Love Letters to a Healing Heart

16: Tracking Devices and Other Ghost Stories

December 1, 2018October 3, 2023 Wanders

As I reread the harassment order Painter filed I realize just how much bullshit it contained. I’ve gone over it repeatedly with The Doctor and my lawyer.

As I start combing through the transcripts I see over and over how often my she intentionally misstates facts and selectively edits the truth to maintain the role in her Pattern.

I’m sure there is a word for that.

I probably would have never given it much thought except on the court paperwork Painter clearly choose to mislead the court about when we started dating. She claims in her paperwork we were simply dating and never tells the court we lived together for three years.

She intentionally checked the box below it, saying we were simply dating. In her complaint she tells the court I moved to YoYo Town in May of 2018 and overlooks the three years we lived together our four-year relationship prior to that. As if I just showed up unexpectedly from Columbus, Ohio.

It was a willful omission. It was a lie. It was more than a rounding error.

My Good Doctor reminded me, if Painter is, “willing to mislead the court about the realities of your relationship what do you think she would be willing to do to protect her other secrets?”

The Doctor added, “Take off your rose-colored glasses. You can still love Painter but stop treating her as simply a victim of your betrayal because it perpetuates the Pattern and hamstrings your grieving and growth.”

So I started digging.

As I mentioned earlier, Painter claims we dated for six years beginning August 2011, the month she filed for divorce. I can prove we were dating since at least May, 2011. Her number is more than a rounding error. It is a willful misrepresentation of the facts to make herself look better and like a victim.

We were dating long before she filed for divorce from her former husband.

This convenient mental and emotional rounding is the exact type of corrupting of truth that must make the betrayed doubt reality: to know something and not have enough confidence to believe it must be crazy-making. Meanwhile, it is precisely the type of overactive imagination of the betrayed that exasperates even the most patient remorse-filled betrayer.

The ghost stories floated by Flying Monkey’s early in this trauma left me bewildered. I knew they weren’t true and so did Painter…so where were they originating?

In reality, they were perpetrated by people that were not interested in reality because they are in love with the ghost stories they imagined and too many episodes of Shameless. It was easy to perpetuate because Painter never asked me a single question about what Beatrix told her.

Not one. Not once. Not a single time. Painter simply went silent and let other people carry her emotional water.

As my Doctor reminder me, “Silence is hardly ever about the other person. She is silent because to sit and talk with you means she has to be open about her secrets too…and she does have them. We all do.”

In reality, Painter didn’t care enough to ask. She was already immersed in creating her Pattern with a new Patsy. I’ll talk more about this later.

This brings me to the statement that I put a tracking device on her phone.

Of all of the nonsense in the order, this is the one that angers me the most. It’s one of many statements that leads me to believe that it never mattered what I did and didn’t do. It is, based on my conversations with the lawyer and my doctor. She is either carrying an irrational fear or telling a strategic lie.

There are no other options.

In either case, the story creates maximum damage between us and between me and others.

It is the kind of ghost story that gets created in a vacuum. It’s the kind of ghost story that ruins people’s lives and she told it willingly and repeatedly.

Painter is a smart woman but she is a Luddite. It is the reason she voluntarily took up my offer to help on her social media and emails. It is the reason I set up her phones and websites. It isn’t that she isn’t capable but it is not in her wheelhouse.

Therefore, when Painter says I put a tracking device on her phone I know exactly why she said that and I know exactly where that story came from…but because she is unwilling to confront the conflict she chooses to believe that story because of:

1. a trauma story
2. a Splitter acting hero telling her a story, or
3. a need for strategic leverage

If I take the generous approach, which I prefer, this is another of many examples where asking a question or confronting me would have addressed her fear and trauma immediately. Instead, she chooses to live in fear of the unknown.

Fear Painter could have dissipated with a few questions and a willingness to lean into the conflict and fears. She is choosing to feed her fears.

The less generous approach is that she would rather live in the problem than the solutions.

An even less generous approach tells me she knows the truth but because it looks good on the harassment order and perpetuates her role as a victim she repeats it.

However, it is similar to the dozens of ghost stories Painter and her enablers have peddled to my friends and associates. I’ve been accused from the beginning of trying to steal her identity, mail, and money. Some drunken hero even accused me of threatening her physically and trying to force contact. Fucking, jackass.

In February, when I confronted Painter via email of lying to others about my behavior and extent of my betrayals, secret-keeping, and escalating series of lies she said, “prove it.”

Of course, I can, because I get my ducks in a row when I make a statement like that. Individuals contacted me and told me. Others shared the text messages.

Chef, Star, Calendar Girl, Paddler, and Traveler told me Painter, members of the Flying Monkey Squadron, and ill-informed people called or wrote them directly.

And all of these people were essentially asked the same thing: I was asked not to tell you.

It reached the point where I started telling people publically and privately to stop telling me. “Her opinion of me is none of my business. If she wants me to know, she knows how to find me.”

Within a week Flying Monkeys were saying I had hacked her phone and that I was stalking her. At the time I thought it was just grandiose people making up grandiose stories…but now? Now I think it was something else entirely.

Within a month of Painter ending our relationship, she quit using the phone. A month later she returned it to me, although we had agreed she could keep it. I agreed I would keep paying for her phone lines and her Twins phone lines through the end of April.

Which is when the contract ended, and I had no choice anyway.

However, I wanted Painter to have options. Beginning in mid-December I repeatedly sent her the links to transfer the line anytime to her name just in case she wanted to take it over before April.

Instead, once again, Painter chose the nuclear option and acted the victim.

It just pisses me off.

It pisses me off because although I am a stupid, entitled, fucking fucker for cheating on her and lying about it, I’m not a fucking possessive, jealous, irrational, drunk, white-trash fucking fucker nut job.

I proved that every single day of our relationship and I’ve proven that every day since our relationship ended.

From the beginning, I have repeatedly respected her wishes and left our home to give her space. I have never shown up at an art show. I have never followed her around town. I have never demanded she speak to me. All I’ve ever tried to do is demonstrate my remorse and commitment to healing and moving forward – with or without her.

I’m not saying any of this to humiliate Painter but every time I fact-check something she has said, or an outsider tells me she said about our relationship or my behavior I discover I either didn’t do that or it contains a type of emotional or intellectual rounding error.

The gift of this digging is I have an excellent intuition that can be trusted. I know people. I can believe my own gut. And once I can trust my intuition I can start making boundaries based on what I know.

Now I just have to start listening.