about something and he would take it as if I was accusing him of
something or trying to make him feel bad about something. If I would joke with
him about something funny he did, Mat would become extremely sensitive and
guarded saying I was “ making him sound crazy”. Once we were driving home from
the grocery store and Mat told me his best friend Greg was coming over for a
visit. I told him I would go for a while and give him some time to hangout with
Greg. This was alarming to him and he demanded to know why I would leave just
because Greg was coming over. I told him to calm down and that I was only going
to leave for a little while because I felt like he and I were together all the
time and that it might be nice for he and Greg to have some “guy time”. “ Guy time” he exclaimed!
“ What do you mean by guy time”? “What do you think we’re gonna do, hold
each others dicks or something”? I was so startled and confused by his
outburst and accusations. Somehow my attempt to make what I viewed as a
considerate gesture was perceived by Mat as a gay slur against him and an
attempt to abandon him. I begin to wonder if Mat was projecting his deepest fears and or insecurities about
himself onto me and onto others around him. Maybe that’s why he always feels
people are accusing him of things he hasn’t done and he worries so much that
people are thinking negative things about him, because deep down he may have
been thinking them himself.
I couldn’t say or
do anything right. If I was there it bothered him, if I wasn’t there it
bothered him, if I showed emotions it bothered him and if I didn’t show enough
emotion it bothered him. In Mat’s mind if I sneezed it meant I was planning on
leaving him. To top off all the madness I was still receiving late night phone
calls from him enthusiastically telling me that he felt “I was an angel sent to
save him”.
Chapter Five -
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner ( The cousin he never wanted to come)
About a
month before his arrival Matija told me he had invited his cousin (named Milan)
from Croatia to come and live with him for 6 months. He said that the move
would help his cousin and would also be helpful to him, as it would keep him
off of drugs and Milan could help him run the company ( Commercial Glazing Concepts) and get things organized . There was even talk of finding someone for his cousin to marry so
that he could legally stay in the country. At first he seemed eager for his cousin
to come but as time went on, once again, he seemed like he was unsure about it
all. He seemed to become upset with the idea of his cousins arrival. He’d
frequently say to me “ shit, why did I invite him here? He's lazy and I don't even know what his work ethic is like”, “ I can’t believe he’s
really coming, this is a mess, what was I thinking? ”, “ I hope he gets a
girlfriend so he’s not bothering me all the time”. I asked him why did he even
invite his cousin to come if he was dreading his arrival that much? He
basically implied that he didn’t know but that he never thought his cousin
would actually be able to get all the papers he needed to come over and now
that he was coming he didn’t know how to handle it. Matija told me his cousin didn't do drugs but did however love to drink. I was confused as to how a party animal cousin who loves to drink and had little (if any) experience in the glazing industry was going to help Matija sober up or run his company, but I trusted that Matija knew what he was doing ( I would later find out that during Milan's 6 month stay, Matija and his cousin flooded the property of a man they were doing business with because apparently the man didn't pay Matija when he wanted to be paid). Mat would however, promise
me on multiple occasions that his cousin moving in would not change anything
between us.
Chapter Six-The Argument and Strange Behavior
The
day before Matija’s cousin came to America Mat and I worked together to prepare
the apartment for Milan’s arrival. While sitting on the couch I tried to share
what I thought would be a sweet moment with Matija by telling him I broke a
rule that I wasn’t supposed to. Mat worried that I had given my phone number to
someone else but I assured him that wasn’t the case. I told him I broke a
personal promise that I had made to myself. I explained that I really liked and
cared for him and I promised myself before he came along that I would never
allow myself to be in that position but I didn’t mind breaking that promise for
him because I felt he was special. To my surprise this sparked what is to date
the most hostile conversation I have ever had with anyone. He lashed out at me, yelling, telling me that
I need to start putting up my emotional wall because he didn’t want to hear
that, telling me he was going to hurt me and that he had a child to feed and
didn’t care about how I felt. He told me he didn’t have a shelf for anyone to
be in his life and that the only reason I cared for him was because I was young
and that when I got older I would see that it’s not important to care for
anyone. He told me it was only okay for me to tell people we were together so
long as he wasn’t around to hear me say it. Matija went on to tell me he didn’t know how
he was going to withstand having me and his cousin around. “ I don’t know what
I’m going to do with him he yelled. I don’t know what I’m going to do with him
and I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. No, I can handle him…It’s you,
you’re the problem”! I asked him why did he feel that we were a problem and why
did he feel the need to choose between us. Mat never answered the question just
went on a rant about moving an island away from everybody. He then asked me if
I could change anything about him what would I change? But then didn’t even let
me answer the question, he just screamed at me telling he wasn’t going to
change for me or for anybody else. I had no clue what he was even talking
about. He told me he felt obligated to have me with him. I asked him why he
felt that way when he was the one who would call, begging me to be with him all
the time? I asked him if he felt like having me around was a mistake, to which
he replied “maybe”. I asked him why did he even ask for my number that day and
why would he keep me with him for months if he didn’t want to know me? He
looked at me angrily and scowled “ Because I get what I want”! I wanted
to be angry, I wanted to yell back but wasn’t sure how to, I wasn’t even sure
what he was angry about. He went on yelling, telling me he’s had this problem
his whole life where people get too attached to him. “You’re just as bad as
Greg” he would yell, “Greg is always around”! “You don’t want Greg around”
I asked? “No”, he yelled back, “never mind, I shouldn’t be talking out loud”. I
then became quiet and unsure of what to say. He got even angrier with me,
telling me I was causing drama like his ex-wife and that he wanted me to act
more like myself. “ Great, now you’re shutting me out” he yelled. I didn’t know
what to do. He continued on his rant. “ I should just tell you to go” he
screamed, “I can’t talk to you when you’re not responding to me”.Then to my surprise he pulled his penis out of his pants, told me he was tired of talking about the subject and I should just give him a blow job. I ignored his disturbing attempt to change the subject. “You won’t
even look at me and it’s making me feel like everything we had is gone” he continued. Then
he started telling me “I was negative because I didn't want to be pregnant and he needed to be around more positive
people”. I was so hurt and confused. All this was coming from a man who just
told me he felt obligated to have me in his life, then 2 seconds later told me
he feared all we had was gone. The
next day he called me at work, he sounded a little paranoid and told me he
wanted me to still come with him to pick up his cousin that night from the
airport. He told me he wanted everything to be the same between us and that he
“ wanted me to want to be with him”. I promised that I truly did want to
be with him. I told myself that the argument that happened the night before was
a result of him feeling stressed and that I should let it go.
That night on the way to the San Francisco airport to pick up his cousin, Matija whimpered the whole way there. He seemed more depressed than ever that he had invited his cousin to come and was wishing he had away out of dealing with Milan. I promised him all would be fine once his cousin got settled in. The minute we got to the airport and united with his cousin Matija’s behavior became even stranger. In less than one second he went from being extremely depressed to putting on what appeared to be a happy front. He was smitten with his cousin and giggled like a schoolgirl at everything his cousin did. I found it to be very odd behavior seeing as how Matija more times than not had a sterner disposition and giggling is something he never did. Nonetheless his cousin seemed sweet enough and Matija treated me no different so I didn’t allow it to alarm me too much.
The next day I barely
heard from Mat but paid it no mind. I knew he was trying to get his cousin
settled so figured I should just be patient. That evening when I was on my way
to my second job he called to tell me he and his cousin were going out clubbing
that night in San Francisco at a place called Ruby Skye and might not be home till late. I told him that was fine just go
and have a good time. I took the rare occurrence of free time to go out with my
friends that night (something I hadn’t done as much since Mat came along). The
next day, morning came and went and I hadn’t heard a peep from Matija. This
surprised me, he had never missed texting me good morning since the day he
started texting me (not even if he was high). By time afternoon rolled around I
texted him just to say “Hi”. After he responded I told him I needed to come
over and get a few things from his house such as my asthma medication. He told
me that was fine. Once I got there
everything seemed fine at first. I gave his cousin a hug and went to the
bedroom to collect some of my stuff. Mat came into the room a few minutes later
to see what I was up to. He starred at me collecting my things. “ So you’re
moving out, “ he said. “ No no , I’m not moving out” I responded (not that I
was ever living there). I just need to get some of my stuff I told him. “Well
just leave the stuff you don’t need right away and take the stuff that you do
need right now”. I agreed that was a good idea. He continued to stare at me for
a while, then out of nowhere his temper and emotions flared. “ You’re mad” he cried out, “you’re mad that
I went out with my cousin last night”. “No I’m not” I responded. “Just because
I’m getting some of my things doesn’t mean that I’m mad”. “I just don’t know if
you’re going to be out late again and so I need to make sure I have some of the
important stuff I need like my asthma meds and night retainer”. “ Whatever” Matija
screamed back, “I don’t care what you do, I don’t care if you’re here or not,
“if you’re gone I won’t even miss you”. I couldn’t believe what he just said
and I told him to stop saying mean things to me. “Yeah well, maybe I’d miss you
for 3 days but after that I won’t miss you at all, I don’t care”! " Look, last night I was out without you and I felt bad, I felt bad that I was out without you. “I don’t even care if my cousin is here” he screamed! Then he went on some tangent about how he was tired of having to go
places with his cousin. He then started running into his cousins room histerically laughing about how the hookers out side of the club were charging $1000 dollars per person. I told him to calm down. I promised him I wasn’t mad
and that I just needed to get some stuff from his house that’s all. But he
continued to yell, frantically telling me about how he felt bad that he went
out without me the night before and that he didn’t want to feel bad. I couldn’t
understand why he felt bad. I told him there was nothing wrong with him going
out to spend time with his cousin and friends. I also reminded him that the
last time I offered him space to be with his friends he got angry and thought I
was trying to leave him. Now that he had gone out he was angry and still thought
I was trying to leave him. I told him this was not rational and to calm down
because he was thinking too much. “I don’t want to have to think” he screamed
back! This was worse than the fight
before, I couldn’t even get him to listen. He started speed walking around the
room and then started singing a song. “I wanna be a baller, I wanna be a
shot caller”, (A song by Rap artist Lil Troy) he sang out loudly over me as I tried to talk.
I begged him to sit down so we could talk, I begged him to stop acting like he
was 5 years old so we could be adult about this and find out what was really
bothering him. He yelled at me telling me “he didn’t want a girlfriend” and
that “I needed to go think about if I could handle him the way that he is”. His
energy was very farral and much more agitated than usual. I told him regardless
of what happens we at least need to talk this over. But then he started speed
walking around the room again. It was horrible; it was like trying to control a
6foot tall hyper active 3 year old. I couldn’t even reason with him like an
adult. Every time I tried to say something he just kept saying, “I need to go,
I need to go my cousin is hungry”. There was plenty of food in the refrigerator,
so why he was treating it as if it was more important than our situation I don’t
know. I was so outdone by the all that was happening I stood with my back up
against a wall. I guess my face appeared to be sad but in reality it was the
look of shock. Matija came over to where I was standing with my back against
the wall. He placed his hands on my shoulders and leaned down so that his face
was directly in front mine. He creased up his bottom lip and made in quiver. “
Aw, what are u gonna cry now” he taunted in a high pitched voice?“ Why are you
gonna cry, why are u sad because you love me, huh is that it, you’re sad
because you love me”? His eyes were filled with nothing but pure meanness. It’s
like we were kids on a playground and he was the big bully that went around
trying to terrorize all the smaller kids just because he felt like it. Then he began making sniffing and whining
noises imitating someone who was crying. “I never said anything about loving you” I
tried to argue back. “Don’t cry” he snapped; “don’t cry”! The look on his face
went from that of a person falsely crying to look of a harsh abusive man. “I
should tell you to go” he continued to yell, “you’re too attached me”. “Why
does everyone have to be so attached to me” he whined as the laid down on the
bed and buried his face in a pillow? “Never mind, you can stay but I’m going to
draw up contracts” he said cockily. “Contracts” I asked? “Yeah there will be
contracts between us” he barked but he never specified what the contracts would
entail. “ Why are you being such a jerk” I cried out? “ “Because I am a jerk”
he answered. “I’m an asshole; I’m crazy like my mother. Maybe if I were
more like my father things would be different”. “You should just go” he started
yelling again, “I don’t care if you’re here”.
He stood back up and held me close, he began giving me kisses after
every other word he said to me. "Why does everyone fall in love with me" he whined? “If you want me to go then why are you kissing
me” I asked? He jumped back from me as if he didn’t even realize what he was
doing. “I’m leaving now my cousin needs food”. I sat down at the edge of his
bed. I felt too catatonic to move. “If you’re going to stay” he snapped “make
sure u only lock the bottom lock to the door and not the top lock when you
leave, other wise you will lock me out of the house”. “I don’t care if you
go, and take what you want, just make sure to leave your hair moose, I’m out of
moose so I’m going to need it”. He headed for the door bedroom door, looked
back at me one last time and said “ you see what I’m like don’t you, you see
what I’m like but it’s not my fault cause I told you I’m crazy”. Then together
he and his cousin walked out of the front door laughing and talking as if
nothing had ever happened.
I sat there a
while longer at the edge of the bed. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel
and what I was supposed to think. I wanted to cry but I was too stunned for any
tears to come out. I wanted to trash his
house but didn’t have the energy. I wanted to get him back but couldn’t think
of anything to do. All I could do was sit there trembling and reflect on what
just happened. The scariest thing was, at that moment and even to this day I
don’t know what triggered that fight. All I know is, I was there getting my
asthma medications and night retainer, he took it as a sign of me abandoning
him and went ballistic. It wasn’t just the argument that stunned me, it was how
ignorant and childish his behavior was. This man who was many years older than
me couldn’t even argue like an adult. I was trying to reason out how going to
get his cousin food and hair moose had suddenly become more important in his
head than working things out with a girl (that up until the day his cousin got
here) he usually would panic without. I wondered how could he say such hurtful
things. I started to think of his ex- wife and wondered if she left him because
he acted crazy toward her the same way he had just done toward me.
I collected just
enough strength to stand up from the bed. I deleted all of his pictures and his
phone number from my phone. I packed all of my belongings making sure to leave
no trace of me having been there. I did however leave my hair moose. I figured
if the moose was more important to him than me then he should keep it. I said
goodbye to his dog and left.
About an hour
later I start receiving text messages from him. But the odd thing was he never
once bothered to call or even text me using words. All of his text had
emoticons on them, happy faces, sad faces and the like. A little later he
texted me a picture of Oreos (my favorite cookie) sitting on the bed in the
exact same spot that he last saw me when he left. I was too hurt to reply. I ignored his text
for the next few days and still none of his messages contained any words.
Eventually that Monday I made up in my mind that I should go try and work
things out with him. I convinced myself that maybe he acted that way because of
all the stress that came as a result of his cousin coming and maybe he just
needed some time to relax.
I asked him to
meet me somewhere so that we could talk but he claimed he’d had too much to
drink and couldn’t drive to meet me. So once again I would have to go to him. When
I went to see him I decided in my mind to let by gone’s be by gone’s. I wasn’t
going to show anger toward him or tell him off. I felt that maybe if I went
with the intent to listen and understand, that he wouldn’t feel so stressed out
and we could finally discuss things rationally. Although calmer, the
conversation really was not a break through at all. Matija started the
conversation by telling me he and his cousin had plans to go to Danville soon
(so basically he was not willing to give me the time I deserved), then brashly asked
me what I wanted from him. He told me he didn’t know what his cousin was going
to do while he was here and so he didn’t know what he was going to do. I
couldn’t figure out why his decisions about us had to be based on what his
cousin was going to do but for some reason that seemed to be the case. He was
still combating every question I asked with “I don’t know” or “I don’t care”.
He told me that I wasn’t listening to him and that I was with him too much.
When I asked why, if he felt that way did he call me every single day asking me
to be with him? He didn’t answer. I asked him why did he text me a picture of Oreo's instead of just talking to me like a normal person. He starred at me and said…" the Oreo's were for you. I thought you were gonna be there when I got back". I couldn't even begin to figure out how or why this would make sense seeing as how he told me to go. He then told me “part of the problem was
because I was there so much it started to remind him of when his ex wife was
there all the time and how she kept him in a cage”. I explained to him that
I never tried to keep him in a cage and that every time I would suggest he go
out and do something he’d tell me it was just better if he stayed in with me so
that he didn’t go use drugs or get into any other kinds of legal trouble. He
went on about how my being in his life kept him from getting work done and how
he couldn’t get enough sleep with me in his life. It was my fault that he
couldn’t get his child to school on time. I tried to remind him that he was not
getting her to school on time long before he met me and that I had been the one
for the last few months calling to wake him up to make sure he did get her
there on time. But according to him I was causing him to be even later. It
didn’t seem as if he truly wanted to work things out or give them closure. He
went on to say that I was too invested in our relationship and that I would get
hurt in all of this. However, he would consistently remind me that he
couldn’t get hurt, so I would be suffering alone. He reminded me that he was incapable of
missing me and so all the feelings in our situation were one sided. Matija then
blamed the entire existence of our relationship on me, denying he had ever
asked me out on a date in the first place. When I showed him a text from months
prior when he first asked me he tried turning the situation against again and
said “ well you were still the first person to make up nic -names, so it’s
still your fault”. Somehow in his mind I
had become the bad guy. I had gone from the person he needed most, to the
person that was most in his way. What inspired this change, I will never know?
For some reason after telling me all of this he went on another one of his
mindless rants. This time it was about a guy at some bar that was “trying to
fight him” the night before and how it seemed “that everybody wants to fight
him”. In Matija’s mind, it was he
against the world. After our
talk, it seemed as if we had worked things out at least a little bit. But then
he asked me not to stay late telling me he and his cousin needed to go to bed
early so they could be rested for work the next day. By time the next day
rolled around I made up in my mind that things just weren’t meant to work out
between us. But then Matija started texting me out of the clear blue, just
making small talk. I responded thinking maybe he was trying to work things out
in his own way. At one point after a sweet conversation I texted him a picture
of a heart. He texted me back telling me it was a trap. Confused by his
reaction the next day I tried the same thing just to see what his response would
be. He texted me back saying, “ I’m sorry but there is no love in my heart,
I’m heartless”. We tried talking about it on the phone but he still wasn’t
making any sense. He then asked me"even if we don't talk anymore can I still get laid"? I was baffled by how rude and selfish the question was. I told him " no, from now on he'd have to pay someone for the service". "Oh, I see how it is" he responded nonchalantly" . I really had, had enough of his antics at this point and
decided to leave it be.
Matija still
continued to text me day after day. He and I had made plans for the 4th
of July long before his cousin came. But since things were now so awkward
between us I decided not to mention it. I didn’t hear from him at all that day
so a few friends and myself went to Reno. At 1:25 in the morning I get a text
from him saying "Happy 5th of July". I couldn’t tell if he was trying
to be rude or funny. He asked me did I go to Berkeley to see the fireworks from
the marina (which is what we had planned to do together). I told him no and
that I went to Reno instead. He pouted and asked why was he not invited a long?
A day later he would text me a love song.
I made fun of the song (out of frustration) but this seemed to upset
him. He texted me for a couple more days and then all communication stopped completely.
But the strange thing is I never stopped seeing him.
Chapter Seven - The Odd Drive By’s
Matija continued
to drive past my work in Pleasanton every single day. He didn’t text, didn’t
call, didn’t wave as he drove past, nothing, but it seemed as if he was determined
to make himself seen on a daily basis. I tried to make excuses for these appearances.
I would tell myself he was only driving by because his parents just lived a
little ways up the road from where I worked. But knowing this didn’t make the
experience of him driving by any less odd. Just because his parents lived close
by did not mean that he needed to pass my store on daily basis. He never used
to drive past the store than frequently…and when he did he would at least
acknowledge me. There were many other
ways to get to his parents house where he could avoid passing by. For the life
of me I could not figure out how you go from talking to a person every single
day to driving past their work pretending that you don’t know they exist and
for seemingly no reason. From time to time I'd also see him drive past my house. This made the situation even more stressful.
Chapter Eight
Who Needs a Girlfriend when You’ve Got Your
Cousin
One of the oddest things about this whole situation was the way
Matija seemed to so easily replace me when his cousin arrived. It didn’t even
take a full 24 hours after his cousin’s arrival for him to disown me and latch
onto his cousin. I couldn’t explain it. He and his cousin began doing many of
the same things we did together and going many of the same places. It made no
sense and I had never heard of a man replacing a girl he had gotten close to
with a male cousin. Some of my friends and people that knew of my situation
started to suggest that maybe Matija was secretly gay. They explained to me
that this theory would help to make sense of his high level of homophobia and
his willingness to push me out of his life once his cousin came. "It would also
explain why he used so many drugs while married" another friend of mine pointed
out to me. “There is something about himself that he can’t deal with and he
can’t really handle being with women". "It would also explain why he avoided
sexual contact so often". I wasn’t sure if this was true or not but so many of
my friends and people who knew about he and I were coming up with this same
theory. I was starting to believe it myself. I would however try to explain to
people that Matija has dealt with prostitutes before and regularly goes to
strip clubs and goes to massage parlors to receive genital stimulation (Happy Endings).
But people…including gay men warned me that those were all the signs of a man
trying to figure out his true sexual identity.
Chapter Nine - A Twisted Game Called Mind Fuck
( 6 months of Matija's Madness )
Matija and sometimes his cousin together would
continue to drive past my store on a regular basis. 25 days went by without
hearing a word from him. Then at random he turned up at my store. He didn’t
bother to apologize for anything he had done, didn’t bother to explain any of
his strange behavior or why he hadn’t spoken to me in days. He just stood their
starring at me with a twinkle in his eye as if he still cared. He told me he
would come back soon to visit me but had to go as he was in a rush.
The days went past
and Mat continued his daily drive by’s. A week since his visit to me had passed
and I still heard nothing from him. At one point he and I came to a four way
stop together in down town Pleasanton. I am certain he saw me but continued to
drive right past without so much as a wave. A couple days later I saw his work
truck sitting at a stop light by my store while I was outside cleaning. The
light turned green and he drove right past as if he knew nothing of my existence.
This type of behavior continued on for 5 weeks.
Finally I decided
to text him. I figured maybe it was safe to try and reach out to him again.
This time it wasn’t about being together and fixing our relationship. I just
wanted to understand why he would drive past me everyday ignoring me, come by
to visit me one day and then continue driving past me like we were strangers.
When I texted him he responded right away and seemed thrilled to hear from me
telling me “to come out side and wave he was driving past my store”. Then the
conversation took a strange turn. He told me his cousin said hello and ended
the conversation by saying have a nice day…keep in touch. Later, I texted him
to find out what “ keep in touch” means. His response was as obscure as they
come. He texted me back something that sounded like he got it from a self help
book. It read, “ People come into each others lives for a reason. It may or may
not necessarily be that the relationship is going to end up the way that it
began but in time we will come to realize why we know each other”. “I know I
ended up being somewhat cold to you and I possibly took advantage of your
feelings but I always tried to be honest”. Now, more confused than ever I asked
him to call me to try and figure things out. He called and the oddest part was
once he did it’s like nothing ever happened. We were laughing and talking just
as we always had. I asked him why he was driving by everyday and why he didn’t
come back when he said he would. Everything he said was very calm and convincing.
“It’s just the way it happened” he said. “The day I came by my cousin wasn’t
with me and all the other times my cousin is with me so I can’t stop by”. He
went on to explain that he drives past everyday because he has to drop off or
pick up his kid from his parents house. “I’m not an asshole” he
protested (even though I hadn’t called him one) and continued to insist that I
stay in touch with him. Matija then went on bragging about he and his cousin had flooded a customers home property and stole watermelon from the man's backyard when he felt he didn't receive payment fast enough.
After hanging up
at the end of the phone call, it dawned on me just what little sense any of the
conversation made. So for some odd reason he couldn’t come by because of his
cousin and he drove past everyday because of his child “, which when I thought
about it made no sense because his kid had been in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe all
that time”. Nothing was adding up and I don’t think Matija wanted it to. The
day after our talk I no longer saw Matija drive by. I decided to no longer
contact him as I didn’t want to put effort into being friends with someone who
wasn’t willing to try at all.
A month went by
before I heard anything from Mat. One day out of nowhere I got a text from him
telling me he had seen my manager. I guess that was his way of telling me he came
by my work. I decided for the first time not to respond to him. After 2 days of
not hearing from me, all of a sudden he began driving past my store again. I
replied to his text and it seemed as if he was egging the conversation on for a
few days. I chose to ignore him and changed my number, yet he continued to
drive by. I couldn’t figure out why he would come by my job on a day when I
clearly wasn’t there because my vehicle was not parked out front. But then
drive past my store everyday, see that I’m there but not come in.
A few days later
he did stop in without warning. Now 36 years old, he made small talk and gave
me a hug before he left. He continued to drive by everyday and then stopped in
again on Thanksgiving. I tried to treat him as nothing more than a customer. He
told me he’d be spending the day at his parent’s house. Before he left he arrogantly
told me to cheer up (in regards to the sad look on my face) and then left. Although he told me he was spending the day
at his parents house he and his cousin continued to drive past my store every
hour or so. It was like they were out just driving in circles. When my shift at
the store ended, he and his cousin ‘just
so happened’ to drive right past as I was leaving. As I was driving home I
saw he and his cousin waiting right at the Hopyard freeway exit, an exit I
drive past to get home everyday. Their truck turned behind me and followed me
down the street. They pulled over into a turning lane, which was to the right
side of me. I didn’t look over and pretended not to see them. I’m certain I was being followed, as I
couldn’t believe that was just a random coincidence.
I hated the whole
situation. It was running and ruining my life. I decided to call Matija and see if he and I
could sit down together and talk about all that had gone on. At this point I
just wanted answers. I had never encountered such strange behavior and people
were starting to worry about my safety. I finally did muster up the courage to
call him. He seemed suspicious of my phone call and asked why did I want to
talk to him? He asked is if there was “anything he needed to prep for”? To my
surprise he did agree to meet me when he returned for his trip to Los Angeles
with his cousin…(a trip I had once asked him to take with me). He and I agreed
to meet at a pizza place in down town Pleasanton after my work ended at 2pm.
Chapter Ten
A Discussion with Judas
{I don’t care about
anyone…not even my family}
Once again Matija proved that he was unwilling
to give me the time I deserved when instead of meeting me at the pizza place like
we planned he pulled up to my work an hour early telling me he had plans in San
Jose and couldn’t stick around to deal with me that day. In a rush he asked me
very brisk and coldly so what did you want to talk about? Without much time to ease
into the conversation as I had planned, I blurted out, “I just wanted to know
why you did what you did to me”? “I want to know why you went crazy on me when
your cousin came and why you’ve been acting weird because this whole thing has
been pretty upsetting and strange for me”. With no hesitation he said, “you
want the truth”? “Of course” I answered.
Matija- Ok, I screwed you over.
Me (Jay)- What do you mean?
Matija- Yeah, I was just using you.
Me(Jay)- What do you mean you were just
using me?
Matija- I was just using you.
Me(Jay)- For what ?
Matija- I don’t know, to feel better.
(I just stood
there starring, unsure of how to react.)
Matija- It was a fucked up thing to
do and I wouldn’t have liked it if someone did it to me but I did it to you
because that’s just how I am.
Me (Jay)- Why me? I mean I wasn’t
bothering you; I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. You pushed your way into my
life.
Matija- Yeah I know that. And I don’t
know. Maybe it was your personality, I saw something in you. Look, I used you,
just get that through your head. Let me guess, I fucked you up
psychologically right? Fuck
…but that’s just how I am.
Me (Jay)- And you don’t care?
Matija- No, I don’t care.
Me (Jay)- Do you care about anybody?
Matija –Nope. It’s how I am. I hurt
everybody. It’s always been that way, ever since I was a kid.
Me (Jay) – Don’t you want to fix that?
I mean do you really want to go through life hurting people like that?
Matija- My ex-wife already tried to fix
it. She took me to a shrink and they were going to put me on pills.
Me (Jay)- What did they diagnose you
with?
Matija- I don’t know, I didn’t stick
around long enough to find out. We went twice and by the end I confused the
shrink. And I’m not gonna take those pills and all that shit doctors give
people. I can just self medicate. It’s why I use the drugs; they are the only
thing that help.
Me (Jay)- I have a theory. Are you gay?
Cause the way you ran from me and the way you could never seem to settle down
with you ex-wife made me think that you might have a hard time being with
women. Or maybe you’re bisexual?
Matija- No, I’m not gay…I don’t
think so. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll take those pills my ex-wife wanted
me to take and then I’ll fuck a guy. But whatever, tell yourself whatever make
you feel better.
Me (Jay)- This is not about telling
myself something to make myself feel better. I just want some truth from all of
this.
Matija- Well the truth is that I used
you. You’re going to be devastated but
I
used you until I didn’t need you anymore and then I got rid of you.
But you should feel better knowing that you made me feel better. I can't believe you think I'm bisexual (nervous chuckle).
Me (Jay)- I really should have hurt you
back for what you did to me.
Matija- Yeah, okay, do whatever you
want to me but just keep in mind I have a kid and if you do something to me it
will hurt her. Anyways, I have to go, I’m supposed to be in San Jose.
Me (Jay)- I don’t care, you owe this to
me. I want to solve this before the New Year comes in. I mean do you care about
anybody?
Matija- No, I told you I don’t care
about anybody.
Me (Jay)- How can you be like that? I
mean what the heck?
Matija- I don’t know. I’ve always been
like that, ever since I was a kid. I get a pet, I get bored with it, I get
another pet, I get bored with it and so on.
Me (Jay)- Um, that’s really sick and
sad.
Matija- Yeah well it’s how I am. I
think it’s because of everything that my ex-wife did to me. I can’t believe she
cut up my green card and then she turned her back on me. I went numb after
that. Plus everything else I’ve been through. I never wanted to come to this
country. My family made me come here in 8th grade and they knew I
didn’t want to be here. I can’t fit in with Americans. You know my father
almost moved us to New Zealand instead. Maybe I would have turned out better if
we had moved there. Then I wouldn’t have been stuck in America.
Me (Jay)- That’s it? Because you were
forced to move here when you were a child and because of a divorce you think
you have the right to go around and hurt people when you feel like it?
Matija- I guess. Everyone else who
moved here when they were young turned out normal and I didn’t. I know one day
I will pay for all the bad things I do. But I don’t care. I file it away in the
back of my head and don’t think about it. I’m self-destructive, you have to
understand that.
Me (Jay)- Do you at least care about
your friends?
Matija- I don’t have any friends.
Me (Jay)- Yeah you do, you talk about
them all the time. What about Greg? He’s like your best bud.
Matija- I don’t even talk to Greg
anymore. Something personal got in the way of work and now we don’t talk.
Me (Jay)- But he’s been your best
friend since like high school and he always comes to your house to play video
games.
Matija- Yeah I know.
Me(Jay) – And you don’t care if you fix
things with him?
Matija- No, I don’t care about Greg.
Me (Jay)- Don’t memories mean anything
to you?
Matija- They would to a normal person,
but I’m not normal so no they don’t.
Me (Jay)- I thought what you did to me
was bad. But treating Greg like this is even worse. I mean you guys have known
each other for so long. So nobody at all matters to you then?
Matija- Well, I have a mother, a
father, a brother, and a sister, I care about them…because that’s the way it
works.
Me (Jay)- That’s the way it works? It
sounds like you feel obligated to care about your family.
Matija- Yeah well, maybe I do. I’m
fucked up like that.
Me (Jay)- Why did you get mad at me
like that all of a sudden? I mean if you didn’t want me there you could have
just told me you needed a little space. You didn’t have to act like that.
Matija- I was never mad at you, I just
sick of people. And maybe I act like that because that’s how my mother is. She
hurts people and doesn’t care. But whatever, I was using you remember. And
whatever happened between us just get over it. I feel like you want something
from me.
Me (Jay) – What do you think I want?
Matija- I don’t know, a romantic
relationship or something.
Me (Jay)- That’s not what I’m after
here. I just wanted to make peace with this and try to figure out what to do
with you. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care about you still. I just can’t
figure out what we are. Are we friends, are we not talking anymore? How does
this work? I just think it’s sad that two people could be so close and for no
reason at all just stop talking.
Matija- I don’t care what we are or
what happens to us. It’s up to you. You know how I feel, I don’t care.
Me (Jay)- I am sick of you saying you
don’t care. How can you be so heartless like that? Everybody needs friends. I
mean when people hug you don’t you feel anything at all?
Matija- Feel what? (blank stare)
Me (Jay)- I didn’t want to believe this
because I always thought you had some good in you, but now I’m not sure.
Matija- I am good but I’m drawn to the
dark side too. I’m like half evil or something. It’s duel, I have split personalities
or something.
Me (Jay)- Are you at least sober now?
Matija- Yeah, I have to be. I’m 100
percent sober.
Me (Jay)-That’s good.
Matija- Wait, I lied to you. I did do
some cocaine not long ago.
Me (Jay)- So then you’re not really
sober. Does your cousin know now?
Matija- Nope, he doesn’t know. I’m that
good at hiding it.
Me (Jay)- Are you bipolar or something?
Matija- Maybe, who knows? I don’t know.
I’m just trying to take care of my kid so I can go self-destruct later.
Me (Jay)- Do you even care about
yourself?
Matija- No, I don’t care about myself.
I would have died by now but I’m stuck with people counting on me.
Me (Jay)- Why didn’t you at least
apologize to me about everything when you would come by the store?
Matija- Yeah, I never told you I’m
sorry. I’ll say it now even though it’s too late. But here’s the thing. I
should have been a lesson to you and it should make you stronger. And like I
said, at least you made me feel better. If nothing else, that should make you
feel good about this.
Me (Jay)- Yeah well, people aren’t
drugs you know. They aren’t there just to make you feel better and then when you’re
done with them you throw them away. That’s not how life works. It sounds like
you just use everybody.
Matija- Yeah I do.
Me (Jay)- That’s horrible. You have no
concern for others; you have no sense of personal responsibility!
(At this point Matija’ s face broke into a
sly smile.)
Matija- Go on, insult me. There’s no
insult you can give me that I haven’t already heard.
Me (Jay)- Look whatever. Just tell me
one thing. Why did you start texting me again a while back?
Matija- When did I text you?
Me (Jay) Um…you started texting me a
while ago before I changed my number.
Matija- Who knows why I do what I do.
Just forget about it and don’t try and make sense of anything. But I’m in a
hurry so I have to go. I hope this talk made you feel better.
Me (Jay)- You do realize your behavior
is strange even for somebody on drugs right?
Matija-Yeah well, I’m one for the
books.
It was safe to say
that this was the strangest conversation I’d ever had. It was going nowhere and
Matija truly didn’t seem to care. Even though he offered me an apology, it was
the most empty hearted sorry I had ever received. There was not a speck of
remorse in his demeanor anywhere. Speechless and outdone there was nothing more
for me to say. I tried everything that I could and still I could not make one
human connection with this man regardless of any efforts that I made. Oddly
enough we hugged and he drove off. Stupid as it sounds I sent him a text
shortly after thanking him for coming by. Nothing made sense and it seemed the
more I talked to him the more confusing things got.
I walked around
for days after replaying everything in my head. Trying to figure out how someone
could so randomly go from hot to cold the way Mat did without warning. How
could someone cut off their best friend and not care, how could someone feel obligated
to care about their own family, how could a person deliberately hurt someone
the way that he did and then feel that hiding behind a small child for cover
was a respectable way to save himself from the consequences of all that he’s
done, and how could someone just look another person in the face that they
seemed to care about and just blatantly say “ I used you until I didn’t need you anymore and then I got rid of you”?
What's worse is the way he seemed to blame his strange behavior on everything and everyone else. It was his ex- wife's fault for leaving him, It was his sisters fault for loving the Jonas Brothers, it was his mother's fault for being crazy, it was his father's fault for not moving him to New Zealand, It was America's fault for being filled with idiots. It was everyone's fault except his own. It lead me to wonder who raised this person? What kind of family could produce such a heartless being? I thought more about his ex-wife, I thought about how he had labeled her as cold hearted and controlling. Since I had known him he'd blamed her for all of his problems. I regretted judging this woman. He blamed her for all of his issues and painted me as a hero there to save the day, only to later turn around and blame me the same way he had done her.
What's worse is the way he seemed to blame his strange behavior on everything and everyone else. It was his ex- wife's fault for leaving him, It was his sisters fault for loving the Jonas Brothers, it was his mother's fault for being crazy, it was his father's fault for not moving him to New Zealand, It was America's fault for being filled with idiots. It was everyone's fault except his own. It lead me to wonder who raised this person? What kind of family could produce such a heartless being? I thought more about his ex-wife, I thought about how he had labeled her as cold hearted and controlling. Since I had known him he'd blamed her for all of his problems. I regretted judging this woman. He blamed her for all of his issues and painted me as a hero there to save the day, only to later turn around and blame me the same way he had done her.
Although I didn’t
allow Matija to see my true feelings, I was indeed devastated. What kind of
person had I been dealing with? The only thing I knew for sure was that Matija Turkalj was the closest thing to a wolf in sheeps clothing that I had ever met. PART TWO
( THE DAMAGE OF A SOCIOPATH)
Unraveling of a Happy Person
Sadly there are no words that can fully help me describe the amount of mental and emotional pain that Matija Turkalj put me through. The worst part is I wasn’t even sure what happened. There were no real issues in our relationship, there was no reason as to why we couldn’t get along, there was no issue that we disagreed on to a point of no reconciliation and apparently there was no loss of attraction on either side of the relationship. None of the usual things that would traditionally tear a standard couple apart actually occurred, Matija just seemed to look for strange excuses to sabotage the relationship. As far as I knew he just went mad one day and that was all there was to it. This mans cold behavior and inexplicable rapid personality changes left me in a catatonic state and inflicted more mental trauma upon me than law will allow. The pain was so overcoming that I started to physically feel the damage. It felt like we were two boxers in a ring and he brutally beat me unconscious. It felt like he took a bucket of acid and threw it all over my body. I felt like someone had peeled all the skin off my body and then poured salt all over my open flesh. I carried the pain with me everywhere. When I went to bed I couldn’t sleep because I kept reliving everything I had been through and the pain was very alive. On the rare occasion that I did sleep I dreamt of all the horrible things he put me through. When I would wake up I could barely move and I was angry with myself for still being alive. I was not suicidal but the idea of dying was extremely appealing to me. Everything hurt. Brushing my teeth hurt, my mind hurt, talking on the phone hurt, drinking water hurt, being awake was torture. I had never dealt with depression before and even the people around me who had experience with depression admittedly told me that my case of it was pretty bad and unstable. It got so bad I quit my beloved part time job at the restaurant without warning or explanation. I was once one of their most responsible and reliable workers and I quit without even so much as a good bye to a group of co-workers that loved me like family. It was a friend/ customer from the restaurant that went out of his way to find me just to make sure I was okay. He told me to at least contact everyone at the restaurant and let them know I was all right as they were all worried sick. I wanted to but couldn’t face anybody. The worst part is I never intended to quit, but I just couldn’t make myself call or show up.
My job at
the convenient store began to suffer too. Where I once loved being there I
could not longer handle working there. I thought about quitting many times.
Everything that I once loved about that job I now hated (I partly blamed the
low status of the job for the reason Matija wouldn’t talk to me). Where dealing
with so many customers on a day-to-day basis once fed my extroverted appetite
for socializing, it was now an angering burden to bare. Having to deal with so
many people made me feel Closter phobic. His cruel daily drive by’s past my
station made the situation even worse and raised my anxiety levels. So many
mornings I decided I would not go into work anymore to avoid the torture. The
only thing that kept me there was the fact that it was the only job I had left
and I needed the money. But even money was loosing its value to me.
I’ll be Okay…I Think
I made up in my mind that I would be strong.
I had been heart broken before and survived it so surly I could make it through
this…right? I tried to fake my way through the pain, as the old saying goes
“fake it till you make it”. I faked being happy in front of customers, laughing
and giggling acting as if I was happy to assist them, all while on the inside I
was bleeding to death. My customers would compliment me on my wonderful
customer service skills. They had no idea that I wanted to stab them for having
the audacity to aggravate me at this unraveling point in my life. I would not
show my friends I was suffering either. I refused to slow down in my social
activities. I went to every get together, every luncheon, every party, every
concert and every fundraiser that I was invited to. The way to get through this
I told myself was not to go under but to keep striving. I boasted to my one
friend who knew what I was going through that I would not stop living my life
because of Mat, that I would not let him defeat me. “ Good, good” my friend
would cheer in support of my determination. But as the Baby Face song goes “I
pretend that I’m glad you went away, these four walls close in more everyday
and I’m dying inside but nobody knows it but me”. I even went on a road trip
with my friend that had been planned months in advance. You’d think that going cross-country
and a change of scenery would be all the remedy I needed to bounce back from
this ordeal. But if anything I was healing in reverse and the pain got worse. I
had no clue what to do.
My emotional demise was becoming more apparent when one day at work a slightly grouchy customer was attacked by me with great verbal hostility. Astonished by my own level of aggression and even more astonished at how much I enjoyed being that ruthless toward another human being I knew I wasn’t getting better and I was not by any means okay. I begin to shut down. I was so confused and broken over what was happening. I realized that the whole situation was exhausting me and I no longer had the strength or emotional resources to even pretend I was all right. I couldn’t fake a smile anymore; I couldn’t pretend I wanted to hangout with friends anymore, I didn’t even want to force myself to eat. To avoid sunlight and seeing Matija and his cousin drive by everyday I started sitting in the stores cold dark storage room away from everything and everyone where I could hurt alone. While in the darkness all day I tried to use the time to meditate on my feelings.
No, I am NOT Okay
My emotional demise was becoming more apparent when one day at work a slightly grouchy customer was attacked by me with great verbal hostility. Astonished by my own level of aggression and even more astonished at how much I enjoyed being that ruthless toward another human being I knew I wasn’t getting better and I was not by any means okay. I begin to shut down. I was so confused and broken over what was happening. I realized that the whole situation was exhausting me and I no longer had the strength or emotional resources to even pretend I was all right. I couldn’t fake a smile anymore; I couldn’t pretend I wanted to hangout with friends anymore, I didn’t even want to force myself to eat. To avoid sunlight and seeing Matija and his cousin drive by everyday I started sitting in the stores cold dark storage room away from everything and everyone where I could hurt alone. While in the darkness all day I tried to use the time to meditate on my feelings.
I Can’t Talk About it, I Have to Protect Him
I wanted to talk to
someone, anyone, surly someone must have had answers, a helpful thought or
opinion. But I couldn’t talk to anyone, not while I still had his best interest
at heart. The Tri valley is a small place and I didn’t want to make the mistake
of talking to someone who knew him, his family, or of his company. I still
cared about him and couldn’t stand the thought of making him look bad. He had
so trusted me with things about himself that he didn’t want to tell anyone
else. Although I was the one suffering, maintaining his trust remained very
important to me. I was certain there had to be a reason for why he treated me
the way he did, for some reason I still believed he was a good person. Talking
about it with others was also difficult because I was worried about how it
would reflect on me. How would people see me as a person if they knew I had
been involved with a drug user? I feared of distorting anyone’s image of me.
Even Faith was Failing Me
I had always believed in God and was
raised to believe that through talking to him all problems could be solved. I
begin praying every night and everyday. I prayed that God would take the hurt
out of my heart and out of my mind, I prayed that this situation would not
break my confidence or take away my joy, I prayed for Matija to heal as a
person so that maybe one day he would come and talk to me and at least explain
things so I could have some understanding of it all. I gave up swearing and
promised God that I’d be a better person if he would just help me through this.
A frequent customer who happened to be a Jehovah’s Witness gave me a bible one
day at random as a gift. I was never one to sit around and read the bible but
at this point I would try anything. I thought that maybe if I searched the
bible long enough I’d come across some magical scripture that would help me to
forgive, forget, become whole and move on again. But even the Lord seemed to be
out of ideas on how to help with this situation.
Murder was the Case (Death by Matija)
My quest to find
understanding of what happened to me and how to heal had become a wild goose
chase that was getting me nowhere. In trying to find peace I had become fiercely
angry. In trying to understand I had become hopelessly confused, in trying to
become whole I had shattered into a million little glass pieces. I had no more
patience to try and be Holy about this or to try and be loving and forgiving.
My digression was not just on the inside but was becoming noticeable on the
outside as well. My skin lost its glow and my body dropped much needed weight.
I wasn’t just dying on the inside anymore, I was dead and Matija Turkalj was my
killer. He killed my higher emotions, he killed myself respect, he killed my
ability to love or even receive love. I could no longer even feel love toward
my own family members anymore. He killed my joy for life, he killed my trust,
he killed my ability to believe that Jesus loves me, he killed what little
faith I had in men, he killed my faith in people, he killed my peace at mind,
he killed the year that was supposed to be my best. All of my joy for waking up
in the morning, the excitement I had for the future, my spirit and my belief
that it pays to be a good person in life, those were all things that were
killed off by him as well. Not only did he kill who I was but he killed who I
was becoming and everything that I could have been. He took my ability to be
anything to myself and anything that I could have been to someone else. As for
my smile, my voice and my self worth, Matija had stolen them all and vanished
like a dope fiend thief in the night.
Human Meth
Matija once told me when we
were together that crystal meth is the worst drug that he does. “It’s the worst
drug he said because when he takes it the drug leaves no soul and all that’s
left is the shell of a person”. I have never done meth in my life, but that is
exactly how I felt. Matija Turkalj was my emotional meth and just like all
other drugs do, he infiltrated my life, made me high, made everything seem
wonderful, confused me, destroyed everything I ever had and then left me for
dead.
Why Does Nobody have Answers ?
I became desperate and decided I had to talk
to someone, anyone who would listen. Most women I talked to all had horrible
stories about men that they were evolved with and they would all say the same
thing at first “jerks are always going to be out there, so buck up and be
strong”. But when I would go further into details about Matija’s erratic,
hurtful behavior and unstable emotions; even the most abused of women that I spoke
to became confused and alarmed. They all arrived at the same conclusion that
something was less than normal about Matija’s behavior or something was (for a
lack of better words) “strange about him”. I talked to old women, young women,
women of different races and cultures, still nobody could understand this man.
Women had no answers so this led me
to asking men what they thought. I talked to old men, young men, gay men and
men of different cultures and even they were confused. The men that I spoke to
all warned me that although men don’t always treat women well, Matija’s
behavior was unhealthy and abnormal even for a jerk. Everyone was arriving at the same
conclusions. Matija was strange, messed up on drugs and possibly gay. And everyone
seemed to agree that Matija was battling some type of mental problem. Bipolar
and Schizophrenia were the number one guesses, but no one could say for sure. I,
having had experience with people who were Bipolar and Schizophrenic couldn’t
help but feel like something else was going on with Mat. But everyone continued
to agree that they had never heard of anything like my situation or of anyone
behaving like Mat. Even my listeners with severe Bipolar disorder found him
strange. My friend Johnny who is a
self proclaimed “player” with the ladies was even confused by everything, he told
me this didn’t sound like the work of a normal playboy and it was strange for
any man to respond to a woman or another human being this way. Another friend
of mine, Leigh was beyond baffled
and told me that I had obviously been dealing with someone who was immature,
mentally disturbed and not normal. This was a serious red flag as this comment
was coming from a girl who’s boyfriend of 5 years had just been released from
prison and even she couldn’t seem to handle the idea of Matija’s madness. A
friend of mine who is a reformed gangster and former drug dealer also warned me
that something was very off with Mat’s character, telling me “he knew drugged
up punks in the hood that didn’t act like that and that Mat sounded like a sick
individual”. Everyone warned me that there was nothing good about him although
at the time I didn’t see it that way.
Am I the Only One Who’s Delt with This ?
The more I talked to
people the more I wasn’t sure if I should feel better or worse about what
happened. I felt satisfied in a way that I wasn’t the only one confused or
disturbed by Matija’s behavior but it was discouraging to find that nobody seemed
to have any answers or solid clues as to what was going on. What’s worse is I
felt like people saw Mat in the wrong light. I was still convinced he was a
good caring soul. I still felt that all the good times he and I shared were
real and had at least some meaning. I just couldn’t see Mat as the monster everyone
else pictured him as. I tried explaining to people that there was goodness to
Mat but people warned me that Matija was a “skilled manipulator and had brain
washed me into believing he was good when he so clearly isn’t ”.
My Transformation (Becoming My Attacker)
Throughout my journey to
find answers it’s safe to say this situation did in fact damage me permanently,
especially in terms of my relationships with men. One of the things that
changed the most is how I interacted with men. I tried dating again but I’d
become as cruel to men as Matija was to me. I found myself belittling their
feelings and mocking them when they tried to express kindness toward me. I’d become in capable of receiving any form
of love. It got to a point where I had to forewarn men that I was not good for
them and that they should stay away from me. I would say all the same things to
them that Matija said to me. Men would plead with me to understand that not all
men are the same and not to let Matija’s behavior reflect on an entire gender,
but it was no use. Now I even find myself deliberately staying away from men
out of fear that I most likely will hurt them and change them for the worse the
same way Matija did to me. The kind of men I am now willing to keep company
with are the ones that I already know are no good. It’s became easier for me to
deal with men like that because I don’t have to trust them, I already know that
they are about bad news. Empty hearted, emotionless, interactions with men have
become all I can handle. I can no longer handle meaningful relationships. I
feel like I don’t want to be anything to anybody and I don’t want anybody to be
anything to me. All I see when I look at men is Matija’s callous ways and empty
hearted behavior.
I found myself thinking more like
Matija. Never one to take a drink I begin spending more time in bars, my mind
was always on taking a drink and I picked up a new smoking habit. I was looking
for anything to end or ease the pain he had caused. My routine became a case of
going to work (crying all day in front of customers), going to a bar after work
and having a drink, then going home, taking sleeping pills so that I didn’t
have to feel the emotional torment, sleeping longer than the average hours ,
then waking up just to do the same thing all over again. Life was no longer
something to experience and a day just became something to get through. I
became jealous of Matija’s ability to shut off all emotion. It’s something even
the worst people I have known couldn’t do and I sickly admired him for it. A
life of feeling nothing and experiencing no emotional pain seemed amazing. My depression and change in behavior got to a
place where everyone in my life started to notice and worry. Friends started
coming to check on me everyday, others went out of their way to find
psychological help for me, some had me sleep over at their house because they
were afraid to leave me alone. One of my dearest friends informed me that she
was even starting to have nightmares about me going off into the deep end. My customers and complete strangers even felt
the need to comfort me. My behavior became more aggressive and reclusive. I
begin having violent fantasy’s and feeling as if I was capable of anything
dangerous and harmful toward another person. I had little or no compation
toward anyone.
I needed to find answers before I
became the one that was self-destructive.
But I couldn’t find any answers as to what happened and what I was going
through. Most people could relate to the heartbreak but very few could relate
to the mental damage that was occurring. I realized that finding the words to
express myself might help but I didn’t know where to start.
The transformation I was going
through was all too real and I couldn’t explain the process. Then one day I
remembered of a story. The story was from a girl I went to college with named
Noelle Roldan. She shared this story to our senior thesis class over a year
ago. She discussed being the victim of rape and her stepfather was her rapist.
In one part of her story I remember her discussing how she began to peel away
the parts of herself that she felt attracted her stepfather to her. She talked
about how slowly but surly she began to change the way she dressed and carried
herself. She told us she felt by starting to dress like a boy and carry herself
like a boy it would keep her stepfather from wanting to sexually assault her. I
realized that my process was very similar to hers. Although I wasn’t dressing
like a boy, I did feel the need to change how I felt Matija saw me. I remember
wishing I could just get in the shower and wash everything about me that he
liked away; maybe then he would not have come into my life in the first place.
He used to always tell me “ I was a sweet person”, so I didn’t want to be sweet
anymore. He used to always think of me as “a good person”, I didn’t want to be
seen as good anymore. All those things in my mind became the reason why he
wanted to hurt me. He thought I was an easy victim or simple prey. I didn’t
want to have that image anymore. It would have kept him and will keep others
like him away if I didn’t seem to be those things anymore. If it was my
personality he liked, then I should be colder. I had to realize that Matija
never saw in me as a happy person that deserved to be cared for, all he saw a happy sucker, someone he thought he
could treat as horribly as he wanted and I wouldn’t fight back. Whatever it was he liked I could no
longer be that. I even started looking into getting full body tattoos as a way
to change my image. I didn’t want to be whatever it is he saw in me, he had
made me dislike the image of myself. The more I thought about it the more I
realized that I felt like a rape victim. But rape was physical and Matija had
committed internal assault. Rape, at the time was the only word I had to help
describe the crime that was committed against me.
Identifying the Problem
The term rape did help me, but I still
wasn’t sure if it was applicable to me. Finding words to identify my problem
was only one half of the problem. The other half was trying to understand and
identify Matija’s behavior. One night at a friend’s house I ended up talking to
my friends father, Leon. A strong, kindhearted man, with a shady past, Leon
also knew of my situation and frequently would ask me how I was doing whenever
he saw me. I told him I felt like I was getting worse and whished there was
some drug to cure me. Drugs aren’t the answer Leon scolded; “trust me I’ve been
there and they don’t help”. I took a long hard look at Leon and thought about
the person he is. He was a man who had spent time in jail, had a past history
with drugs and other criminal activity and still he was a loving kind person
who found room in his heart to care for people and express himself with
sensible logic. I couldn’t figure out what made Leon and Matija so different. “I
just don’t want to feel anymore” I told Leon. “I don’t want to feel anything
and if drugs can take away my ability to feel then that’s what I want”. “Don’t
let this guy change you” Leon warned, “and let me tell you something else,
drugs don’t really stop you from feeling”. “The only kind of person who doesn’t feel, is a sociopath”. It was
in that moment that I realized Leon might be on to something. I began researching
everything that I could on sociopaths. Learning about this behavioral disorder
was starting to make my experience with Matija make sense. Most of the sociopathic
traits he showed strong signs of. My research on Sociopaths led me to research
other personality-disorders such as Narcissist and Psychopaths. Other than Sociopath,
the other disorder Matija showed strong signs of having is one called Borderline Personality Disorder (a disorder
that seems closes to Sociopath). I was finally finding what seemed to be clues
and answers to my situation. I was also able to understand why most people
couldn’t relate to my situation. While most women have the unfortunate luck
of dealing with jerks, those men still were not exhibiting sociopathic traits.
The Difference Between a Garden Variety Jerk and a Sociopath
Jerks
can be rude, self centered people but they still have the mind and heart of
everyone else around them. With Sociopaths and other personality-disordered
people, you can't place the reasoning of what a normal person thinks,
does and feels onto them because they are not normal. They do not think the way
we do. Sociopaths hate the world in general. They hate what they cannot
be--relaxed, social, happy, loving, compassionate, human beings. They mimic the
people around them to try and be ‘normal’ but it exhausts them and their masks
slip which allows for the cold, heartless, assholes they truly to appear.
Try looking
at it like this: Imagine
- if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or
remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern of the well-being
of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with
shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish,
lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the
concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to
accept without question, like gullible fools. Now add to this strange
fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup
is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that
conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free
is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by
guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your
cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so
completely outside of their personal experience that they seldom even guess at
your condition. The
panicked feeling of a guilty conscience never squeezes at your heart or wakes
you in the night. Despite your lifestyle, you never feel
irresponsible, neglectful or so much as embarrassed, although for the
sake of appearances, sometimes you pretend that you do. For example,
if you are a decent observer of people and what they react to, you may adopt a
lifeless facial expression, say how ashamed of your life you are, and talk
about how rotten you feel. This you do only because it is more convenient
to have people think you are depressed than it is to have them shouting at you
all the time, "The Sociopath Next Door”: The Ruthless
vs. the Rest of Us" by Martha Stout Ph.D. (Broadway Books, New York, 2005,
ISBN 0-7679-1581-X).
Finding My Voice- In learning more about sociopaths and other behavioral
and personality disorders it was helping me to find the words to describe the chaotic
behavior that I experienced with Matija. Through the process of possibly
identifying what was going on with him it was bringing me closer to finding the
words to explain what was going on with me. It allowed me to talk about my
feelings and to no longer feel like I was crazy or had to be silenced.
As much as I was learning about
sociopaths and other personality disorders, I still couldn’t let go of the
feeling that I had been raped. But I knew I had never been physically raped. It
was more of a rape of my emotions. I decided to Google the term rape of
emotions and to my surprise Emotional
Rape is in fact a real term and a real form of abuse which can be just as traumatic
if not more so that physical rape.
Sociopaths, Borderline Personality Disorder,
Emotional Rape…having the right words to identify what I had been through was
more important than I ever could have realized. Not only so that I could
explain what I had been through but also so that I could understand the trauma
that I was experiencing. What I was
experiencing was Post Traumatic Stress
from having been emotionally raped by
Matija, a man who displayed strong sociopathic and behavioral disordered
traits. I researched testimonials from victims who had been through similar
situations with people who were sociopaths and for once there seemed to be a
group of people who related to me and what I was going through. These people
understood that the damage done to us
victims is not about the heartbreak. It’s about the death of one’s soul and
higher emotions that occurs when a sociopath (or other personality disordered
people) enter into your life. To this day I sit alone and look a pictures of
myself that were taken before Matija entered my life. Some of those pictures
were taken just days before meeting him and every time it’s like looking at my
own obituary. I can’t even remember what it feels like to glow the way I did or
for happiness to be that second nature.
Post Traumatic Stress/ After the Sociopath Leaves – When a Sociopathic
or personality- disordered person begins doing damage to your life it almost
always beings happening long before we realize it. My situation with Matija was
no different. I didn’t realize the psychological damage Matija has caused me
started long before his behavior turned in a hostile manner toward me without
warning or reason. Matija had been relentlessly and shamelessly playing head
games with me from the start of our relationship. Had I been more educated on
Sociopathic behavior, hopefully I would have been more likely to see that I had
been expressing early stages of anxiety long before I realized it. But it
wasn’t until Matija whimsically threw me out of his life that the mental trauma
was completely visible. It’s usually at that point when victims of Sociopaths
(and personality-disordered people) becomes fully noticeable.
Throughout my research I learned that
Sociopaths typically do exactly what Matija Turkalj did to me. They force their
way into your life, make it seem that they truly care and that the two of you
found something special together. Once they earn your trust by “wrapping you up
and dragging you through a world of deceit, lies, deception, betrayal, illusion
and delusion they abandon you without offering you any sense of closure”. “This truly is the hardest part to
rationalize and understand, but you will never have a feel good, amicable,
honest conversation as you part ways no matter how hard you try. You won’t have
the closure that you likely desire. Do you deserve it? Absolutely. But the man
or person that you fell in love with was nothing more than a manufactured
being. He mirrored what he learned about you to win your heart, but the love
you felt was a mirage. You’re left with a lifetime
supply of trauma and no explanation”.
Victims are then left to try and
recover what is left of their lives after they realize a person with a criminal
mind who has no concern for others whatsoever just took advantage of them in
every way possible and there was never a relationship. The Post Traumatic
Stress that comes from being in a situation like this is very real and can be
extremely deadly.
•
Can include bad dreams and
nightmares.
•
Hypersensitivity – trouble sleeping,
being frightened easily, difficulty with concentrating, and outbursts of anger.
•
Anxiety – being in constant
fight-or-flight mode. This in turn leads to physical and emotional
fatigue, which later manifest as illness and disease in the body.
•
Being triggered by stimuli in the
environment which recalls traumatic memories.
•
Repetition Compulsion – Reenacting
traumatic events in an attempt to gain closure – this is why we often re-abuse
ourselves after our abuser has left. This might include negative
self-talk, or entering into another abusive relationship. In other words,
trying to complete what wasn’t previously completed. However, this only
enhances PTSD symptoms because it doesn’t heal the trauma.
Impact of PTSD
Left untreated, PTSD and C-PTSD lead
to other symptoms and conditions which affect all areas of life. These
include:
•
Inability to handle stress
•
Eating disorders
•
Drug and alcohol addictions
•
Damaged relationships with others
•
A negative outlook on life
•
Depression
•
Specific anxiety disorders such as
panic attacks and phobias. For example, victims who were stalked often
develop agoraphobia.
•
Crippled Self-Esteem
•
Loss of career and loss of desire to
be productive
•
Diseases such as cancer.
Victims of abuse have higher incidents of certain types of cancer.
•
Suicide
Many
who read this will think, “Everyone experiences these types of feelings at some
point in their lives.”
That
is true, but we aren’t talking about fleeting feelings. We’re talking about
constant, chronic, never-ending feelings that just won’t go away, regardless of
our efforts to make them vanish. We’re talking about feelings and emotions that
lead to self-destruction. Like me, many people start to believe they are going
crazy but in actuality all the above symptoms result from
losing the ability to cope with long-term abuse. You aren’t going crazy
but have endured traumatic events that became overwhelming.
Misconceptions about the Victims of Sociopaths – One thing I have sadly found
to be true throughout this horrific journey is how easily people judge and make
the wrong assumptions about people that were evolved with Sociopaths and other
personality-disordered people. People are quick to make the following comments…
-You must have already had low
self-esteem to get evolved with such a horrid person.
-You must have already come
from a broken family background.
- You must be doing something
to attract these types of people too you.
-Why couldn’t you just see the
person was strange and gotten away sooner?
- You’re too nice and naïve.
- You’re the kind of person
who’s too trusting.
- You are the kind of person
who gives yourself too quickly and that’s why this happened.
- You are the one that allowed all these bad things to happen to
you. You could have just left sooner.
Sadly,
the list of judgments and misconceptions from others (usually who have never
had a Sociopath consistently in their own lives) goes on and on. The worst part
is I too would have had the same judgments about people in these types of
situations had I not been placed smack dab in the middle of it myself.
For
people who make comments such as these you are entitled to your opinions, but I
forewarn you not to judge before you have walked a miles in another’s shoes.
While
from time to time these assumptions can be true, I have found this is not
usually the case. When it comes to a Sociopath, ABSOLUTLY NO ONE IS SAFE from the personality-disordered
persons head schemes and emotional trickery. For those who accuse victims of being too nice
or naïve, consider this. Sociopathic people have been known to out smart their
own therapist.
You may have the
highest self-esteem in the world; you may have come from the world’s most
loving family and still these emotional vampires can find a way to weasel into
your life , no one is safe from their charm and treachery And just because a Sociopath found a way into
your life does not mean that the victim did anything to bring these monsters
into our lives. When a Sociopath comes into ones life it’s important to
remember that it’s much like being in a horrible car accident. Just because you
were evolved in a car wreck and you were the one who got hurt doesn’t mean the
crash was your fault. It’s simply a case of being in the wrong place at the
wrong time.
When it comes to being able to see what a personality
disordered person is doing to you and your life, giving yourself too quickly to
these people and having the strength to leave sooner…all should remember that
these people are master tricksters and the most skilled of actors. They
entangle themselves in your life and in your emotions in ways that cannot be
described. While in the situation (and even for those that manage to get out of
the situation) you’ve been brainwashed to a point of almost no return.
Everything is distorted including your sense of reality. “Sociopaths and personality-disordered people
say whatever they want to get what they want. You've got to remember that part.
They are opportunistic. They are going to win until they get caught”.
The Stress of Being with a
Sociopath and Why They Leave
(The Victims
Struggle)
“ Sociopaths (as unpredictable as
they may seem) are very predictable creatures . It might seem a shock to you,
the sudden ending of the sociopath departure. But this is just an illusion,
just like everything else in the sociopath box of tricks. Unlike other
relationships where there is warning, or fights and arguments, this part will
be missing. Or when there are arguments leading up to the exit, you will be at
a loss, what the arguments are about. After all the sociopath will pick a fight
with you, over nothing at all. The week before the sociopath exit you will
notice
•
Edgy
behaviour
•
Picking
fights over nothing at all
•
An
attempt to sleep with you one last time night before
•
After
a huge fight – that is about nothing you have done – the sociopath leaves
•
You
will be surprised that when the sociopath does leave – despite there might be
tears (or might not) on their part – that they are remarkably calm. The ‘love’
that could have been shown to you the previous day is gone. It is evident that
the sociopath had already planned their exit strategy. Even if, just the day or
the week before they were talking of marriage, children or life long
commitments. It seems sudden to you – but it isn’t to the sociopath. Behind
your back they were already planning their exit. Without your knowledge they
had already sourced a new place to live – and in some cases a new partner
(victim) too.
Of
course the sociopath has already sourced their new source of supply before
leaving you. Sociopaths need someone else to lean on. They are unable to be on
their own. They wouldn’t let you know that they have already sourced supply
behind your back. Of course not, because the sociopath would like you to
believe that it is YOUR fault – something that you have done – this is why they
have left.
This
isn’t the case. It simply means that for the sociopath they were either:
•
Bored
•
Had
found a new source of supply – that fitted their needs better
•
Wanted
to escape from responsibility
Duality
of the sociopath
If you
have dated a sociopath you will already know that the sociopath is a master of
mind games, tricks and illusion and that nothing is ever as it seems.
Whilst
smiling to your face, behind your back they have likely been giving others the
sob story, and others wanting to help the poor sociopath victim in their plight
of need, offers a place to stay.
What
the new target or accomplice does not realize is that they are the
next future victim. And whilst there will be tales of you, and how you are a
crazy psycho – in the future – they will be labeled as that person too.
Sociopaths are not particularly loyal and when moving into mode of discard will
tell others just how awful you are. To gain both sympathy and to obtain
support to leave – with their halo shining looking like the great guy or gal.
The sociopath loves to make a clear exit, and will tarnish your name without a
thought, if it makes him look better.
Sociopaths
have a dual personality. Life to them is a game, and everyone else are actors
in the game. It can be hurtful to realize that the only person who was in a
relationship – was you. The sociopath was merely playing a game. Perhaps they
grew bored or tired of the game with you, or they felt that there was easier
source of supply elsewhere. Whatever their reasoning, in their mind you have
served their needs. Now they are justified in moving on.
Why
create a fight deliberately beforehand?
Sociopaths
always pick a fight. This could be over anything. Usually it is over nothing.
There is absolutely no sense to the fight either. Often you will be accused of
something that you haven’t done. The sociopath will play victim at how their
feelings are hurt, and just how awful you are to do what
you have done. You protest your innocence. You witness the narcissistic rage.
Yet you have no idea what this is about? It makes no sense at all.
Well
at least it makes no sense at all at the time – until the next day when the
sociopath with a big drama packs their things (They often leave a few items so
that they can return at a later date should they wish) – they almost always
keep their options open. So they pack their things and off they go….. you
are amazed – how did they find somewhere to live so fast? You wonder as
perhaps the day before or a few days before you were (you thought) happy and in
love? You haven’t even came to terms that you have split up, yesterday, perhaps
even this morning, you were happy and in love? How can he/she be so cold? How
can this be happening?
The
truth is – that the sociopath has a duality of personality. Whilst smiling
to your face and faking love – behind your back they were already moving on.
The fake row that they created, the drama and accusations that made no sense
and caused so much pain, was a deliberate calculated event engineered by the
sociopath to get them out of the relationship and to move onto whatever else
they had planned behind your back.
Sociopaths
do not end relationships like normal people do. Sitting down and having heart
to heart conversations trying to work out where the relationship is going
wrong, and what you can do to fix it. This is not the sociopath way. The
sociopath has their own exit strategy. This of course achieves
•
Winning
•
Retaining control
If you
had done anything to the sociopath that they had smiled through in the
relationship, now will be the time that they tell you exactly what they think
of you. It is now that you see the real person behind the mask. The anger that
you witness is the simmering anger that lies behind the mask of deception all
of the time. It is just that normally it was hidden by a charismatic smile and
twinkling eyes….
Coping
after discard
Discard
can be really painful. Especially when it was sudden and unexpected. The sense
of betrayal and confusion cause intense pain. You might have a longing to find
out the truth. It might be difficult to come to terms with the truth. It is
hard to understand that the sociopath would have designed this and planned
their exit strategy behind your back, whilst smiling to your face and playing
the perfect partner” (Source: Dating a Sociopath the Truth Will Set You
Free).
Harry Potter and The Chamber of Sociopaths
The
more I researched Sociopaths and Personality Disordered people the more I
realized they are almost identical to the dark characters known as Dementors introduced in
book/movie series Harry Potter "Dementors are
among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest,
filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and
happiness out of the air around them... Get too near a Dementor and every good
feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor
will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself... soulless
and evil. You will be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life."
This is a photo from the 3rd
Harry Potter film in which a Dementor attempts to suck the soul from a young Harry
Potter, leaving him faint and disoriented. In this moment the world goes cold
and it is felt that all happiness has left the world. This is the exact effect that a sociopath has on his/her victim's.
Signs That You Are Dating A Sociopath
(Knowing When to Run!!)
The chances are unlikely, but if
you ever find yourself wondering if you are in a relationship with a Sociopath
or personality disordered person its important to know the red flags and
indicators that you are indeed in such a situation. May I point out that if you
find yourself researching whether out not you are involved with a sociopath is
reason enough to be alarmed in and of it’s self.
First of all it’s important to give
a textbook definition of what a Sociopath actually is…
Definition- “A sociopath can be more
than just the rapists and serial killers you see on the news. They can be your
family members, friends, co-workers, neighbors, or even your soul mate.
Sociopaths are manipulative and charming. When you first meet them, you think
they are well groomed, but in reality, they will bury lies and secrets beneath
the mask they show to society of a well-mannered person just like everyone
else. The answer is complicated as this is actually an incredibly complex
personality disorder. The condition is hard to diagnose due to the wide range
of manipulative behavior sociopaths display. Instead of being a single trait,
sociopathy is a syndrome, a whole cluster of symptoms related to each other. A
certain number of these symptoms must be present for a person to be diagnosed
as a sociopath. As an essential step to understand sociopaths, getting to know
the definition is necessary. Sociopaths are people who have antisocial
personality disorder and demonstrate a pattern of disregard that is
pervasive, particularly in terms of the feelings and rights of others. Most
people consider sociopaths to be criminals, but while it is possible, this is
not a requirement for a diagnosis. Sociopaths are typically very intelligent, however,
instead of letting their knowledge empower themselves, they use it for
deception and advancement. This means that the high IQs of sociopaths can be
dangerous, with examples being found among serial killers who evaded the law. Sociopaths
can't feel remorse, guilt or shame because their brains don't have the proper
wiring. This means that they can threaten or harm people or betray them without
worrying about the consequences. Sociopaths are people who pursue their
self-interest, even if it harms others. These people will hate to lose any
fight or argument, leading them to defending their lies at all costs, even if
it becomes absurd based on logic. They simply want to win or dominate others no
matter the cost. People with this condition are completely self-serving and
cannot love. They might pretend to have compassion or feel love to get their
way, but they don't actually feel the emotion in the same way that others do”(Source:
enki village.com). Sociopaths suffer from antisocial personality
disorders such as (ASPD); in addition to ASPD, psychopaths also lack
conscience or empathy and are delusional in nature. Sociopaths are also unable to conform to
what society defines as a normal personality. Antisocial tendencies are a big
part of the sociopath’s personality. This pattern usually comes into evidence
around the age of 15. If it is not treated, it can develop into adulthood.
Visible symptoms
may include physical aggression and the inability to hold down a steady job.
The sociopath also finds it hard to sustain relationships and shows a lack of
regret in his or her actions. A major personality behavior trait is the violation of the rights of others. This can appear as a disregard for the
physical or sexual wellbeing of another.
Although these
symptoms are all present, they may not always be evident. Research has shown
that the sociopath is usually a person with an abundance of charm and wit. He
or she may appear friendly and considerate, but these attributes are usually
superficial. They are used as a way of blinding the other person to the
personal agenda behind the sociopath’s behavior” (Source: wiseGEEK the clear answers for
common questions).
With the definition of ‘Sociopath’
learned let’s now identify the Red Flags that you are in a relationship with
one:
#1. The
person talks way too much and listens way too little. Dominating the
conversation often signals insecurity, self-centeredness or narcissism.
#2. He/she always needs to be right. No matter how
big or small the topic, the toxic individual doesn’t allow room for differing
opinions and turns a discussion into a debate that must be won.
#4. Truth-telling is not a high
priority. Even slight variations on what you know to be the truth, or careful
omission of facts, is enough to put the person on your watch list.
#5. There are signs of addiction
or dependency. If left unaddressed, compulsive behavior involving alcohol,
drugs, gambling, pornography, and other issues is sure to damage many aspects
of the individual’s life — including your relationship.
#6. Desperation is in the air.
Emotionally healthy people will be eager to get know you as an individual — not
overeager to get into a relationship (any relationship) because of loneliness
or neediness.
#7. Conversation is salted with
sarcasm. Derogatory comments and cutting humor, even if you aren’t the target,
signal a lack of empathy or a need to prove superiority.
#8. Straight answers are in short
supply. To your direct questions, you get evasive responses, mixed messages or
contradictions. The person is cagey about where he was last night and how
things are at work. If it seems like he’s hiding something, he probably is.
#9. The person has a victim
mentality. All of his/her problems are someone else’s fault — unreasonable
boss, unloving parents, lousy roommate, the government. Constant blame-shifting
usually demonstrates a lack of personal responsibility.
#10. “Common folk” are treated
poorly. Rude, insensitive behavior toward restaurant servers, dry-cleaners, and
store clerks reveals an arrogant attitude.
#11. The person likes to gossip.
Rumor-mongering serves no purpose except to harm others’ reputations and an
attempt to burnish one’s own.
#12. He/she bashes the ex.
Justified or not, no one wants to hear endless complaints about a former
partner. There’s nothing healthy about staying stuck in the past. Move on
already.
#13. His/her stories seem
grandiose. Exaggerations about accomplishments, acquaintances and adventures
demonstrates a need to brag, which demonstrates a shaky self-esteem.
#14. The person tries to control
you. If you feel pressure to act and think according to someone else’s wishes
rather than your own, head for the nearest exit.
#15. Your gut instinct screams,
“Look out!” Trust your intuition — it’s usually a reliable guide.
Source:
(FoxNewsMagazine.com)
Apart
from Sociopaths, a list of
other personality-disordered personalities to look out for are:
1.
Narcissist
2. Psychopaths
3. Borderline Personality
Disorder (BPD)
As
someone who lived through this firsthand, I plead with anyone who suspects that
they are in a relationship with a Sociopath or personality disordered person to
take the signs seriously and RUN!!!!! The situation will only get worse. You
may have faith in your situation or feel at the moment that you have reason
enough to hope for the best but on the behalf of other victims let me say these
situations never have a cheerful ending.
Wounded
Blue Jay
