Taking a look in the mirror
It's been a while since I've done a soap box entry so I'm going to talk about something that's bothering me today.
It's not often that you have an opportunity to find out something new about yourself. Just so we're clear, I'm not talking about, discovering that you like a certain new kind of food, or that you like the particular way that light glints off someone's eyes, or the discovery of a new talent. What I'm talking about is something that you discover about yourself that actually shakes you to your core and changes your own vision of who you consider yourself to be.
This happened to me fairly recently and I'm still thinking about how I feel about it.
This is going to take some explaining so bear with me.
Like a lot of people that I know, I was brought up with a very strong sense of right and wrong that was given to me by parents, specifically my father, who thought it would be funny to give their new son unfettered access to literature of all kinds, and then later movies, but at the same time, subtly influencing my choices.
These experiences have undoubtedly shaped my views of right and wrong.
When I first heard Optimus Prime say "freedom is the right of all sentient beings" I have to admit that I had no idea what "sentient" ment but by God Optimus Prime said it was important and therefore it was so.
When Robin Hood stood up in front of his merry men and drove them on to fight against injustice I was right there with him.
When Obi-wan told Luke about the dark side of the force, I shivered in fear and swore that I would never fall to the dark side.
My moral choices where less about what my parents told me or what I was told at school, church or at sunday school but rather because the characters in the movies, in the books and comics told me that they were the right choices.
When Indiana Jones struggled against overwhelming odds to save the children from the temple of Doom. I couldn't have told you why it was the right thing to do, but I knew that it was.
Now that I am somewhat older and more cynical I tend to like my hero's with a few more flaws, but I still find that I enjoy a good old fashioned hero tale where good triumphs over evil, simply because, they are the good guys.
So here it is, it's cheesy but nevertheless it's true.
I always wanted to be a hero. I always wanted to stand beside Robin Hood, to fly with luke skywalker, to walk through the wilderness with Aragorn. I wanted to do the right thing, no matter what that might mean.
One of the greatest points of any kind of heroic fiction of any kind is when the mustache twirling villain of the piece holds the gun to the hero's friend/family/loved one's head and says, do this evil thing or I'll kill them. The hero will always find a way around it but will normally prevent the deed from happening. This is an important point and I'll come back to it.
Now I need to talk about my family.
Without going in o too many details, it boils down to this. My parents split up when I was 11 and my little sister was 6. my mother re-married an unspeakable piece of scum who made a decent attempt of ruining our lives. As atomicfae so often likes to say "God could have made some perfectly good earthworms out of that genetic material,"
For a more detailed history of what happened please go here: http://spike369.livejournal.com/2006/10/12/
My little sister, who is now 24, a sickeningly beautiful and talented, singer, musician, dancer and actress. Has long since moved past these horrible events and put them behind her. Like me she has been to therapy, probably repressed and forgotten more than is entirely healthy but is nevertheless on good form and moving forward with her life.
Now a bit more history. Since she was about 11 my little sister has been surfing various chat rooms having been provided with the means to do this by the utter waste of oxygen that was my stepfather.
Our story begins early on in this odyssey into the internet when, between looking at boy band websites and discussing makeup and music with other kids her own age, she started to receive e-mails from someone calling himself "Regent Dave,". After a little while these emails started making her uncomfortable and being a fairly intelligent girl she sent an email back which said in polite but firm language that Regent Dave should FUCK OFF, and rightly so.
Fast forward to relatively recently.
As I said, my little sister is a talented singer/actress/dancer and she maintains a facebook account as in that particular world, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Now I know nothing about facebook but she tells me that there is a feature called "suggested friends" which are people who are friends of friends, or people that occasionally check your profile.
Lo and behold a little while ago someone called "Dave Regent" started appearing on this list. At first my sister, who has a large social network, thought nothing of it, until her ex-boyfriend sent her an e-mail asking who this Dave Regent guy was as he'd been reccommended through her account,
She did some research and after a while she found that our erstwhile scumbag of a stepfather also has a facebook account.
And shares profiled pictures and details with "Dave Regent,"
Now, just in case you didn't read the above link and don't know our family history. I was physically and psychologically abused by our stepfather, but my sister was sexually abused as well. So you will understand it when she hit the roof. She emailed both our stepfathers actual account as well as Dave Regents account asking if they were the same person and if they were that they should FUCK OFF!!! (I understand that these were her actual words this time). Both profiles were removed in the early hours of the following morning.
My sisters concern now is not for herself. But if this guy was devious enough to send her messages through an alternative name, an alernative name that he's been maintaining for at least 10 years at that, what else as he done, who else has he talked to. He has now remarried to another woman,
who
wait for it
ALSO HAS YOUNG CHILDREN.
What if they are in danger?
What else is this very sick man up to?
Now my sister called the police, who told her that to be able to get into his records and access his computer, they need a specific accusation to investigate as apparently the above suspicions are not enough.
Now as I said, both my sister has large portions of her childhood that she can't remember, and furthermore, she doesn't want to remember them. Who knows what happened in the years that that monster had an influence on our lives. To find something to accuse him of she has to see a particular team, who are going to drag through her memory to see if they can find anything to form a basis for arresting and investigating this man.
And she doesn't want to do it.
Herein lies my problem. If it was me, who had discovered this history and could say that I was being stalked and could possibly provide something that could put this man behind bars, then I would be down at that police station right now, kicking off and screaming about talking to someone to get this sorted out. I wouldn't hesitate. Other people might be at risk and if I could prevent that, then I would do it.
It's undeniably the right thing to do.
however
If my sister decides that she doesn't want to go through that mess again. If she decides not to make an accusation. If she decides that she's put it all behind her and doesn't want to go back.
I will not hesitate,
I will not blink.
I will support her in that decision and I will defend her against anybody that dares to suggest that she's doing the wrong thing. Even worse, I find that I'm quite vehement about it.
There is no doubt in my mind that the "right" thing to do is to go to the police and make the accusation no matter how upsetting it might be, but if my little sister decides not to go ahead then I will stand by her. Since reaching that realisation I have slept like a baby, absolutely without guilt.
So there it is, I've found my limit. The point at which I would cross the line, and even more disquieting than that, I find that I'm okay with it.
Just for the record. At the present time of writing, my sister is in communication with the police who "understand her concerns" but she is having difficulty trying to talk to someone who wants to take on the case. This after a girl was recently murdered after going to meet someone who she met online.
Go figure.
Rant over
Spike
It's not often that you have an opportunity to find out something new about yourself. Just so we're clear, I'm not talking about, discovering that you like a certain new kind of food, or that you like the particular way that light glints off someone's eyes, or the discovery of a new talent. What I'm talking about is something that you discover about yourself that actually shakes you to your core and changes your own vision of who you consider yourself to be.
This happened to me fairly recently and I'm still thinking about how I feel about it.
This is going to take some explaining so bear with me.
Like a lot of people that I know, I was brought up with a very strong sense of right and wrong that was given to me by parents, specifically my father, who thought it would be funny to give their new son unfettered access to literature of all kinds, and then later movies, but at the same time, subtly influencing my choices.
These experiences have undoubtedly shaped my views of right and wrong.
When I first heard Optimus Prime say "freedom is the right of all sentient beings" I have to admit that I had no idea what "sentient" ment but by God Optimus Prime said it was important and therefore it was so.
When Robin Hood stood up in front of his merry men and drove them on to fight against injustice I was right there with him.
When Obi-wan told Luke about the dark side of the force, I shivered in fear and swore that I would never fall to the dark side.
My moral choices where less about what my parents told me or what I was told at school, church or at sunday school but rather because the characters in the movies, in the books and comics told me that they were the right choices.
When Indiana Jones struggled against overwhelming odds to save the children from the temple of Doom. I couldn't have told you why it was the right thing to do, but I knew that it was.
Now that I am somewhat older and more cynical I tend to like my hero's with a few more flaws, but I still find that I enjoy a good old fashioned hero tale where good triumphs over evil, simply because, they are the good guys.
So here it is, it's cheesy but nevertheless it's true.
I always wanted to be a hero. I always wanted to stand beside Robin Hood, to fly with luke skywalker, to walk through the wilderness with Aragorn. I wanted to do the right thing, no matter what that might mean.
One of the greatest points of any kind of heroic fiction of any kind is when the mustache twirling villain of the piece holds the gun to the hero's friend/family/loved one's head and says, do this evil thing or I'll kill them. The hero will always find a way around it but will normally prevent the deed from happening. This is an important point and I'll come back to it.
Now I need to talk about my family.
Without going in o too many details, it boils down to this. My parents split up when I was 11 and my little sister was 6. my mother re-married an unspeakable piece of scum who made a decent attempt of ruining our lives. As atomicfae so often likes to say "God could have made some perfectly good earthworms out of that genetic material,"
For a more detailed history of what happened please go here: http://spike369.livejournal.com/2006/10/12/
My little sister, who is now 24, a sickeningly beautiful and talented, singer, musician, dancer and actress. Has long since moved past these horrible events and put them behind her. Like me she has been to therapy, probably repressed and forgotten more than is entirely healthy but is nevertheless on good form and moving forward with her life.
Now a bit more history. Since she was about 11 my little sister has been surfing various chat rooms having been provided with the means to do this by the utter waste of oxygen that was my stepfather.
Our story begins early on in this odyssey into the internet when, between looking at boy band websites and discussing makeup and music with other kids her own age, she started to receive e-mails from someone calling himself "Regent Dave,". After a little while these emails started making her uncomfortable and being a fairly intelligent girl she sent an email back which said in polite but firm language that Regent Dave should FUCK OFF, and rightly so.
Fast forward to relatively recently.
As I said, my little sister is a talented singer/actress/dancer and she maintains a facebook account as in that particular world, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Now I know nothing about facebook but she tells me that there is a feature called "suggested friends" which are people who are friends of friends, or people that occasionally check your profile.
Lo and behold a little while ago someone called "Dave Regent" started appearing on this list. At first my sister, who has a large social network, thought nothing of it, until her ex-boyfriend sent her an e-mail asking who this Dave Regent guy was as he'd been reccommended through her account,
She did some research and after a while she found that our erstwhile scumbag of a stepfather also has a facebook account.
And shares profiled pictures and details with "Dave Regent,"
Now, just in case you didn't read the above link and don't know our family history. I was physically and psychologically abused by our stepfather, but my sister was sexually abused as well. So you will understand it when she hit the roof. She emailed both our stepfathers actual account as well as Dave Regents account asking if they were the same person and if they were that they should FUCK OFF!!! (I understand that these were her actual words this time). Both profiles were removed in the early hours of the following morning.
My sisters concern now is not for herself. But if this guy was devious enough to send her messages through an alternative name, an alernative name that he's been maintaining for at least 10 years at that, what else as he done, who else has he talked to. He has now remarried to another woman,
who
wait for it
ALSO HAS YOUNG CHILDREN.
What if they are in danger?
What else is this very sick man up to?
Now my sister called the police, who told her that to be able to get into his records and access his computer, they need a specific accusation to investigate as apparently the above suspicions are not enough.
Now as I said, both my sister has large portions of her childhood that she can't remember, and furthermore, she doesn't want to remember them. Who knows what happened in the years that that monster had an influence on our lives. To find something to accuse him of she has to see a particular team, who are going to drag through her memory to see if they can find anything to form a basis for arresting and investigating this man.
And she doesn't want to do it.
Herein lies my problem. If it was me, who had discovered this history and could say that I was being stalked and could possibly provide something that could put this man behind bars, then I would be down at that police station right now, kicking off and screaming about talking to someone to get this sorted out. I wouldn't hesitate. Other people might be at risk and if I could prevent that, then I would do it.
It's undeniably the right thing to do.
however
If my sister decides that she doesn't want to go through that mess again. If she decides not to make an accusation. If she decides that she's put it all behind her and doesn't want to go back.
I will not hesitate,
I will not blink.
I will support her in that decision and I will defend her against anybody that dares to suggest that she's doing the wrong thing. Even worse, I find that I'm quite vehement about it.
There is no doubt in my mind that the "right" thing to do is to go to the police and make the accusation no matter how upsetting it might be, but if my little sister decides not to go ahead then I will stand by her. Since reaching that realisation I have slept like a baby, absolutely without guilt.
So there it is, I've found my limit. The point at which I would cross the line, and even more disquieting than that, I find that I'm okay with it.
Just for the record. At the present time of writing, my sister is in communication with the police who "understand her concerns" but she is having difficulty trying to talk to someone who wants to take on the case. This after a girl was recently murdered after going to meet someone who she met online.
Go figure.
Rant over
Spike