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Hypervigilance To Limerence; Echoes Of The Past

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JupiterTaco
Posts: 5664
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2015 6:12 pm
United States of America

Re: Hypervigilance To Limerence; Echoes Of The Past

Post by JupiterTaco »

ECHOES OF LIMERENCE PART 14; BASKING IN THE SIGNS

I’m going to write this post mostly for later purposes, so that someday when this all passes and I can look back at it objectively, maybe I can see these things for what they are. But I still want to have proof that I was looking at this thing as objectively as possible so I’ll try to list everything that I can remember of I and my former coworker’s interactions.

However at the beginning I can’t really remember him because I didn’t notice him. Aside from remembering him interacting with me in orientation I didn’t start paying attention until some point after we started our jobs. I barely remember the first time I saw him and don’t remember what he said in orientation when we all took turns to introduce ourselves but clearly he remembered what I said, which came up later. I didn’t think meant anything altogether but it was but one of many signs that my ex who never remembered anything about me was all wrong for me.

My former coworker is barely taller than me, has dark eyes, long wavy brown hair that he usually keeps braided and a short beard on his face. Among the first times I remember noticing him aside from the first time I saw him and barely noticed was when he was sitting catty-corner opposite from me, wearing what looked vaguely like some type of sleeping clothes, his legs up against the table facing my direction and he’d kind of smiled when the head driver who would be training him and the other driver who started then, was explaining the itinerary and I looked at him when he said “right on” or whatever he said with his bright smile. I remember wondering if he was high and thinking nothing else.

I don’t remember if that was before or after another time when he’d fixed his gaze on me and complimented my hair and I remember feeling put on the spot by his gaze though his face was friendly.

I remember he seemed to end up sitting at the end table seat next to me a lot, if not right next to me but I don’t remember taking real notice of it as I didn’t really focus on it and he seemed friendly to everyone and I’m trying to remember but I just don’t remember paying attention to how often he ended up right next to me or how he treated me as opposed to others.

Plus at the beginning I have to admit I found myself initially mildly attracted to the young woman who also started who, like me, was training to be a dispatcher. My same-sex attractions are kind of odd I guess. It’s often one of those things where I often don’t know if I want to be with or be the person and it’s awkward. Maybe both and this was also one of those situations with the younger woman anyway even though I knew for certain that I’m okay being me.

Anyway she also was very friendly and if she knew how I felt, she never let on about it, and I acted like a normal coworker, but she kind of settled near me a lot and would ask me questions about work and my life and I never took that to mean anything more than that or anything. I was more happy that I wasn’t feeling shame about a homosexual attraction and trying to shove it down, but otherwise I was very focused on what I was there to do.

As an aside, one thing I remember noticing is that our very first dispatch trainer was an easy-going guy, I don’t know how old but older than her, who seemed to focus his attention on the young woman just like the rest of our trainers did throughout training and even though he did this constantly and she’d give it back, I remember one incident where they were bantering and he kept mentioning his wife in an almost urgent manner and she’d ignore it and he finally looked at me after about three times of this, I was right next to her so it was hard to ignore and I looked at her and was just watching this awkwardly and didn’t say anything. Anyway that was one thing I remember which reminds me of how things can be interesting seen from other eyes.

But the girl had a boyfriend and talked occasionally about him. Other than that, I don’t remember her giving any kind of impression that she was actually interested in the trainer or anybody else but she talked a lot, was friendly and had a sense of no boundaries which could be common with being a young woman, IDK.

My potential LO/coworker on the other hand, I really didn’t see him a lot during training because we were training for dispatching and he was training for driving so they were gone a lot doing their thing. I remember being parked next to him one morning and him waving at me from his car but I don’t remember what it looked like much or thinking of it. I don’t even remember what his car looked like other than the color.
I’d see him occasionally in the office and he’d say hi all the time, but I didn’t think anything of it or that it appeared he was seeking me out at that point. One time he approached me at my car when I was leaving and said my car looked like the other driver’s who had started with us, which was something the girl had said also another time. I didn’t think anything of it except that he seemed hesitant to leave when he realized it was me and not him and was just kind of standing there hanging around and the parking lot was dark at night so it was awkward.

The first time I paid attention to it was one night I was leaving work and he’d come out of the garage at the same time I was leaving and kind of stood there like he wanted to talk to me. I was a little startled to see him, and he seemed put off and looked at his phone with a grumpy face. That was the first time I was kind of like WTF? And the first time I noticed it and wondered if maybe I’m not coming across friendly enough.

For the record I don’t really care what people think of how friendly or not I am. But this guy had come across at this point as a friendly guy who maybe just wanted to talk to everybody so I remember making a concerted effort to be friendly if he was around. Which for the most part, that’s how I’d see him from then on, was when I’d be sitting at my desk and hear him coming to approach me otherwise I do still have a startle response.

There was one time, and I can’t remember the order that all of these earlier interactions happened, but the one time with the alarm system at work, when I was trying to set it one night and it wasn’t doing anything. At that moment, he had come in and asked if everything was fine and I told him “this thing is pissing me off,” and he looked at it.

Then he kind of explained somebody just got back to wash a van so “don’t arm him in” and he kind of touched my arm with his fist lightly like it was the most awkward thing he'd ever done and we were smiling and I just kind of said, “no, don’t want to do that,” and slipped past him to be on my way. That was the first time I remember being affected by him and I just thought a little crush was born.

I remember noticing the next time after that, that somebody had come in one night when I was on the phone, it was him and he was kind of walking slowly along the far wall watching me and I waved at him over my chair. I don’t remember anymore if it was the same night or another night that he’d come up and patted my shoulder staring at me and asked me if I was liking the job. Probably the same night.

This was how many of our interactions would go. So I wasn’t terribly inclined to look and see if there was anything more going on; probably honestly until the hand thing, but even before that, when I’d catch him staring at me a bit too long, when his voice would change saying my name over the radio, when his touches would linger too long, when he’d find any excuse to interact with me and then try to drag them out, I may have thought it was a little crush on his part and certainly mine and nothing more.

And even though at that point I could sense something else going on, I wasn’t terribly inclined to think that just because he acted over-friendly at work that meant he was actually interested in me. I was aware he was attracted to me, that was kind of hard to ignore, but even I know that doesn’t mean anything.

He didn’t ask me a whole lot of my life outside of work and aside from the conversation where we talked briefly about both the mountain drive and where we were from (which was the info he knew about me from orientation), and the time he first started singing my name at me and told me he liked singing my name. He told me who he was and asked if I remembered him and I had told him we were in orientation together, and he kept saying things to appear to drag out the conversation as he hesitated to leave; he mostly talked either about work-related subjects or random details about himself just to drag out a conversation but again nothing that would give me the impression that he had any serious interest in me as a person or wanted to take any of this outside of work or and I wouldn’t have wanted to either.

That’s probably the reason, aside from that I had work to do, that I tried my best to put him off. I didn’t know how old he was, but I knew he was a lot younger than me. And before he started finding work-related things to talk to me about, he was largely a distraction when he was there. So I don’t know if somebody got on him or what.

One time before leaving for a trip, he said bye to the other dispatcher who was working at that time and then lingered at the door staring at me (I don’t think she noticed). I waved at him and he finally left. The time early on one Saturday night there were two managers, three or four other drivers and myself there, and he’d come in talking loudly and acting like he had an accent. When he came near where I was sitting and made sure I heard him, I asked if he was entertaining himself. I don’t remember what he said anymore because I was working. I mean it was cute and distracting but yeah he was wound up that night.

He offered to get me a soda from the breakroom and offered me the dessert from his lunchable, and I was so hungry even though I’d eaten not long before that (constantly being hungry was a huge problem at that job) so I’d taken it, but yeah he was really nice like that. Constantly hovering around my desk.

Some time later, he’d come back behind me and got my attention, I don’t remember how anymore, and when I looked at him, he was smiling at me over his shoulder while he talked to the guys, standing between me and them. That was I think the same night he’d followed me and another driver out to check out a van. When I was walking around the side, he’d snuck up behind me and touched my shoulder, acting like he was shocking me or something and I was just standing there smiling like “are you done?” If the other driver noticed it, he said nothing.

I mentioned in one of the first posts how he’d treat me differently in front of the older woman we worked with and that was something that really got on my nerves. Not only since I didn’t understand why except that possibly he was flirting with her too and wanted to keep that info from both of us, or possibly even that she might’ve wanted to get him with her daughter or something but I didn’t think about it. I really didn’t care about the reason whatever it was, it was just weird. When they talked, they mostly talked to each other and not me, and later on, they’d leave the room to talk.

I had a hunch that she was the one who may have told him I “wasn’t married” but still as I’ve said that didn’t mean I wasn’t involved with someone else. Despite my crush on my coworker, I knew my ex was the one who had been there, when I was unemployed, when I was living in my car, etc. I knew there was no way in hell I was ever going to trust some random dude to be there for me even after my former stalker neighbor and her egotistical fat apartment manager homey cost me my apartment and then finally vanished completely from my life (but I still dream about her occasionally).

My ex told me constantly that he was going to change his life, and I assumed he would when he was ready. I had the thought in the back of my mind about going back to him if he ever moved out of where we’d both lived and I was clear that I was not going back to that building where I’d experienced so much harassment. Ultimately he never did move and the situation with my coworker, who changed much of how he presented himself and worked so hard to impress and help me at work, really brought that into a glaring unpleasant light.
But with the older woman, I saw glaring signs of how a relationship with this other guy would likely be. And even otherwise if I’d looked, but it was more near the end of my employment that I started realizing how much being around him did affect me negatively but I’ll get to that later. There were always red flags.

So back to the first time the woman had come in with him and said “he’s the best!” and was like hugging him as he barely hugged her back and then seemed to kind of pull away staring at me as he’d stared at me from the moment he walked in. I turned away to answer the phone and then after that, it seemed they’d leave the room to talk, and even though it could’ve been because they didn’t want to distract me on the phone, I remembered how I felt that night with the hugging thing, how cringy it was and just weird, almost like they’d rehearsed it and how it’d triggered me, reminding me of my former neighbor, who’d done many things that were blatantly obviously staged. And that was how I felt early on, was that I didn’t want a repeat of that and I know it made me possibly hypervigilant to this dude.

The time before that they were both talking at my desk and didn’t seem to be really trying to include me or anything but that was weird. So yeah after that, that kind of stopped. Then the phone thing happened. He’d told me that not all the drivers were plugging in their phones and there weren’t enough cords to charge them all, and that night, I’d spent half the night on sales calls which wasn’t supposed to be my job, with a faulty phone app and constantly crashing software and was pretty annoyed at my employer not to mention just sick of everything and I remember that night all I wanted to do was leave when it was time.

At that point it was becoming clear that whatever I did or didn’t do, I would be yelled at by somebody and was plain sick of it. Plus I was used to his continuing antics to seemingly keep me from leaving work on time at night. So I told him I’d check the phones from now on, but I’m leaving for now and then I put mine away in a huff and left. He’d wandered into the office after me probably to check and I remember rolling my eyes as I left.

The door and hand thing had happened the next night. Until that point, he hadn’t come in to see me like usual and I didn’t really care. I was just glad he wasn’t distracting me. When I left I realized he was in his van parked near where he could look inside and see me at my desk. He approached me as I got into my car.

That was the last night before my weekend. When I came back, I remember I had a hard time finding a place to park and I had to drive through the parking lot looking for a place. I happened to notice that he was in one of the vans watching me. I didn’t let on that I saw him. He came in and took my hand again that night, and was just looking at it.

After that, the way he approached me seemed to change. Rather than singing at me over the radio and being syrupy sweet, he’d approach me at work with work-related stuff. He’d use it to get close to me and after patting me, sometimes he’s be really close with his arm around my chair or other times touching me, to show me something. One time he rubbed my upper back really noticeably and when I looked at him, he was smiling, touching me, and insisting he didn’t mean anything by it, as his hand was planted on my upper back.

One night soon after that, he was projected to start his trip back to town (empty) at a specific time that would make him arrive back after I left. I was silently relieved, until he called and asked for permission to leave early. The women in the mountains insisted he had to stay at least ten minutes until the projected departure time in case somebody booked a last-minute shuttle to the airport.
He tried to tell me in the quiet throaty voice he would at times use to talk to me over the radio, that it wasn’t so much the departure time, just that it was about accountability, knowing what was going on. The other dispatcher insisted he had to stay and I told him she’d said that but he left and got back before I left. Which you know, I’m sure the drivers didn’t always want to do ten/twelve-hour days on a trip with no customers but I have no idea what contracts they signed so you know.

I never got the ride-along I was promised which would’ve helped with routing and routing and the lack of enough time routing based on my training of routing times was one issue that came up. The younger woman got all the training on routing and when it was my turn to do it, the latest trainer left early to go to the gun store and my new boss insisted I had it down and mostly I did, but the ridealong would’ve helped.

Other times the times would be off on his routes. Nobody else told me about it. I got to the point where I’d tell him when he came in whether or not I routed his side and a couple of times I had to tell him I’d set him up for a transfer for his very long trip and someone had removed it.
For awhile I only worried about routing the one side of the pickup/dropoff areas we serviced as there were mostly two dispatchers, me and whoever was working in the mountains at any given time; sometimes one evening dispatcher (one of the bullies) and one overnight dispatcher, but if I didn’t find a way to have the time to route both sides, the timing would be off on whatever one I didn’t route and screw up the drivers’ days.

This happened even later on when they insisted they’d found me help and the afternoon dispatcher who worked before I went in would explain to me that they’d already routed. I’d still have to fix almost everything. Which was part of the reason I was so flabbergasted that the witches in the mountains suddenly decided I was going to do sales calls also but moving on. I’ll talk about all of the negative aspects of the job in another post, but trying to route with the noisiness of the van rental company and all of their customers was challenging at best.

My coworker was the only one who told me about issues in the vehicles, problems with the routing, etc. And it was awhile before I started noticing that I saw way less of everybody else. Up to this point, I’d explained to my coworker in detail some of the issues that I’d been having with the job in one conversation. The computer/technology problems. The times I’d routed something and soon find it changed, etc. To which he got really close, patted me and said he knew we were dealing with a lot.

So it wasn’t really something that would seem out of the ordinary in general, though there was always this feeling of tense energy in the room. I felt it from early on when he’d walked past me with wide eyes one night and seemed trying not to look at me when I’d gone to empty the trash cans that nobody else ever emptied and he’d come out of the break room. I just managed a smile and stared forward.

I knew he did a lot of things he did to have an excuse to get close to me but there was always my rational brain trying to question everything, to tell me I could be wrong. And I know there are people that may think so, but moving on. One night he came in and one of my bosses was trying to fix the other two computers which wouldn’t turn on so that I could send mass emails on one and take phone calls and check trips on the other, which would’ve made my job so much easier. They didn’t give me a hard time about my working speed, I didn’t consider it completely necessary but I was always trying to think efficiency.

My coworker had approached him at first about routing problems, and I’d asked him how long he spends at most stops (everyone was aware I’d never gotten my ridealong and one of my coworkers got one right before I left and she was there almost as long as I was).

He’d told me he needed an extra five minutes at every stop at least which would make sense but wasn’t what we were trained to do. All we were trained to do was round up to five or ten minutes from the original projected time between stops to give time to load at the next stop, at first and then an extra five minutes for every three passengers.

Then he brought up another safety issue in one of the vans with my boss who was still fiddling with a computer, and he kept sneaking looks at me which again, I just thought he wanted me to know so wrote it down and put it in nightly blast later. At some point, he was asking our boss about a raise right in front of me and kept glancing at me. My boss was still fiddling with a computer and my coworker was just going on in this flat voice that he works so hard and he isn’t finding the motivation to keep doing it with the money he was making, while glancing constantly at me. At some point I just kind of lost my resolve and was quietly laughing to myself turned to my computer. You would’ve had to been there, it was just so funny. I wanted to tell him, word to the wise, some conversations really belong in a private office. LOL!

So yeah, he was such a distraction, a half-hour if only that, distraction every night. When I left we were literally working all of the same days. For half the week it seemed he’d work day shifts and then on weekends he’d work overnight shifts. He’d initially had Friday nights off and either worked Monday or Tuesday, I didn’t know when I wasn’t there as those were my days off so I don’t know. Sometimes he was on call on Fridays.

But the last week I was there, he was there on a Friday so don’t know if he was filling in for somebody or they changed his schedule or what. Really, what matters is that everything about the situation; having to keep an eye on him as part of my job; being alone with him nearly every single night; having to rely on him for the information I needed to do my job while trying my best to remain kind while avoiding all of his plausible-deniability actions, all of these things were like playing with fire to a limerent and after the hand thing I felt I was going down a rabbit hole I couldn’t get out of.

Though I still wonder if I was actually limerent being that I don’t remember everything (I’d think I would if I had been limerent, but it may have just set in later. I know I still ruminate about the whole situation even now and that has affected my productivity immensely). One time he’d come to tell me his routing was again wrong, and again someone else had changed it, and I did have a question about one section of town so he’d leaned into me to explain it and that was when I’d seen the woman’s name on his hand, and I had an unpleasant flashback to my fourth LO who had a woman’s name tattooed on his neck and how he’d acted and I kind of pulled back. He seemed to notice and sort of jumped back a bit and then he practically tossed the paper he was holding and asked in a quivering voice for me to fix it. I’m sitting there trying to concentrate as he’s sitting next to me and I couldn’t. He starts whistling a song.

At some point a few minutes later, we had a conversation where we were talking about people from work, people who hadn’t stayed with us, and he was looking me in the eyes and told me he liked working with me, etc. and I’d kind of mentioned that he was a good worker, that they’d better keep him happy, with a laugh. He broke out in this huge smile and kind of stuttered, yeah…well…yeah, and leaned back in his seat. He was looking me in the eyes and then did a really obvious once-over look at my body in the chair next to him. It was sort of quick but obvious and then back at my eyes. I kind of folded into myself then and pulled into myself. I don’t really remember after that.

At some point he was out in his van and that was the time they’d moved the trailer, and I had to approach him about that. He’d reached out to touch my hand as I left and that was when I refused to approach him again about the stupid trailer lock.
Another time he came out of the office on his way out for a trip and I was doing something and he was watching me and kept sliding his sunglasses down his nose and looking at me and I finally waved at him.

Another time he was running late, might’ve been after his check-engine light had come on. He came by to tell me to send his passengers fifteen-minute delay texts. I don’t remember anymore if it was the same day or not, but someone who was supposed to get the other shuttle had apparently snuck onto his shuttle without him even knowing (he hadn’t counted) so when he read his passengers off to me and they were all there, I’d cleared him. Another driver had told me a few minutes later that one of her passengers was on his shuttle so I’d gone into my boss’s office and remember thinking, gawd I don’t want to deal with this guy right now…

My boss was the one who had to fix that situation anyway. He’d coordinated them to meet up and transfer the passenger and he told me there was no way I could’ve been at fault for that, that was definitely on the driver. When my coworker came back later that night, he’d admitted his mistake and realized he had to do headcounts on passengers.

On the second to last night I worked, he’d come in and was making small talk again, this time after complimenting my hair again and then he said it looked like his (wavy) and I told him he probably didn’t have to make it that way. I said it looked good on him. He seemed to have a panicked look in his eyes and sort of touched his hair and then was staring at me. I looked down.

He kept talking about his hair and finally said he was going to clean his van and kind of gave me this timid bow of sorts. I laughed and he hesitated and then walked off. When I left, I asked him if he wanted me to lock the door and he said he’d do it. He told me he appreciated me with a huge smile and I said likewise and left.

The last night I worked, I saw him watching me when I pulled up to work early and was listening to music before work. I didn’t remember seeing him again before he left but I was on the phone. After I left, I started realizing all of the “signs” that someone is thinking about you, which I’d googled when going through my former neighbor situation and which were seriously magnified in that situation, were noticeably true for me. Starting with the night I left, I felt serious goosebumps as if someone were hugging me. A few days later I was walking in the park thinking about him and a butterfly, then still out of season had come up and started almost dancing with me, landing on me over and over. I found numerous white feathers. I heard songs we heard together at my new job soon after leaving old job. I have seen his name, both as he spelled it and the more obvious way others spell it, everywhere. I see black sprinter vans and think of him.

I’ve had itchy eyes usually one or the other off and on, discomfort while eating, periods of yearning in my stomach that seem to come out of nowhere. And of course hearing his voice in my head when he’d talk softly on the radio or his voice would crack saying my name. And of course the dreams and intrusive thoughts/memories.

I’ve seen reminders of his home state and the state he’d lived in before coming here (a lot of people from there have moved here hence all the license plates). I’ve seen angel numbers as well as the numbers that were on the bottle he gave me. And his birth year. One day I had a little peace and was analying AirBnB data in another city I may want to live and in quick succession I saw street names of both his home state and the language he used to jokingly greet me in.

So I can see how the craziness can start. But one thing that’s keeping me in check is that I remember strongly how much stronger these signs were with my former neighbor and that was someone who would’ve and was bad for my mental health without question. Aside from the numbers of dreams from my former coworker, that was definitely more intense without question.

Well that and he hasn’t called or done anything to get in touch with me and neither have I him. I take the moments of peace where I can concentrate on something else when I can and try to go easy on myself. I’m still getting former employer notifications in my email. I often wonder if the minute I start letting go of it and shifting my attention elsewhere, if he’s going to be the one to post a message and possibly undo the progress I might make, but only time will tell. That or I’ll get frustrated enough to finally tell them to take me out of their system so that I stop getting spammed with their crap.

I don’t feel an urge to go and see this guy. I don’t feel an urge to contact him. Occasionally I wonder if I should feel like I should try but then I ask myself why. The vast majority of my dreams about him make me feel bad, and quite honestly I don’t know him and really wouldn’t want to date someone who has another woman’s name on his hand. And that’s from someone who thought about getting memorial tattoos of people so that says a lot.

But I do miss the way he made me feel at times. I miss the way he stared at me like I was so amazing at times. It felt really nice. But I can learn to see myself like that and shouldn’t need someone else to tell me that.
"Men are fooled so easily. Women wrelike spiders. They'll pull you into their webs and...wrap you up so tight you can hardly breathe," Griselda Blanco, Cocaine Godmother
JupiterTaco
Posts: 5664
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2015 6:12 pm
United States of America

Re: Hypervigilance To Limerence; Echoes Of The Past

Post by JupiterTaco »

ECHOES OF LIMERENCE PART 15; WHEN REALITY HITS

It’s been over a month since I left my job with my former potential LO coworker. And reality has really been starting to hit. The reality that I lost the little, if crappy support system that I had in my ex over at least partially these issues and my need for space to get over the guy who’d been a prominent force in my life and is now a memory, if constant one, in my mind. Other than a ghost in my head and still occasionally in my dreams where

I see the outline of his shaggy hair and dark eyes that somehow always looked like bright beams, I’m alone. And I’m once again being covertly threatened with homelessness again even though I have a job and have given my mother everything she’s asked of me at this point. I’ll talk about all of that in another post, but yes, it’s pretty hard to think about getting lost in fantasy when real life is knocking at the door like that…again…
Plus I’m just trying to remember the reality. He’s not here, he hasn’t been here, and he’s not coming back. My ex, who won’t stop calling, is here and

I feel compelled to take him back in my life again because at least when he was in my life, I had a support system of some sort. I had somebody to vent to about the state of my life, and the ongoing problems with the person I never wanted back in my life. For the first time I’m finally starting to feel the anger at what has been done to me. The misrepresented job, the unprofessional managers, the crappy equipment and technology and the handsy coworker. I don’t think that I can ever blame this guy, he’s pretty young and has some learning to do, but yeah whatever makes me see him for how I should’ve always seen him if I hadn’t been so compelled to play nice and be quiet.
"Men are fooled so easily. Women wrelike spiders. They'll pull you into their webs and...wrap you up so tight you can hardly breathe," Griselda Blanco, Cocaine Godmother
JupiterTaco
Posts: 5664
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2015 6:12 pm
United States of America

Re: Hypervigilance To Limerence; Echoes Of The Past

Post by JupiterTaco »

You’re right, good old-fashioned sensing has seemed to have lost its appeal in our busy, over-thinking society.

"Awareness comes when we recognise our shadows/dark traits and decide if we want to change them. I'm not saying whether you are a bully for laughing at someone's misfortune and having no issue with doing so in their face because I'm not you. I would feel like a bully in that situation. Some may say it's comeuppance, however, I feel we influence our own karma/fate when wishing awful things upon someone else. In my previous posts, I mentioned my reactive behaviour and needing to defend myself came off as if I was bullying others who I deemed as bullies, hence no winners. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth type thing."

One of my shadows is most certainly a bully. I mean I was raised by and around several so that doesn’t seem so outlandish. I realize people would think that about my laughing at the former apartment manager, and that’s fine but I had a long way to get to that point with her. I had to laugh when my ex told me he wished I was that happy that he'd moved out of there. =)) :-o

I discussed a lot of this in my journal section, but our personal problems aside from her being buddy-buddy with my former neighbor J, started over parking. Parking!!! All I asked was to have parking taken off my lease after my car was vandalized by one of former neighbor J’s flying monkeys who’d stayed in the building after she left.

I also complained at that point about another worker who’d made a racist comment about black people (manager and her pussy-whipped maintenance man were both black as were many tenants, other employee was white and mostly everybody who harassed me was white also) and slavery one night and I’d told him off. They didn’t remember who he was and he must’ve left or got fired because I never even saw him after that one night (my car was vandalized the same night so he was also a suspect in my mind).

She denied responsibility for anything that happened. Fine. I wanted parking taken off my lease so I could park under my window and watch my car and she said she would and never did. I initially started wracking up late fees and interest over that! When I finally told the owner, was when it was finally taken off after nearly constant phone calls from her asking for the money and denying she’d told me she’d take it off, and I left a nasty review calling her out on google for not doing such a simple facet of her fucking job and that was when she started her campaign to get me out including illegal inspections during a pandemic. Rather than fight her, I broke my lease and left. My unit is still empty.

I was happy to let all of that go. That was my get-out-of-jail free card. But the bitch had the nerve to send me to collections for what should’ve been one month of rent that I didn’t pay because I moved, but she’d put a bunch of trumped-up charges on there. It was insane the shit she tried to charge me for, knowing I had pictures of before and after when I moved in and out and proof that I’d asked for things to be fixed for years that were never fixed, including a fire alarm and a frayed kitchen outlet which made me laugh when she tried to tell me that the boxes in my closet were a “fire hazard” that were nicely packed and stacked and which pest control could easily walk around and spray and they did for years.

Months later when I had a place to stay again I wrote the collection agency a letter and told them I didn’t owe and wasn’t going to pay the debt and listed all of the reasons why; the long-term pest problem and lack of general maintenance and many, many things that were never fixed which were actually broken when I moved in; false charges and extortion, illegal lease clauses; illegal actions by management and undue harassment from management and other tenants and that I had physical proof of all of that. I never heard from them again and it was soon removed from my credit.

Of course being in touch with my now-ex and having to see and hear all about the place and people who’d caused me so much misery certainly didn’t help. That’s just my story. One would have to read all of the stories of things she’d done to them and there are many. So yes, I’d happily laugh in her face but she’s out of my life.

My whole life seems like an endless karma story. It’s been bad. I’ve seen people who have been nothing but terrible human beings have everything and people who have been good people, even religious people, end up with nothing. Bad things keep happening to me and I can state completely that I never did a single thing to make her treat me like that, and I’ll never know ultimately why, but I try to continue to be grateful for what I have. I know how bad things can get. But being homeless isn’t the end of the world. It can be tough and trying, and it can certainly be dangerous. But so can living with harassment, working with harassment, abusive relationships, etc. And these are things people do every day to avoid being homeless which in certain situations can be freeing from such situations despite the problems. It’s so crazy. Better to focus on fixing one’s own life and getting to a position of not needing to rely on others for a job, a place to stay, etc. I think that’s the real measure of wealth.

Nevertheless a part of my healing is that I do find what could be termed cluster b humor really funny and have my own conflictions around that. That’s why I like Archer and his mom, and George Lopez’s mom for just a couple of examples. Again, it’s what I grew up with. We need to stop all of this us-versus-them bullshit that goes on. Everybody is capable of almost anything at any time. It’s reality. We lock people up for committing all sorts of terrible crimes and then they’re stuck in an environment that has no bearing on learning and healing, and they come out worse than before they went in. There are people on death row who have been delayed several times. If that’s not a form of torture I don’t know what is. And just who gives the government the right to do that?

I guess I can theoretically understand the idea that some people are just so evil and dark that they shouldn’t be alive, but this idea of shoving everybody into a box that is “them, not us” conveniently ignores the fact that much of society completely overlooks the fact that so many people are raised in truly horrific environments and then they’re magically supposed to know how to live in civilized society? Oh right, because there are so many people making money off of the continuous cycle of people in and out of prison who have no real way to change. Even if they had the mind to change, the family can be a huge pull on people trying to change. I can speak for that! So just imagine how bad that can get.

"Will I get bullied for my opinions in the future? Probably. Do I have to react? Nope. I have always said that I wish no one harm (and genuinely meant it) but this was negated by my defensiveness and need to be right. In a 'My opinions are mine and I'm entitled to them damn it' kind of way. Right? Pigheaded I was because I didn't stop to be a little bit more curious. A little bit more empathetic. Anyway, not sharing this to make anyone feel yuck. Sharing because I believe 'like attracts like. I always asked "why does this keep happening to me?" Probably because I needed to be a bit more aware of what I was attracting."

One can share their opinion, it doesn’t mean somebody else wants to or is ready to hear it. That’s one thing I struggle with, is that I’m trying to attract better things into my life and I feel this foray back into the circle of someone who’s already proven that she doesn’t actually care a bit about me and is still entrenched in negativity has been a struggle. I realized I have options last week for another living situation and that made me feel a little better. Maybe that was what I needed most. The true answers will come in time.

"Happy Easter! May love find us in the most beautiful ways. Love your thesis idea. I believe you've got a creative intelligent mind that can break some ceilings and create positive change. Law School, Dream Analyst, sounds bleeding interesting to me!"

Thank you and likewise!
"Men are fooled so easily. Women wrelike spiders. They'll pull you into their webs and...wrap you up so tight you can hardly breathe," Griselda Blanco, Cocaine Godmother
JupiterTaco
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Re: Hypervigilance To Limerence; Echoes Of The Past

Post by JupiterTaco »

Speaking of "signs" how could I forget??? A few days ago someone with the same name as that tattooed on his hand happened to like one of my really old posts on a FB group I'm in (and like his, this isn't a very common name). That weirded me out enough to make me deactivate my account. /:)
"Men are fooled so easily. Women wrelike spiders. They'll pull you into their webs and...wrap you up so tight you can hardly breathe," Griselda Blanco, Cocaine Godmother
JupiterTaco
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Re: Hypervigilance To Limerence; Echoes Of The Past

Post by JupiterTaco »

The shuttle company is hiring again. =))
"Men are fooled so easily. Women wrelike spiders. They'll pull you into their webs and...wrap you up so tight you can hardly breathe," Griselda Blanco, Cocaine Godmother
JupiterTaco
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Re: Hypervigilance To Limerence; Echoes Of The Past

Post by JupiterTaco »

ECHOES OF LIMERENCE PART 16; MUSINGS OF A “FORGOTTEN” CHICK 6/5/23

My recent experience with the former classmate J who popped into my head plus a guy at work who seems like he’s flirting with me at times but is married, got me thinking back about all of the times I felt like I was being unwillingly pulled into the role of work spouse. And there are many, many experiences of that.

Former manager circa 2016-2018; store manager circa 2018-2019; I’m sure I’ll think of more, but for now I want to stick to the subject at hand. It’s worth mentioning that I will never forget the feeling I had when former manager I first mentioned whom I’d worked with for years, who took years to mention that he was living with a woman and had kids with her, showed up and knew who I was, asking me about my hair, and then staring at me for much of an evening on a Sunday night as her husband worked behind the counter and I waited for an order to deliver. I’ll never ever know whether she did that because of things he told her that I did that were not true or whether he told her true things about me. But I always kept boundaries with this guy despite my echoes of attraction to him, largely because of his similarities to my drug-addicted, criminally-inclined dad and my very charismatic sex-addict uncle who was a common feature in my childhood who made it fun. That type of situation is not something I would want again but even years ago, I would not friend or accept guys on social media who were clearly in relationships even if they were honest about it and most weren’t.

I still think given the numerous things I’ve read about the damage to relationships that social media and seeking supply does, that it’s a good rule of thumb even if I can hide behind my happy pride frame for the month and can sit with the knowledge that I have no interest in stealing anybody’s friggin’ boyfriend or husband.

Cue the incident last week that made me realize that my decidedly hot, mixed-race around-my-age married-with-kids, helpful male coworker has been looking at my body and that other people know it which I don’t want to talk about right now.
Nevertheless I feel a bit vulnerable given what I’ve been dealing with about my former classmate J. I’ve blocked him to avoid the possible temptation to stalk him online. It hasn’t been too bad since I just looked at him that one time but since he’s been on my mind almost unstoppably for almost a month, I’m taking every precaution to avoid ending up slipping in case this is limerence.

I mentioned in another post that there are two women constantly lording themselves over his page. I don’t know which one is his actual girlfriend or what, but all I know is that it’s not a good sign (no better than him having one woman he clearly is publicly committed to like a normal committed man who is being honest should but doesn’t) and nevertheless it’s not a dumpster fire I want to get anywhere near so I passed up contacting him in any way which I thought seriously about doing because I was concerned.

On that topic, I was almost asleep last night when I realized youtube was playing a video that talked about common signs of manipulation. I thought I’d heard them all but found out that feigning concern or at least using that as a reason to contact someone can come across as manipulative because often that’s a reason an abuser will use to come back. I should know, my mother is a pro at that and so is D.

My mouth dropped open after hearing that and realizing how close I came to contacting J. I wasn’t going to tell him why, at most I was just going to like something he posted and hope he wouldn’t realize I had a new facebook account which I never added any classmates (just childhood best friend’s brother who was dying). I really was concerned. I’ll say that a part of me does wonder about him because he looks like he could be on some kind of drugs (and definitely looks incredibly worn-down and tired and is not aging well) but none of that is really any of my business.

I did what I thought I owed myself in this situation and just waited for almost a month to see out of curiosity if he would contact me and he hasn’t so that told me all I needed to know about this situation despite all the “signs” surrounding memories of him and that it was time to put it behind me. So I blocked him and called it good.

Now I’m just hoping this doesn’t mean I’m vulnerable to someone else and am keeping boundaries with the married man at work. It helps that I don’t find him attractive (he’s good-looking but not really my type). And I hope that will be enough. Nevertheless I’m sitting in the aftermath of that very-strange experience with my former classmate and all that could’ve happened or at least that I thought could’ve happened. That after his image appeared in my mind out of the blue so strongly almost a month ago, and how it freaked me out a bit remembering my numerous of those experiences with my former neighbor. I was afraid he was going to try to find me with some strange vigor. Believe me when I say I feared that more than I feared him not doing such, just like with probably all of my past LOs though I wouldn’t have admitted it was a secret fear of mine when I was actually limerent.

Now I know we all grow up with the idea that somebody looking for an old love or love interest after years sounds really romantic and like it should be really flattering. I’ve even heard of and/or read a few books with that particular subject matter. But it’s really not flattering that somebody could pine over somebody who goes out and marries somebody else, has a whole family, a public spouse and then cheats and/or leaves for an old love. Don’t get me started about the idea that the person who did all this could technically do all of this while pining for somebody else too. Just ick...

Nevertheless since this happened I’ve been realizing that the residue of the past several years of my life and not the least of all the years before that where I felt utterly alone going through so many things I went through during my school years and nobody was there; these things are all there in the background reminding me of why it’s actually kind of insulting to be someone’s “one that got away”. Not the least of all because we were friends on Facebook for I think over a year on my old account and that I’d have been easy to find for years despite altering my name on there on my new Facebook account. If corporate nutbags from past jobs could find me on there no matter what I did and my ex/roommate/friend D can continue to find new information on me and ways to bug me from random numbers, then surely if he’d wanted to at any time, he could’ve contacted me but didn’t.

I know people are in relationships a long time, even ones they may not have wanted but I don’t care. I don’t care that somebody’s stressful toddler, a global pandemic and the overturning of Roe vs. Wade may or may not all have added stress to an otherwise mediocre relationship that predictably led him to potentially thinking of me which a sensitive me could pick up on somehow if that’s what happened.

I already know that could possibly not be the case. I’m just pretty sure that it is, and that they are having problems, whatever they are. It’s none of my business and I want none of it. But I also don’t want even the idea of some guy with a kid to come running back to me, two states away trying to savor some bit of his youth or whatever which I’m sure is the only reason he’d do that.

Even if things went well, I don’t want to be with somebody who is otherwise a constant reminder of things I don’t want to think about, and otherwise a reminder that he, like everybody else, has managed to forge relationships and move on and live a normal adult life while I’m still dealing with the same shit I was dealing with at age eleven, when I had a class with him for the last time. So I wished him well silently and blocked him. And I already feel the weight lifted. So maybe that was all it took. And in time everything else will go back to normal.

In the meantime I’ll be glad that at least for now, my mind is on J and not my other coworker, who recently made a joking comment that said not just to me, but to everybody we work with, that he is looking at my body. And how that makes me feel exposed, sleazy and grossed out.
Walked down the aisle I was working in with a look of either enthusiasm or intensity or both, and how that made me feel sort of cornered and a little concerned. Not the least of all that working in a place full of men is very triggering which in the long run will be helpful but not so much in the short-term.
"Men are fooled so easily. Women wrelike spiders. They'll pull you into their webs and...wrap you up so tight you can hardly breathe," Griselda Blanco, Cocaine Godmother
JupiterTaco
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Re: Hypervigilance To Limerence; Echoes Of The Past

Post by JupiterTaco »

PART 17; THE UNEXPLAINED HEAVINESS

So I unblocked my former classmate J briefly one night so that I could do two things; see once and for all if there were any signs that this isn’t all just in my head; and to see if he is still in a relationship. It appears he is. I just got weirded out and blocked him and started doing a cord-cutting visualization like I did with my last coworker, every time he popped into my mind, or I started feeling his energy. It really does help but I’m afraid I might need more help with it as what I’ve experienced, the dreams, the intrusive thoughts and fantasies, and feeling his energy at times has been very intense.

I am trying to think of the emotions I felt when I went on the internet and saw that. Shock, disgust, etc. That if it were just a fantasy and I knew it was just a fantasy in my head, it’d be more okay to use as a baby blanket if that’s what I thought I needed right now. But it’s not. I really feel that this is more than that, and I’m terrified that things are affecting him as much as me which I’ll talk about in a minute. Nevertheless I don’t want to be responsible for the idea of helping split a family up. And really I’m getting a little old to continue having my energy sucked away by bullshit like this. It’s way past time to start leaning into what God has for me. So I am doing what I can to just fight this at every turn.

Nevertheless as far as my question as to whether it’s all in my head, that was kind of answered too. About two weeks ago, he’d posted something about twin flames. It said something like “we couldn’t be together when we met” etc. something else. I wanted to screen-shot it but I was afraid that’d be like feeding the beast if I even read all of it so I didn’t but I felt it spoke to me, what little I did read.

Anyway when I read it initially I rolled my eyes. Another twin flame douchebag. Then I just happened to look and realize that the day he posted that was the same day I remember I could feel his energy really strongly around me like you would feel if somebody was cornering you with a warm hug, and yeah, I’m freaked out. This is creepy shit I tell you.

I realize that doesn’t actually mean without asking him, that he thinks I’m his twin flame or something, and I really don’t care. I just want all of this to stop. I want him to go back to the periphery of my memory where he always was and stay there. I don’t want this guy! I have not been able for the life of me to figure out what the hell on earth triggered all of this, but I have decided that I am keeping him blocked indefinitely. And I have yet another reason never to attend a high school reunion lmao! Oh and of course another one to be glad I got the hell out of my hometown...again...
"Men are fooled so easily. Women wrelike spiders. They'll pull you into their webs and...wrap you up so tight you can hardly breathe," Griselda Blanco, Cocaine Godmother
L-F
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Re: Hypervigilance To Limerence; Echoes Of The Past

Post by L-F »

JupiterTaco wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 10:06 pm About two weeks ago, he’d posted something about twin flames. It said something like “we couldn’t be together when we met” etc. something else.
How do you know it's about you, and if he was in a relationship, why would he even post something like this, unless it's in reference to his current relationship?
Sounds incredibly weird. From someone on the outside looking in on one half of the story, I would say he was talking about his current partner. Not denying your feelings because they are true for you, just curious about his post.
"And in the end, we were all just humans…Drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Re: Hypervigilance To Limerence; Echoes Of The Past

Post by JupiterTaco »

L-F wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2023 10:25 am
JupiterTaco wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 10:06 pm About two weeks ago, he’d posted something about twin flames. It said something like “we couldn’t be together when we met” etc. something else.
How do you know it's about you, and if he was in a relationship, why would he even post something like this, unless it's in reference to his current relationship?
Sounds incredibly weird. From someone on the outside looking in on one half of the story, I would say he was talking about his current partner. Not denying your feelings because they are true for you, just curious about his post.
L-F wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2023 10:25 am
JupiterTaco wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 10:06 pm About two weeks ago, he’d posted something about twin flames. It said something like “we couldn’t be together when we met” etc. something else.
How do you know it's about you, and if he was in a relationship, why would he even post something like this, unless it's in reference to his current relationship?
Sounds incredibly weird. From someone on the outside looking in on one half of the story, I would say he was talking about his current partner. Not denying your feelings because they are true for you, just curious about his post.
I don't know that it's about me. The post was about being together in another life I didn't read it in its entirety and given my present state I don't think it's necessarily a good idea.

I suppose some people can believe in the Twin Flame thing without it getting to their heads but from what I hear about people who believe in it it's really intense for them.

And I certainly don't think he's my twin flame or anything like that he's not been in my consciousness which is another thing I hear about twin flames.

The closest I ever came to believing in twin flames was with high school LO years ago due to the many similarities we had which seemed at the time really freaky. Remembering that with my present eyes I think he was just showing me things about myself that I really needed to look at.

The last time I thought about this guy was really when I ran into him on the bus all those years ago. And I never thought about it at the time but after that happened I remember having this feeling and this intense idea briefly that he was with me at a punk show after that but you know I was really drunk and I just didn't really think anything of it but I do remember that and of course I never told anybody or anything and that was it. I never thought of it even when we were friends on Facebook for a while on my old account years ago this guy was not part of my memory.

In fact I just realized going through all this that he is actually in the classmates picture at N's funeral/class picture on FB and I just never even noticed nor recognized him and I've spent my share of time looking through everyone trying to figure out who is who and was mostly unsuccessful by the way LOL.

I feel like something is going on with him and I realized that this all sounds crazy I would certainly never talk about it anywhere else but here. I hope to God that I'm wrong but yes I really have to distance myself from this. This came out of literally nowhere and I just want it to stop.
"Men are fooled so easily. Women wrelike spiders. They'll pull you into their webs and...wrap you up so tight you can hardly breathe," Griselda Blanco, Cocaine Godmother
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