Dancing with the devil

"Just stay alive." That's all I kept telling myself as I laid there on the ground. My mind was frantic as it was trying to understand what had happened. The fear was so deep that I turned to religion for comfort. Searching the internet for videos, I came across a sermon on Psalms 23. "Ye, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." Why had he done this? The disbelief and confusion ran cold through my veins.

Let me take you back to the beginning.

He seemed timid and shy when we first met. His hands trembled whenever I was around, which made me empathize for him. I wanted him to feel comfortable and did everything I could to accomplish that. After a few weeks of brief interactions, he approached me and asked about my social media account. I gave him the information and by the time I had gotten home, he had sent a friend request, but before I could accept it, he removed it. This was the first of many red flags. Immediately, my heart felt confused and my face was hot. Why did he do that? I assumed it was because of his lack of confidence so I turned around and sent him a request, which he accepted. After a few conversations, I never once thought twice about how he seemed to accurately guess so many things about me. He knew what kind of cigarettes I smoked, he knew songs I liked and he knew movies that I had purchased online. Then just as soon as I started developing strong feelings for him, he disappeared.

He had invited me to have lunch with him one day and by the time I had gotten dressed, he told me he had decided to order his food to go. This was the second red flag. I can not even begin to explain how much my heart hurt that day. I just could not understand why he had done that. The following weeks he continued to read my messages but not respond, and I innocently thought it was simply because he had been hurt in the past and was proceeding cautiously. After a while I decided that it was time to move on and right when I began to, he came back. I felt like I was constantly trying to make him feel reassured that I really liked him and only him. It got to the point to where I was neglecting any and all people in my life, just to accommodate and do things for him. I often felt deprived of affection because he never would display any type of intimacy or closeness. Kissing was far and few in between and when it did happen, it was simply just pecks. Eventually, we were intimate sexually but it was very robotic, and cold. I am the kind of person that feels like sex is sacred and become extremely loyal once I have engaged in the act. The following weeks were filled with ghosting, along with intermittent, passionless encounters.

One night we had been sitting in my car and were talking about something he had agreed to help me with financially. I can remember he looked at me, and the darkness that was in his eyes was bone chilling. It scared me. I didn't know how to react so I simply remained calm and reassured him that I was loyal and wouldn't betray him in anyway. Looking back I wish that I had made a different choice, but I had agreed to let him help me. My intentions were to pay him back as soon as I made the money, but little did I know that he had been watching me and studying me for all of my weaknesses and was waiting for the right moment to attack.

When you see movies about hackers, it is portrayed as something cool. I would watch him work on his computer and was completely smitten on how intelligent he was when it came to technology. I ended up letting him work on my laptop not knowing that he had set it up so he could control it from him computer. He would berate and belittle me from time to time because of something my laptop was doing, knowing that he had been the cause of it. He set things up to where he looked like the hero in so many situations, but he also, little by little, gave himself and his plans away.

He had told me about Edward Snowden and the whole situation that happened with him, and he also mentioned that someone's cell phone camera can be accessed through messenger. I soon realized that he was monitoring me through messenger because it was the only way he would communicate. He never called me on the phone and he never texted me. He always communicated through messenger and now I know it was because he was watching me as I responded to his messages. He would often repeat conversations I had with my children and once I realized what was going on, I didn't know how to proceed. So I ignored everything and I pretended like I didn't know what he was doing. I wanted him so bad, I wanted him to be with me so bad, that I continuously ignored my intuition. I felt like the time and energy I had invested would go to waste if I ended things now, so I kept on. It wasn't until that fateful day that I was able to walk away from him and cut off all communication.

I was scheduled to work that night and decided to stop by his place before I went in. He came outside to my car, handed me a drink and kissed me goodbye. It was about an hour later when I began to notice that something wasn't right. I felt weird, I felt drugged. My head was hurting and my body was weak, I pulled over at a gas station and got out of the car and when I got out it felt like my perception of everything was blown wide open. I knew everything. All of the little crumbs of information he had told me were lined up in my mind and I knew exactly what was going on and what he had done. Fear rushed through my body as I drove home as carefully as I could. I didn't want my kids to know what had happened so I went to my room and laid down. He kept messaging me, asking me what was going on. I wouldn't respond. I never did respond, to tell him what I knew. I knew that he would only deny it and try to make me feel crazy. I got away and to this day, I struggle with the pain. There is so much pain in my heart because I know, that there is nothing I can do for him, nothing I can say to him to change the situation. The police admitted that this happens more often than people realize but that was as far as it went. This is an untraceable offense. This type of abuse is not provable. So the victims of cyber stalking not only have to sit with the trauma of the abuse, but they have to go to bed each night knowing their abuser is probably targeting someone else and is basically, unstoppable.

My days fluctuate from feeling strong and moving on, to extreme remorse. It saddens me so often to know that he is the way that he is and more than likely will never change. For whatever reason, he developed that way and the only thing I can really do is pray. That maybe someday, he will receive the help he needs and that no one else will suffer at his hands again.