(Editor’s Note: This post was originally posted on another blog of mine (no longer available) on August 25th, 2010 and updated as indicated. I moved it here as part of what will be a couple of other posts on stalking, cyber-stalking, bullying, cyber-bullying, etc. Stay tuned.)

Update 12/18/2010: I had so far been unable to go do this. Until today.

It was a fittingly cold and dark and dreary and rainy day today when I was finally able to go up and visit Sue’s grave — or at least the plaque where her ashes were put to rest.

I took her a flower. It was the least I could do. And it wasn’t easy. It was, in fact, very hard. And sad.

It was also strangely peaceful. In an odd way I think it may have put my heart to rest too. At least Sue is finally at peace. At least I hope that she is. Her life was hard. She suffered a lot, and she deserves the peace.

Rest in peace Sue.

This is a particularly difficult entry to write for many reasons. It’s highly personal (more personal than I usually share on this blog). It is emotionally charged, for me. I’ve been working on it for almost a week. a long, long time, and it’s a very long post. During that time, a lot of other really fun completely shitty stuff has happened to make this even more difficult to process and write about. I still don’t know how I am supposed to feel about this. I don’t think there’s any right answer. But maybe writing some of it out will help me deal with it. There seems to be a lot of sickness and death around lately. I don’t like it. (More on that at the end)

This story ends with a death, but I’ll start at the beginning instead.

When my marriage was ending back in 2000, I got involved with a woman, older than me, who was, shall we say, the antithesis of anyone I had ever been with before. Or so I thought. She was outspoken, beautiful, crazy, funny, loud, uninhibited … the list was long. She had 2 children from 2 previous marriages, both teenagers, or close to it. It was a wild ride from the start. We moved in together. She accepted my 2 kids as her own, even though they weren’t with us full-time, and one of my sons is severely disabled. It was wildly passionate and intoxicating. As difficult as it is to write now, I loved her then. Deeply.

That’s the mechanics of it. The emotions of it are much, much more complicated. We managed to stay living together for almost 2 years. They were not easy years. They were not without conflict or disagreement. What relationship is? They were also not without love and tenderness and good memories. We had fun. We had turmoil.

But the disagreements and the strife and the ugliness began to outstrip the love and the fun and the wild times. The relationship became volatile. Explosive. Unpredictable. Even scary. And I wanted out. But given the instability and explosiveness, I knew I couldn’t just get out that easily. It was not going to be simple. It was not going to be smooth. It was going to leave a mark. A big one.

So I spent months saving money, in secret. I spent months looking for a house to move into, in secret. One that could accommodate my boys, and that I could afford on my own. One that would accept my dog as well. And I found just the place. A little bungalow in downtown Sunnyvale, CA. 2 bed rooms. I bathroom. Fenced back yard. The landlords loved my dog. Only 3 steps to get in the front door (other than that, wheelchair friendly). I took it. Paid my first and last months rent, and a deposit. Swallowed hard. Went home to make my move. Anyone who’s ever lived in an abusive relationship knows what I’m talking about. They know how hard it can be to get out. To convince yourself that you deserve better. To convince yourself that you can get out. To gather up the inner strength required to stand up, take the coming onslaught, and get out.

To say that dishes were broken would be an understatement. I did a lot of ducking. A lot of dodging and weaving. Remember the scene from the movie Dodge Ball where they played with crescent wrenches? Yeah, like that.

My dog and I (and one suitcase of clothes) were gone within half an hour. I had nothing else. I had to go buy an inflatable bed and a “bed in a bag” sheet set, some towels, etc. from Target. I had nothing. Nothing. But I was out. Or so I thought. In hindsight, I could have (and should have) planned it better, but when you’ve never done something as dangerous and frightening as leaving an abusive relationship, it’s hard to know how to plan. Over the next several weeks and months there were various negotiations involved in getting the rest (or at least most of) my belongings out of her house. I never did manage to get everything, but losing some material things in the process of getting back your self respect and dignity is a small price to pay.

Getting out was just the beginning of the problems. There were the phone calls. 100s a day (literally). There were the text messages. 1000s a day (again, literally). There were the emails too numerous to count. There were the chats. It was like whack-a-mole. I would block one account, and a new one would pop up within minutes. It was impossible to stay ahead of. And they ran the gamut. From “I love you, please come home” to “I hate you more than the devil himself and I will send you to meet him soon!” Emails to home. Emails to work. Showing up at the office. Showing up at my house. I’d change my phone number (cell) only to have her calling and texting it 2 days later. I have no idea how she did it.

Months later, when things still hadn’t subsided, and I lived in fear of coming home to find a rabbit boiling in a pot on my back porch, I had finally had enough. I had gone on a few dates with a woman who had an unlisted home phone number. One evening her phone rang. It was my ex-girlfriend calling to threaten her to stay away from me. How she got that number I do not know to this day. I came home one night to a messages, scrawled in lipstick on the glass panes of my front door. I had finally had enough.

I went down to the Santa Clara County Courthouse to the domestic violence unit, and filed for an order of protection. I’m going to try not to go on a rant here, but suffice to say that the Domestic Violence Unit — and later I would come to find out the police, too — don’t exactly take a man seriously when he’s trying to get an order of protection against a woman. To say that they were skeptical, and unhelpful wold be an understatement. But I got a temporary order, and a hearing set for the full order in a month. The Sheriff’s office would server her, and explain the order to her, and hopefully the harassment would stop.

When the hearing came around, my ex didn’t show up, which, at least in California at the time, meant that the Order was granted as permanent (meaning, I believe 10 years). She was not allowed to call me. Send me email. Send text messages. Or come within 500 yards of my house. She was also forbidden from owning a firearm. I lived on a narrow street, so there was no way she would be allowed to even drive down my street without violating the order. I hoped this would put an end to it all, but I was very, VERY wrong. Things slowed down, but the emails continued. The phone calls continued. Reporting these things to the local Police proved fruitless. They simply didn’t care. I’m a big strong guy. She’s a little bitty woman. They didn’t see a problem.

Finally one evening as I was standing in my living room, talking on the phone, I saw her come storming up my walkway. She had a head of steam and was coming in hard and fast. The front door flew open, she was in my house, in my face, and slapped the portable phone out of my hand, leaving a scratch across my face in the process. A few choice words from her, and she was gone just as quickly. I dialed 911. The Sunnyvale PD arrived, and I showed them the protective order, and told them the story. They listened diligently, but it was clear they weren’t that interested in doing anything about it. Then my phone rang. The caller ID showed that it was her, so I let the police officer answer. This was as clear a violation of the protective order as could be asked for. Had the roles been reversed, I would have already been in handcuffs in the back of a squad car. After 10 or 15 minutes, the police left, saying that they were going to talk to her and “get her side of the story.”

They did go talk to her. They didn’t arrest her for violating the protective order, they just talked to her. This is what I call the “naked man problem.” Most of the men reading this will get this instantly. But let me explain:

We have a woman, standing in her house, in front of a plate-glass window, stark naked. A man is standing on a public sidewalk in front of her house, looking at her. Along come the police.

 

Question: Who gets arrested?

Answer: The man, of course.

Now we have a man, standing in his house, in front of a plate-glass window, stark naked. A woman is standing on a public sidewalk in front of the house, looking at him. Along come the police.

Question: Who gets arrested?

Answer: The man, of course.

And that, my friends, is the naked man problem. It is rampant in the family court system, and in most areas of law enforcement. And it is what I was up against in this situation.

For the next 3 months, nothing changed. I got phone calls. I got email messages. I got Chat messages. I would change my phone number, and 2 days later, the calls would start again. But after 3 months, the District Attorney’s office called me. They had the police report (including the phone call that was answered by the cop), and they were prosecuting. In fact, they already had prosecuted. He was calling to tell me that a bench warrant had been issued, that she would be spending 72 hours in jail, and (this is the best part) asking me if I knew where she was.

After that, after she ended up in jail, things got much better. Not entirely. I would still get messages like “Those paintings look great above the fireplace in your new house.” And my wife (I had gotten married again by this time) would get messages at work. But things were better, and we coped. Then we left California and moved to North Carolina. Being 3,000 miles away made me feel a lot safer. Not entirely safe, but a lot safer. I gradually began to open my life back up again.

Every few months I would google her name just to make sure she hadn’t moved to North Carolina, or whatever. At one point, googling her, I came across this (coincidentally, the same day, a former mutual friend emailed me the link. I’m still not sure I believe in coincidences). So this is the article, in it’s entirety, that I came across.

 

Photos by Maria J. Avila / San Jose Mercury News Michelle Minick visits with neighbors recently outside of Brittany Jessup’s room at a motel in Santa Clara. The women were part of a colony of homeless people who made a temporary home at the Motel 6.

LeAnn Jessup and neighbor Roger Becker, both of whom are currently homeless, share dinner at their temporary motel home.

 

SAN JOSE — Who knows how many broken lives dwell behind the numbered doors of the hard-luck motels scattered along Silicon Valley’s busy thoroughfares?

Places like the Motel 6 on a congested stretch of the El Camino in Santa Clara. It’s a $50-a-night spot where the desperate and the demoralized check in with no idea where they’ll go when they finally have to check out.

I went there to see Michelle Minick, who promised to show me a hidden kind of homelessness.

These are earnest folks who are not very different from working people everywhere: individuals and families with dreams and determination. But they also have life stories that are unsettling, illuminating and difficult.

It’s early September and Minick and her 17-year-old son have been at the Motel 6 for three months.

“I know there are 20 or 30 people here,” she said, meaning a couple dozen of the uncounted many who put a different face on the homeless — weary souls who can scrape up enough for a motel room, but not enough for a month’s rent and deposit. Good people who live one day to the shaky next by working cell phones, laptops and craigslist to line up odd jobs and look for permanent work.

“These working poor families; I’m telling you, they’re a beautiful, tragic, amazing community of people,” said Jennifer Hodgson Loving, of EHC LifeBuilders, a San Jose emergency housing organization. “I’ve always found them to be so heroic.”

On any given night, more than 7,000 homeless people roam Santa Clara County looking for a place to sleep. No one knows how many more live on the margins in motel rooms here and across the country, though a spokeswoman for Motel 6 acknowledged that population.

“Everyone has a need of a place to stay, whether it is short-term or little bit longer term,” said Janice Maragakis, vice president of communications for Motel 6. “A lot of times we’re a solution for that until they can save up to put a deposit on an apartment.”

Homeless advocates say motel dwelling is widespread.

“I think it’s sort of that hidden homelessness,” Loving said. “People are living in this state of night to night, month to month.”

People like those who come into Minick’s room to talk to me about their netherworld. There is LeAnn Jessup and her 20-year-old daughter; and Shelly, who lives with her 16-year-old daughter; and Roger Becker, a man on his own.

They are not winos, ex-cons, junkies or the sad, mad souls who wander around screaming at demons. They are mothers, high school kids, the overwhelmed and underemployed.

Different but similar routes

The group — call them the Motel Seven — tell stories providing the broad outline for the stories of so many others. They’ve endured breakups, breakdowns and medical nightmares. Minick, 49, was once a socialite; now she’s a woman needing a new liver and a new hip.

Shelly, 36, was an engineer at Lockheed before debilitating depression cost her her job. Jessup, 47, was a dental assistant before rheumatoid arthritis made the work too painful. Becker, 37, diagnosed as bipolar, has just lost his sales job, his girlfriend and the apartment they shared.

“I know there are stereotypes of homeless people,” Minick said, “but if you saw us walking down the street, you never would have guessed.”

Yes, there is help available, but it is not one-size-fits-all and it comes with a confounding bureaucracy. The kaleidoscope of social programs and their regulations can be maddening to the newly homeless.

There are income limits and asset limits. There are programs for seniors, another set for parents, a different set for singles. There are food stamps. There are medical benefits for those under 21, over 64 and those with children or a disability. Sorting through the programs can be overwhelming for those who are emotionally shattered.

“You have to be able to focus,” said Shelly, who asked that her last name not be published. “If you have these disabilities, you can’t do those sorts of things.”

The Motel Seven have patched together government services. They’ve borrowed from friends and relatives. Some receive child support. Becker gets $147 a month in general assistance. Some have had temporary jobs. Minick cleans houses. Becker and Jessup briefly counted cars for a company that does traffic studies.

Incremental payments

A month at the motel costs $1,500 — enough for an apartment even in Silicon Valley. But landlords don’t take the rent $50 at a time.

Shelly recently landed a temporary $20-an-hour test technician job at Hewlett-Packard. But she still can’t find a place to rent because her credit is shot.

“If I were a landlord,” she said, “I wouldn’t want to rent to me.”

Sometimes the dreams are as heart-wrenching as their situation. Becker wants to start an Internet business to allow sports fans to swap promotional trinkets. Jessup figures she and her daughter can save for a mobile home. Minick wants to start a nonprofit to help the homeless.

Their lives are all about ingenuity. Shelly buys frozen dinners at the supermarket and takes them to the 7-Eleven to microwave them.

“Sometimes you just have to have a hot meal.”

They’ve turned craigslist into their own social services provider. Shelly found a mini-fridge on the site for $40. Now she and her daughter can have milk and make sandwiches with mayonnaise. Minick finds housecleaning gigs on the site.

One craigslist ad the group thought up held a plan that was equally inspirational and heartbreaking.

“Random Acts of Kindness,” it began, “We Need One.”

The group wondered if they pooled their bits of money whether someone might rent them a house where they all could live.

“We, all of us, are all hardworking folk that never knew one another before and have now come together to be a family.’ “

Dream is short-lived

But life on the edge is fragile and so is the notion of family. Allegations soon arose that one person had stolen cash from another and that some were blowing money on alcohol. Within a week, the big house idea was dead.

When you live day to day, every decision is monumental. If you have $5, do you buy gas? Food? Put it toward the motel room? Every setback is devastating.

A week after I met Minick she was panicked. Her car had broken down. If the police towed her car, it was all over. Yes, because the car got her to whatever work she could find. But also because the car would become home if she lost her motel room.

A tow-truck driver on craigslist said he’d get the Sable back to the motel for $20. A relieved Minick cried.

“Somehow,” she said, “we do get blessings.”

A number of the Motel Seven started our conversation talking about how quickly homelessness happens. But that’s not it exactly. It takes time to go through savings and friends and family willing to let you sleep on the couch. But at some point, the slow slide into homelessness picks up speed.

Within a month of the September day I first drove up to the Motel 6, Minick had lost her room. She was staying with a friend and worrying about where to go next.

“I’m watching the turning of the leaves and how cold it’s getting at night.”

After losing his job counting cars, Becker couldn’t hang on. He left the Motel 6. He hasn’t returned my calls. Jessup was still at the motel living on her daughter’s waitressing money.

Shelly was doing well at HP, and she had just discovered $20,000 in her 401(k), which she’d lost track of. She was hoping to find someone who would rent to her if she pays several months at once.

Until then she and so many others will keep trying to hang on in the pale light from a roadside sign on a hard-luck motel.

— Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

That came as quite a shock to me. I knew she was an alcoholic. I knew her life had been spinning further and further out of control since we split up and she started stalking me. But I never imagined that she would have lost everything and become homeless. Living in a Motel 6. As I said, I was shocked. Part of me wished I could reach out to her and lend a helping hand. Especially to her younger son, on whom I knew this was being especially hard. But I also knew that were I to reach out a hand, I would likely have it bitten clean off. I knew that I could not reach out to her without becoming re-engaged n some manner. And once that started, there would be no turning the dial back. Her dial only had 2 settings: off and 14. There were no middle settings, and I couldn’t go back to 14. So I left it off.

From the article it was clear that she had nearly succeeded in drinking herself to death. You don’t need a liver transplant from the soap at Motel 6. I’ve known people who also hit a similar bottom to that one. Most of them didn’t survive either because they never got the liver they needed or because they continued to drink, causing what was left of their own liver to fail completely. There isn’t a whole lot of middle-ground there. You either get a liver in time, or you die.

I have not been in contact with her, even after reading about her desperate plight. As you may have read in a previous post about friendship, I probably should have. On some level, even though she had been stalking me, and making my life miserable, and generally disrupting and disturbing anything and everything in my life she was still, I guess at some level, a friend. I don’t give up on friends that easily, though maybe I should. And I should definitely rethink that philosophy. As I said, I’m just not wired like that.

I didn’t contact her. I never called (not that I would have known what number to call. I never emailed (again …), she remained blocked on Facebook.

And then 2 weeks ago I googled her again (as I said, I did that every few months/years just to check in with her and make sure that she’s ok. It’s the most I can do, since I can’t, and don’t want to, actually contact her. Well, this time I found something entirely different. This time, I found this:

Michelle Sue Minick

|   Visit Guest Book

Michelle Sue Minick

Resident of Santa Clara
Feb. 24, 1958-June 21, 2010
Michelle, or Sue, as most knew her, was born in Fort Morgan, Colorado. Upon moving to California and having children, she became a very involved member of her community. Among her peers she was known for her outgoing personality, honesty and unwavering generosity.
Sue is survived by her two children, <redacted by request> and <redacted by request>. She was a loving mother who gave her whole heart to raising her two children. She was a constant supporter of her children’s endeavors and was extremely proud of their accomplishments.
We love you mom and will miss you so much. Thank you for everything that you have done for us. We know you are now resting in peace and smiling down.
A memorial will be held in Sue’s honor on Friday, July 9th at 11:00am at Gate of Heaven in the All Saints Chapel, located at 22555 Cristo Rey Drive in Los Altos.

 

Published in San Jose Mercury News/San Mateo County Times on July 1, 2010

She was gone. And back on July 1st. I no longer had a stalker. I seriously didn’t know, and still don’t know, how to react to this news. Should I be happy that this woman that made my life a living hell for so many years is gone? Should I be sad that this woman that I loved at one point was now dead? I feel deep sadness for her children. Her son, has no one in this world left (his father died of cancer a few years ago). I wish that there were somehow something I could do to help him.

In the end, I am saddened by her death. She was a bright, vibrant, funny, crazy, and thoroughly enjoyable person most of the time. I did love her. She also had some very serious and deep-seated problems that neither I nor anyone else could ever seem to help her with (and not for lack of trying). I don’t know whether or not she had regained her wonderful friendships and had lots of people who loved her nearby when she died, or if she died alone. I very much hope it was the former. She deserved that, at least. It would sadden me even more to think that she died alone. No one deserves that.

I have to handle this on my own. I have to find my way through this emotional minefield alone. I have to reconcile the love, the distrust, the malevolence, and the ambivalence. Somehow I have to come to some sort of peace with this. Death is final. There is now no longer an opportunity for me to make peace with her, to let her know that, while I hated her for what she put me through, for so many of the things she did to me, that on some level I still loved her and would always love her. And the simple act of writing that last sentence causes so much conflict and pain.

You see, I never give up on people. Even people I know in my heart I should give up on forever. Even people that have not only not earned my continued love and friendship, but have actually taken serious and overt actions to destroy that love and caring in me. But I just can’t seem to ever do that. And so I couldn’t with Sue. (I knew her as Sue. Some knew her as Michelle.)

So I will grieve some for her. I will grieve that she is gone from this earth, and that at least for some people, the world will never be as bright and wonderful a place without her in it. I will grieve that I never got to have any sort of final closure with her so that she could know that somewhere I still loved her. For the person she always could have been, not for the person she so often was. And in the biggest paradox of all, I will grieve that she is no longer in my life, and never will be again while at the same time being relieved that she is no longer in my life and never will be again.

And I will feel guilty over the mourning. And I will feel guilty over the relief. And I will never be able to reconcile the two. But it has taught me a lot about myself. It has taught me the depths of friendship. It has taught me the depth of love. It has shown me the fleeting nature of our lives, and the everlasting, lifelong impacts of friends and lovers and enemies.