Betrayal IX
I've been planning this entry in my head for a couple of weeks now. I wasn't certain it would ever need to be written, but if it came to it, I knew exactly how it would go. I meant to write it on Sunday night, and I tried to start, but I was too tired, so I went to sleep instead. Had I been more awake, it would've gone exactly how I'd planned it. Now, in only a few hours, it's all changed. This may still be The End, but it's not the one I expected it to be.
I give you this ring, as a symbol of my lies...
Friday was our first anniversary. I was awake as the previous night turned into that morning, and next to me in bed was not my wife, but my laptop. Shanna had still been ignoring me all week, and I'd been sending her messages every day counting down the days until Monday, when I'd said I would ship her things back to America if she hadn't moved them. I sent her the message to say that she had two days remaining, but also asked whether she cared what day it was, and whether she'd ever imagined that our first year of marriage would end like this. I thought she wouldn't be able to ignore that, and she didn't. She replied later that morning:
Happy anniversary Ashley... No I didn't imagine this. But then again I never imagined that you would be the way that you were. I guess we all have our problems. Its just a shame we had so many. I won't be able to go to your house. I will ask Mike if he can pick up the boxes when he has the time. As for the unpacked stuff. If you really are going to send it to the states, send it to my mother. The stuff in the bags aren't that important, so do with those what you want. The last of my things are as follows: [a list of the things she left here]
I almost didn't the rest of it, I got stuck on the 'Happy anniversary Ashley'. Did she say... happy? I got angry again, and wrote what was quite possibly the most hurtful letter I've written.
No, it's not happy. You have failed me in every way. We didn't have many problems at all. I've seen all kinds of couples, and we had it easy. We just had one major problem, which is that you are dishonest. You were still a good person, mostly. You cared about people, and it did all seem genuine. But you certainly have changed. You've become one of the most thoughtless, inconsiderate, selfish people I've had the displeasure to know. Congratulations, there's a way to move forward in life. You are a horrible person. I'm sure you'll go talk to your wonderful new friends now, and they'll comfort you and tell you you did what you had to, and that it's okay. Don't believe a word of it. If you think it enough, you'll believe it, but it'll never be true. I hope you remember this for the rest of your life. You are a liar.
Anyway, I reject your suggestion. First of all, it wasn't the unpacked stuff I am going to send to America, it is everything, boxes included. I will still do this on Monday morning. I will be at Dream Theater on Saturday, so you'd better hope Mike is free on Sunday, or it's going. I will also repack it to save shipping costs. Large items, and things I bought anyway (like your bike) will be sold. Anything I deem easily replaceable (books that are common, supplies, consumables, anything that can easily be bought) will be sold or given away. The only things that will be kept are things that are unique and personal to you, and these will be shipped. You will also not tell me where to send it. It will be safe, but I will send it where I choose.
I am also not a packing service. You do not leave this mess here and expect me to clear up. Mike can take the boxes you've already packed, but everything else I will sort and get rid of as described above. I am not packing for you.
The flat will be emptied of every trace of your existence, because indeed, it would've been better if you didn't. I wish I could take back everything I have ever given to you, because those special 'first times' will never happen again, and you have stolen them from me - I will never be able to give them to anybody else, and you did not deserve them. I wish I had never touched you, never kissed you, never made love to you. And I wish you had stopped me. I wish you hadn't led me on for so many years, keeping me believing.
You have taken things from me that can never be replaced. I know your life was a mess, but mine wasn't. I trusted you with it, and you betrayed me. I hate you. Once your stuff is gone, I never want to hear from you again. Ever. Do you understand? Don't look me up in ten years time. Don't send a card. Don't leave me comments. Don't ever contact me in any way. I wouldn't bother Graham either, you lost him too. Well done, you turned your back on the two people who cared about you the most, and without whom you would have never made it to where you are. Hope that makes you happy. Don't wear your ring, you dishonour everything it ever stood for, and you don't deserve it. Stop using my family name immediately, because you don't deserve that either - you actions bring shame to my family. I will write my letter to IND on Monday. It's still somewhat unlikely they'll bother chasing you, and technically it really makes no difference to me, but there will be consequences of some kind. Even if you don't get deported, your life will become a lot more difficult. It will be good for you to learn the hard way.
You are beautiful, absolutely beautiful. But you know what? That's all you are, now. Everything I ever loved about you as a person is either gone or was a lie.
She replied several hours later with a text message: "If you dont tell me where you are shipping my stuff i will call the police on you and let bournemouth council know that you have been tax evading for the past year. I will not allow you to treat me like a child. I am tired of you bullying me!".
I couldn't decide whether to be amused or angry, and ended up some kind of mix of both. First of all, as you will read above, I didn't say that I wouldn't tell her where I would ship her things, I only said that it would be my choice, and not hers. As for 'tax evasion'... sorry, was that a threat? And if so, is that really the best she could come up with? What she's referring to, is that when I first moved into this flat, I paid a 75% rate of council tax because I was living alone. After Shanna moved in with me, I never got round to telling them it'd changed, so I've continued paying at the same rate. I simply forgot to inform them, but if they really care, which I doubt, I'm quite happy to just pay whatever it is I owe, it's a couple of hundred pounds at most. I could even let them know now, but that would be stupid, since I now am living alone again.
I called her, and after several attempts she actually answered. There was a strange pause and some noises I couldn't identify, and then she started talking. I told her everything I've just written, and spent quite a while laughing at the stupidity of trying to threaten me. Then, about five minutes into the conversation, she explains what the noises were: apparently, 'for legal reasons', she's recording the phonecall. Quite how she was doing this I don't know, since she has my old phone, and the best they could probably come up with is a microphone connected to a tape recorder or a computer, so I imagine the quality is absolutely terrible. Not that it would ever be useful for anything anyway, because the recording of phonecalls is only permitted for personal use, and not where it is made available to any third party - it'd be inadmissable as evidence for anything, and neither of us said anything of interest anyway, neither can I imagine why she thought I would.
She told me all about how I had apparently 'abused' her, and when I enquired how that was possible, I was told it was mental abuse, because I knew about her 'condition' and I was deliberately putting her under stress, bullying her, manipulating her, and all kinds of other bullshit. Oh, and 'exhausting her' - apparently that's an offence now, too. My argument was basically no, my reactions are quite normal under the circumstances, it's not really my fault that she's too weak to handle it. I also explained for the second time what 'manipulation' actually is, because she clearly still doesn't know. She is convinced that me asking for her to come and take her things away is manipulation, despite that I really don't care whether she does it willingly or not. She also seems to believe she is a very special case, that she's a victim, and that people like immigration authorities and police care enough about her emotions that the law won't apply the same to her as it does to others. She thinks she could 'easily' get a police escort to the flat, but since she hasn't, I suppose it wasn't quite as 'easy' as she thought.
Unsurprisingly, we got nowhere. She made one rediculous claim after another, and I just kept repeating that I wasn't scared of her threats, I knew very well what my position was, and that nothing was going to change - she got her stuff moved by Monday, or it was going to America. I got bored of the conversation, said bye, and hung up.
Then, about two hours later, I get another text, asking when I'm going to be home that night. I call her, and she answers. It's like talking to a different person. The irrational and confrontational girl I had talked to a while ago had turned into someone calm and, as far as I could tell, reasonable. She also sounded almost... resigned. I guessed that her threatening me hadn't got the result she'd been hoping for. She said she'd spoken to Mike, and was wondering if I'd be at home that night and he could come over and pick up her boxes. I would've agreed to that, except that I'd just made other plans. I'd asked Graham if he felt like going to the Bridge house, and he'd cancelled some of his plans to make time for me, so I wasn't going to change that. Saturday we'd be away for Dream Theater, and Mike was away somewhere on Sunday, so that left only Monday - the day that I'd said I'd start shipping. However, I accepted that the offer had been made to do it that night, and I'd turned it down on the basis of my own plans, so I agreed that Monday, provided it was kept to, would be okay.
The time at the bridge house was nice, the Dream Theater concert deserves an entry of it's own, and this is a Betrayal series entry anyway, so I will leave the rest of Friday, all of Saturday and the first half of Sunday to a separate post. I resume Sunday afternoon, after I got back to Bournemouth. Here, I am going to be careful, because I've been given fairly little to work with and made a lot of assumptions and guesses. I could be wrong - in fact I'm not even suggesting that any idea is 'right' - but I can see a few posibilities, and they are deeply worrying.
I spoke to a friend. Names or details aren't necessary, because none of you know who they are, except Shanna, and to her it will be obvious no matter how I put it. My friend and Shanna had spoken, and I was shown a little of what was said.
about him saying I've breached the visa
its a lie
we have to be divorced before he can say anything
we are still legally married
Well, I only repeated to her what IND have told me directly, so if it's 'a lie', it's their lie, not mine, and I somehow doubt they are lying. I've been told that I must inform them if the marriage is no longer 'subsisting' - actual legal status is irrelevent. But this is nothing. What comes next is truly sickening:
also
I've been getting in touch with lots of people here
women's aid, victim support, lawyers, etc.
concerning what he's doing and what he put me through
I'm going to be applying for a visa in my own right
due to domestic violence?
and neglect?
when I have a serious medical condition
What the fuck?! Neglect... well I know she claims to have felt 'neglected', and maybe she did in an emotional sense, but I provided a home, food, money, freedom, helped her get the documents she needed for employment, and generally supported her life. That is not neglect. But 'domestic violence'?! I am... speechless. I cannot believe those words even came into her mind. I have never, ever done anything to harm her, or threatened to do so, or made the slightest hint or suggestion that I ever would, or anything else that even comes remotely close. Neither has she spoken of anything of the sort to me or anybody else. Neglect I could put down to a misunderstanding or misinterpretation, but violence... that is an outright lie, and she damn well knows it. She goes on to say that she has lots of 'evidence', in the form of my journal. I assume she's referring to my private diary, but I can't understand why - it hasn't been updated since she was visiting in the summer before she even moved here, and even that entry wasn't complete. Even if there had been any truth in the accusation, the diary wouldn't be any use because nothing has been recorded in it for the entire time she's been living with me. As for the rest of it, it shows that I have some messed up and probably contraversial feelings and ideas in my head, but am very clearly in control of them and myself.
This has gone far beyond the point of being just wrong now. It's one thing to spout all this stuff to the people around you, but does this mean she is actually knowingly and intentionally lying to legal and support organisations, in the hope that it will help her cause? Has she thought for one single second about the consequences of something like that? This isn't a game, and they are not just going to feel sorry for her and give her what she wants. If you accuse somebody of abuse, that is going to get investigated, which equals huge amounts of shit for both of us. I'm not worried about the outcome, because quite frankly, she's insane, and I'm not - whatever story it is she's telling, it's come from absolutely nowhere, and nobody's ever heard it before. Since there's not the slightest bit of evidence, it ends up as her word against mine, which is not a case for anything. If she's lucky, she'd get away with dismissing it. If it somehow got proved that she had deliberately made it up, that will not be good for her at all. I too, certainly don't want to be dragged through any kind of investigation.
I tried to think of why she might do something like this. Somehow, despite all I've seen from her lately, I still can't believe that it's actually malice. I don't believe she is just out to hurt me. So what else is there? The only thing that comes to mind is the visa. She did say she was applying for another one, and I've already pointed out that she doesn't qualify under the usual categories. They will however, consider special circumstances, such as say... domestic violence.
The only conclusion I can draw is that she's so desperate to stay in the country that she will go to any length, including and probably not stopping at lying to anybody and everybody, without the slightest concern about the possibly consequences to herself or me. Here I reiterate that this is my conclusion, and she has not spoken of any of this to me directly. Not have I seen the complete conversation they had, only a little more than these fragments. This just seems to be what the evidence suggests.
Either way, the fact that she could speak such lies is enough for me. This relationship is over, and I do not want her back. When I saw what she'd said, I took off my ring and threw it into the pile of junk on my desk in disgust. I don't even think I want to keep it any more... I think one day I may feel like going up to the clifftop, like I used to, and I think that when I come home again, it will be gone.
There's one final accusation, which could easily be one of the worst, that I can't actually deny, though it wasn't intentional. Shanna's always been upset that I have porn on my computer. I haven't looked at it since she moved in, and it's burried in amongst years of crap from previous hard disks, but I refused to ever do anything about it firstly because I didn't see why I should, and secondly because it's all over the place and I really couldn't be bothered to sort through my junk. Anyway, that in itself, is not anything too serious. It's not illegal, and for a horny teenage boy, it's not even unusual. What is unusual is perhaps my methods. Most boys are not very computer literate, and maybe browse a few porn sites. I however, used technology to my advantage, which basically included programs that would automatically find and download material without my intervention. The volume this produced was rediculous, and far more than I could ever even have time to look at. More importantly though, you never knew what you were going to get. I've seen a lot, but some of what got downloaded was seriously disgusting, and more to the point here, illegal. Whatever I actually came across, got deleted, but I am well aware that there's a good chance that a lot got dumped on my disk that I never even got round to opening.
I've probably been through a dozen hard disks since then, but I keep buying ever-increasing capacities, and every time I always make a directory on my new disk called 'Stuff' or 'Old' or 'SortMe', and dump everything from my old disks into it. Repeat this for each new disk, and you end up with what I have today: hundreds of gigabytes of Tux-knows-what, half of it duplicated. Add to this that I managed to destroy my partition table sometime last year and ended up with half a million 'recovered' files, all named something that doesn't represent their contents, and mostly corrupted. There is absolutely no way I have the time to sort through this stuff, but I wouldn't delete it, because I'm afraid that I just might lose something that I've forgotten about. Maybe in all the crap, there's some document or program or something from my past that I'd hate myself if I lost, and as technology advances, just maybe it will become feasable that I can recover it.
Sadly now, it looks like I won't have a choice. I'm sure my ignorance wouldn't be taken as an excuse, so I will somehow have to find the time to do what I've been avoiding for years: I will have to go through everything, and sort it all out. As for the 'recovered' files, that would just be an impossible task, and I can't take the chance that one of them might contain a fragment of something bad from somewhere, possibly even data that'd been previously deleted from the MFT but never overwritten on the disk itself. It will all have to go, and if there is anything special of mine in there, I am going to lose it.
Shanna came online for a few moments that night, but didn't mention anything interesting to me. She just wanted to ask whether Mike'd been in contact, and that she hoped he was going to get her things. I went to work on Monday, and received a text from her, but it only said that Mike had left me a message on my home phone, and nothing more. I sent Mike a message saying I wasn't at home and could he please let me know what the plans were, and between us we agreed that he'd come over about 9pm. I left work to get home just before 8, because I wanted to check the boxes. Yeah, it's bad, but any trust I had is long gone. I was wrong though, and it was indeed all her stuff.
Mike was a litte late, but did let me know that he would be, so I didn't mind at all. I liked Mike the first time we met when I went with Shanna to her first meeting with their Wiccan group, and I still do. I don't know him, so I should be cautious about what I believe, but I've no particular reason to doubt anything he says is true. Indeed, he told me another side to the leaving story that doesn't match up very well with Shanna's, and I'm actually inclined to trust his version more than hers. It certainly puts some more doubt over her claim that 'everybody knew' she was unhappy for months and months before she left. It also seems that her 'friends' haven't received much better treatment in terms of consideration than I have. Anyway, he took all the boxes that Shanna had finished packing, and we filled up the remaining half-finished ones with books from the bedroom. So, most of the boxes are gone now apart from a few leftover empty ones, but there's still plenty of her stuff all over the flat. There's also the entire landing lined with black sacks of stuff, which she has told me I can dispose of as I wish... but I don't trust her on that either. I really don't doubt that should the idea become 'useful' to her, she would accuse me of throwing her things out without her permission, despite having given it to me.
We had a bit of a talk too, from which I got the idea he mainly agreed with my thoughts on her reasoning. We don't think she is acting maliciously, but we do agree that she is probably unstable enough to do some very worrying things if it seems like a good idea to her at the time. I mentioned to him what my friend had told me about the 'abuse' claims, and I think he had trouble believing that she was capable of it. I apologised to him for giving him the stuff, I do feel bad about it. I'd threatened to send the stuff to America in the hope that Shanna might care enough to actually come and sort it out, but instead she did nothing and got him to take it all instead. Still, I am grateful to have it taken away, and apart from feeling a little guilty that he now has to fill his house with junk instead, I don't really care where it goes to. He said he was there for both of us if we needed him, which I'm gratful for. He also mentioned that he'd offered to come with Shanna to the flat because she was scared to go alone, and she'd turned him town, which I found interesting. I sent Shanna a message after he left to tell her what he'd taken, and told her I would call the next day.
The Shanna I got to speak to this time was yet another one. Not the aggressive one that threatened me, or the quiet one who spoke to me afterwards, but a happy-sounding one. I didn't have much to say to her, mainly just that there was still stuff left and she still needed to come and deal with it. I asked her why she'd refused Mike's offer to acompany her, and she paused, perhaps to think of an answer, and then said that it was because she'd been looking into getting a police acompanyment instead. I told her that wasn't any good, because unless they had a court order, I could and would refuse them entry to my flat, and the same went for anybody else she felt like bringing down. I said I would accept any of her friends from Bournemouth, but that due again to lack of trust, I would not leave them there alone. Before we said goodbye, I decided to ask her if there was anything else she would like to tell me. Anything she'd perhaps been keeping from me, and thought that I might like to know. She said there wasn't, and acted clueless as to what I might be talking about. I just said that I wouldn't make guesses in case I was wrong, and that if there was nothing, then it wasn't a problem. The conversation I was told about definately took place, so if she is genuine in her denial that there is anything to tell me, then it must be that she didn't say what she meant very clearly. The other option of course, is that she's continuing to lie to me. Given the wording she used, and her current record, this seems more likely. Just thought I'd give her the oppertunity.
She promised (though we know how good those are) to come online tomorrow night and talk to me about when she might come to finish the job. We'll see what happens.
I give you this ring, as a symbol of my lies...
Friday was our first anniversary. I was awake as the previous night turned into that morning, and next to me in bed was not my wife, but my laptop. Shanna had still been ignoring me all week, and I'd been sending her messages every day counting down the days until Monday, when I'd said I would ship her things back to America if she hadn't moved them. I sent her the message to say that she had two days remaining, but also asked whether she cared what day it was, and whether she'd ever imagined that our first year of marriage would end like this. I thought she wouldn't be able to ignore that, and she didn't. She replied later that morning:
Happy anniversary Ashley... No I didn't imagine this. But then again I never imagined that you would be the way that you were. I guess we all have our problems. Its just a shame we had so many. I won't be able to go to your house. I will ask Mike if he can pick up the boxes when he has the time. As for the unpacked stuff. If you really are going to send it to the states, send it to my mother. The stuff in the bags aren't that important, so do with those what you want. The last of my things are as follows: [a list of the things she left here]
I almost didn't the rest of it, I got stuck on the 'Happy anniversary Ashley'. Did she say... happy? I got angry again, and wrote what was quite possibly the most hurtful letter I've written.
No, it's not happy. You have failed me in every way. We didn't have many problems at all. I've seen all kinds of couples, and we had it easy. We just had one major problem, which is that you are dishonest. You were still a good person, mostly. You cared about people, and it did all seem genuine. But you certainly have changed. You've become one of the most thoughtless, inconsiderate, selfish people I've had the displeasure to know. Congratulations, there's a way to move forward in life. You are a horrible person. I'm sure you'll go talk to your wonderful new friends now, and they'll comfort you and tell you you did what you had to, and that it's okay. Don't believe a word of it. If you think it enough, you'll believe it, but it'll never be true. I hope you remember this for the rest of your life. You are a liar.
Anyway, I reject your suggestion. First of all, it wasn't the unpacked stuff I am going to send to America, it is everything, boxes included. I will still do this on Monday morning. I will be at Dream Theater on Saturday, so you'd better hope Mike is free on Sunday, or it's going. I will also repack it to save shipping costs. Large items, and things I bought anyway (like your bike) will be sold. Anything I deem easily replaceable (books that are common, supplies, consumables, anything that can easily be bought) will be sold or given away. The only things that will be kept are things that are unique and personal to you, and these will be shipped. You will also not tell me where to send it. It will be safe, but I will send it where I choose.
I am also not a packing service. You do not leave this mess here and expect me to clear up. Mike can take the boxes you've already packed, but everything else I will sort and get rid of as described above. I am not packing for you.
The flat will be emptied of every trace of your existence, because indeed, it would've been better if you didn't. I wish I could take back everything I have ever given to you, because those special 'first times' will never happen again, and you have stolen them from me - I will never be able to give them to anybody else, and you did not deserve them. I wish I had never touched you, never kissed you, never made love to you. And I wish you had stopped me. I wish you hadn't led me on for so many years, keeping me believing.
You have taken things from me that can never be replaced. I know your life was a mess, but mine wasn't. I trusted you with it, and you betrayed me. I hate you. Once your stuff is gone, I never want to hear from you again. Ever. Do you understand? Don't look me up in ten years time. Don't send a card. Don't leave me comments. Don't ever contact me in any way. I wouldn't bother Graham either, you lost him too. Well done, you turned your back on the two people who cared about you the most, and without whom you would have never made it to where you are. Hope that makes you happy. Don't wear your ring, you dishonour everything it ever stood for, and you don't deserve it. Stop using my family name immediately, because you don't deserve that either - you actions bring shame to my family. I will write my letter to IND on Monday. It's still somewhat unlikely they'll bother chasing you, and technically it really makes no difference to me, but there will be consequences of some kind. Even if you don't get deported, your life will become a lot more difficult. It will be good for you to learn the hard way.
You are beautiful, absolutely beautiful. But you know what? That's all you are, now. Everything I ever loved about you as a person is either gone or was a lie.
She replied several hours later with a text message: "If you dont tell me where you are shipping my stuff i will call the police on you and let bournemouth council know that you have been tax evading for the past year. I will not allow you to treat me like a child. I am tired of you bullying me!".
I couldn't decide whether to be amused or angry, and ended up some kind of mix of both. First of all, as you will read above, I didn't say that I wouldn't tell her where I would ship her things, I only said that it would be my choice, and not hers. As for 'tax evasion'... sorry, was that a threat? And if so, is that really the best she could come up with? What she's referring to, is that when I first moved into this flat, I paid a 75% rate of council tax because I was living alone. After Shanna moved in with me, I never got round to telling them it'd changed, so I've continued paying at the same rate. I simply forgot to inform them, but if they really care, which I doubt, I'm quite happy to just pay whatever it is I owe, it's a couple of hundred pounds at most. I could even let them know now, but that would be stupid, since I now am living alone again.
I called her, and after several attempts she actually answered. There was a strange pause and some noises I couldn't identify, and then she started talking. I told her everything I've just written, and spent quite a while laughing at the stupidity of trying to threaten me. Then, about five minutes into the conversation, she explains what the noises were: apparently, 'for legal reasons', she's recording the phonecall. Quite how she was doing this I don't know, since she has my old phone, and the best they could probably come up with is a microphone connected to a tape recorder or a computer, so I imagine the quality is absolutely terrible. Not that it would ever be useful for anything anyway, because the recording of phonecalls is only permitted for personal use, and not where it is made available to any third party - it'd be inadmissable as evidence for anything, and neither of us said anything of interest anyway, neither can I imagine why she thought I would.
She told me all about how I had apparently 'abused' her, and when I enquired how that was possible, I was told it was mental abuse, because I knew about her 'condition' and I was deliberately putting her under stress, bullying her, manipulating her, and all kinds of other bullshit. Oh, and 'exhausting her' - apparently that's an offence now, too. My argument was basically no, my reactions are quite normal under the circumstances, it's not really my fault that she's too weak to handle it. I also explained for the second time what 'manipulation' actually is, because she clearly still doesn't know. She is convinced that me asking for her to come and take her things away is manipulation, despite that I really don't care whether she does it willingly or not. She also seems to believe she is a very special case, that she's a victim, and that people like immigration authorities and police care enough about her emotions that the law won't apply the same to her as it does to others. She thinks she could 'easily' get a police escort to the flat, but since she hasn't, I suppose it wasn't quite as 'easy' as she thought.
Unsurprisingly, we got nowhere. She made one rediculous claim after another, and I just kept repeating that I wasn't scared of her threats, I knew very well what my position was, and that nothing was going to change - she got her stuff moved by Monday, or it was going to America. I got bored of the conversation, said bye, and hung up.
Then, about two hours later, I get another text, asking when I'm going to be home that night. I call her, and she answers. It's like talking to a different person. The irrational and confrontational girl I had talked to a while ago had turned into someone calm and, as far as I could tell, reasonable. She also sounded almost... resigned. I guessed that her threatening me hadn't got the result she'd been hoping for. She said she'd spoken to Mike, and was wondering if I'd be at home that night and he could come over and pick up her boxes. I would've agreed to that, except that I'd just made other plans. I'd asked Graham if he felt like going to the Bridge house, and he'd cancelled some of his plans to make time for me, so I wasn't going to change that. Saturday we'd be away for Dream Theater, and Mike was away somewhere on Sunday, so that left only Monday - the day that I'd said I'd start shipping. However, I accepted that the offer had been made to do it that night, and I'd turned it down on the basis of my own plans, so I agreed that Monday, provided it was kept to, would be okay.
The time at the bridge house was nice, the Dream Theater concert deserves an entry of it's own, and this is a Betrayal series entry anyway, so I will leave the rest of Friday, all of Saturday and the first half of Sunday to a separate post. I resume Sunday afternoon, after I got back to Bournemouth. Here, I am going to be careful, because I've been given fairly little to work with and made a lot of assumptions and guesses. I could be wrong - in fact I'm not even suggesting that any idea is 'right' - but I can see a few posibilities, and they are deeply worrying.
I spoke to a friend. Names or details aren't necessary, because none of you know who they are, except Shanna, and to her it will be obvious no matter how I put it. My friend and Shanna had spoken, and I was shown a little of what was said.
about him saying I've breached the visa
its a lie
we have to be divorced before he can say anything
we are still legally married
Well, I only repeated to her what IND have told me directly, so if it's 'a lie', it's their lie, not mine, and I somehow doubt they are lying. I've been told that I must inform them if the marriage is no longer 'subsisting' - actual legal status is irrelevent. But this is nothing. What comes next is truly sickening:
also
I've been getting in touch with lots of people here
women's aid, victim support, lawyers, etc.
concerning what he's doing and what he put me through
I'm going to be applying for a visa in my own right
due to domestic violence?
and neglect?
when I have a serious medical condition
What the fuck?! Neglect... well I know she claims to have felt 'neglected', and maybe she did in an emotional sense, but I provided a home, food, money, freedom, helped her get the documents she needed for employment, and generally supported her life. That is not neglect. But 'domestic violence'?! I am... speechless. I cannot believe those words even came into her mind. I have never, ever done anything to harm her, or threatened to do so, or made the slightest hint or suggestion that I ever would, or anything else that even comes remotely close. Neither has she spoken of anything of the sort to me or anybody else. Neglect I could put down to a misunderstanding or misinterpretation, but violence... that is an outright lie, and she damn well knows it. She goes on to say that she has lots of 'evidence', in the form of my journal. I assume she's referring to my private diary, but I can't understand why - it hasn't been updated since she was visiting in the summer before she even moved here, and even that entry wasn't complete. Even if there had been any truth in the accusation, the diary wouldn't be any use because nothing has been recorded in it for the entire time she's been living with me. As for the rest of it, it shows that I have some messed up and probably contraversial feelings and ideas in my head, but am very clearly in control of them and myself.
This has gone far beyond the point of being just wrong now. It's one thing to spout all this stuff to the people around you, but does this mean she is actually knowingly and intentionally lying to legal and support organisations, in the hope that it will help her cause? Has she thought for one single second about the consequences of something like that? This isn't a game, and they are not just going to feel sorry for her and give her what she wants. If you accuse somebody of abuse, that is going to get investigated, which equals huge amounts of shit for both of us. I'm not worried about the outcome, because quite frankly, she's insane, and I'm not - whatever story it is she's telling, it's come from absolutely nowhere, and nobody's ever heard it before. Since there's not the slightest bit of evidence, it ends up as her word against mine, which is not a case for anything. If she's lucky, she'd get away with dismissing it. If it somehow got proved that she had deliberately made it up, that will not be good for her at all. I too, certainly don't want to be dragged through any kind of investigation.
I tried to think of why she might do something like this. Somehow, despite all I've seen from her lately, I still can't believe that it's actually malice. I don't believe she is just out to hurt me. So what else is there? The only thing that comes to mind is the visa. She did say she was applying for another one, and I've already pointed out that she doesn't qualify under the usual categories. They will however, consider special circumstances, such as say... domestic violence.
The only conclusion I can draw is that she's so desperate to stay in the country that she will go to any length, including and probably not stopping at lying to anybody and everybody, without the slightest concern about the possibly consequences to herself or me. Here I reiterate that this is my conclusion, and she has not spoken of any of this to me directly. Not have I seen the complete conversation they had, only a little more than these fragments. This just seems to be what the evidence suggests.
Either way, the fact that she could speak such lies is enough for me. This relationship is over, and I do not want her back. When I saw what she'd said, I took off my ring and threw it into the pile of junk on my desk in disgust. I don't even think I want to keep it any more... I think one day I may feel like going up to the clifftop, like I used to, and I think that when I come home again, it will be gone.
There's one final accusation, which could easily be one of the worst, that I can't actually deny, though it wasn't intentional. Shanna's always been upset that I have porn on my computer. I haven't looked at it since she moved in, and it's burried in amongst years of crap from previous hard disks, but I refused to ever do anything about it firstly because I didn't see why I should, and secondly because it's all over the place and I really couldn't be bothered to sort through my junk. Anyway, that in itself, is not anything too serious. It's not illegal, and for a horny teenage boy, it's not even unusual. What is unusual is perhaps my methods. Most boys are not very computer literate, and maybe browse a few porn sites. I however, used technology to my advantage, which basically included programs that would automatically find and download material without my intervention. The volume this produced was rediculous, and far more than I could ever even have time to look at. More importantly though, you never knew what you were going to get. I've seen a lot, but some of what got downloaded was seriously disgusting, and more to the point here, illegal. Whatever I actually came across, got deleted, but I am well aware that there's a good chance that a lot got dumped on my disk that I never even got round to opening.
I've probably been through a dozen hard disks since then, but I keep buying ever-increasing capacities, and every time I always make a directory on my new disk called 'Stuff' or 'Old' or 'SortMe', and dump everything from my old disks into it. Repeat this for each new disk, and you end up with what I have today: hundreds of gigabytes of Tux-knows-what, half of it duplicated. Add to this that I managed to destroy my partition table sometime last year and ended up with half a million 'recovered' files, all named something that doesn't represent their contents, and mostly corrupted. There is absolutely no way I have the time to sort through this stuff, but I wouldn't delete it, because I'm afraid that I just might lose something that I've forgotten about. Maybe in all the crap, there's some document or program or something from my past that I'd hate myself if I lost, and as technology advances, just maybe it will become feasable that I can recover it.
Sadly now, it looks like I won't have a choice. I'm sure my ignorance wouldn't be taken as an excuse, so I will somehow have to find the time to do what I've been avoiding for years: I will have to go through everything, and sort it all out. As for the 'recovered' files, that would just be an impossible task, and I can't take the chance that one of them might contain a fragment of something bad from somewhere, possibly even data that'd been previously deleted from the MFT but never overwritten on the disk itself. It will all have to go, and if there is anything special of mine in there, I am going to lose it.
Shanna came online for a few moments that night, but didn't mention anything interesting to me. She just wanted to ask whether Mike'd been in contact, and that she hoped he was going to get her things. I went to work on Monday, and received a text from her, but it only said that Mike had left me a message on my home phone, and nothing more. I sent Mike a message saying I wasn't at home and could he please let me know what the plans were, and between us we agreed that he'd come over about 9pm. I left work to get home just before 8, because I wanted to check the boxes. Yeah, it's bad, but any trust I had is long gone. I was wrong though, and it was indeed all her stuff.
Mike was a litte late, but did let me know that he would be, so I didn't mind at all. I liked Mike the first time we met when I went with Shanna to her first meeting with their Wiccan group, and I still do. I don't know him, so I should be cautious about what I believe, but I've no particular reason to doubt anything he says is true. Indeed, he told me another side to the leaving story that doesn't match up very well with Shanna's, and I'm actually inclined to trust his version more than hers. It certainly puts some more doubt over her claim that 'everybody knew' she was unhappy for months and months before she left. It also seems that her 'friends' haven't received much better treatment in terms of consideration than I have. Anyway, he took all the boxes that Shanna had finished packing, and we filled up the remaining half-finished ones with books from the bedroom. So, most of the boxes are gone now apart from a few leftover empty ones, but there's still plenty of her stuff all over the flat. There's also the entire landing lined with black sacks of stuff, which she has told me I can dispose of as I wish... but I don't trust her on that either. I really don't doubt that should the idea become 'useful' to her, she would accuse me of throwing her things out without her permission, despite having given it to me.
We had a bit of a talk too, from which I got the idea he mainly agreed with my thoughts on her reasoning. We don't think she is acting maliciously, but we do agree that she is probably unstable enough to do some very worrying things if it seems like a good idea to her at the time. I mentioned to him what my friend had told me about the 'abuse' claims, and I think he had trouble believing that she was capable of it. I apologised to him for giving him the stuff, I do feel bad about it. I'd threatened to send the stuff to America in the hope that Shanna might care enough to actually come and sort it out, but instead she did nothing and got him to take it all instead. Still, I am grateful to have it taken away, and apart from feeling a little guilty that he now has to fill his house with junk instead, I don't really care where it goes to. He said he was there for both of us if we needed him, which I'm gratful for. He also mentioned that he'd offered to come with Shanna to the flat because she was scared to go alone, and she'd turned him town, which I found interesting. I sent Shanna a message after he left to tell her what he'd taken, and told her I would call the next day.
The Shanna I got to speak to this time was yet another one. Not the aggressive one that threatened me, or the quiet one who spoke to me afterwards, but a happy-sounding one. I didn't have much to say to her, mainly just that there was still stuff left and she still needed to come and deal with it. I asked her why she'd refused Mike's offer to acompany her, and she paused, perhaps to think of an answer, and then said that it was because she'd been looking into getting a police acompanyment instead. I told her that wasn't any good, because unless they had a court order, I could and would refuse them entry to my flat, and the same went for anybody else she felt like bringing down. I said I would accept any of her friends from Bournemouth, but that due again to lack of trust, I would not leave them there alone. Before we said goodbye, I decided to ask her if there was anything else she would like to tell me. Anything she'd perhaps been keeping from me, and thought that I might like to know. She said there wasn't, and acted clueless as to what I might be talking about. I just said that I wouldn't make guesses in case I was wrong, and that if there was nothing, then it wasn't a problem. The conversation I was told about definately took place, so if she is genuine in her denial that there is anything to tell me, then it must be that she didn't say what she meant very clearly. The other option of course, is that she's continuing to lie to me. Given the wording she used, and her current record, this seems more likely. Just thought I'd give her the oppertunity.
She promised (though we know how good those are) to come online tomorrow night and talk to me about when she might come to finish the job. We'll see what happens.