Singing for one's supper
Stereo thing happened again today...
I've been at my mother's place for two days (partly as a reprieve from the heating problems in my apartment). I woke up from a nap around 5:35pm and went downstairs. No music to be heard.
Headed to the basement to change a load of laundry, and came back up. As I stepped into the kitchen to get some food, 'The Rose' sung by Bette Midler started to play. This is about the fifth time the stereo's started playing this particular track out of the blue. (See November 15 post, 'More anomalies for mother.')
Later on, my mother and I finish watching a TV program, 'When Angels Come to Town.' I hug her goodnight, and the phone rings. It's 11:30pm; I know it's going to be a wrong-number/crank call. My mom answers it. Sure enough, it's a wrong number, bordering on crank call.
So well-timed. How long will it take before other people will recognize all this as persistent harassment? It's not just this week, or this month, or even this year. It's been three years, and possibly as long as five years.
Chill Out
Haven't yet described my week's adventures with the landlords, my lack of heating for an entire month (despite a new boiler in the building, and new radiator knobs), how I had two blown fuses twice in 24 hours - and so much more. Lots went on during these miserable days without heat or working outlets.
(Among many other choice comments, my landlord kept emphasizing, 'it's the two fuses on the left.' There's only four fuses in the whole box. I have reason to believe my surveillers play me off as different things to different people: thief or criminal, lefty socialist-activist, racist, businessperson hiding my wealth (woohoo), someone disloyal to my own race, or conversely, strong proponent of the Asian Invasion, and so on. Whatever it takes, right?)
Funnily enough, the 'fuses blew' the day after I concluded my therapy in an anger program I've been in for a year-and-a-half. Diagnosis: no progress. Actually, I've made a lot of progress. I've reduced my anger without being on medication, and I'm more congenial and less reactive - in spite of harassment. =:-)
Part of my anger (fear, hostility, sarcasm) is due to being constantly harassed, yet not being believed. Like being continually molested, beaten, or raped, but no one else can see it's happening. So to others, I remain an angry nutter, who's made no progress and is obsessed with surveillance.
Mentioning therapy here will undermine my credibility. Fingers will naturally point at me as being a constant hell-raiser, left, right, and centre. True enough, I am hyper-sensitive, emotionally imbalanced, and sometimes antagonistic. Often, in my frustration, the words just come out wrong (as the song goes).
Establishing ties with people over the past several years has been a challenge. At times, when relationships or situations might have been healed or strengthened, I believe my surveillers have occasionally influenced circumstances, so my connections with people remain distant.
How? By harassing me with phone calls, staging strange or threatening encounters, sending targeted spam; and creating living discomfort, like no heat, broken appliances, vandalism, etc; and worse, creating diversions for the other parties, or even co-opting them. That's a lot of effort to expend, but I haven't been your typical surveillance subject, either.
My seeming like a suspicious, delusional freak has many benefits for my surveillers:
1) Study group impacts and social dynamics;
2) Finetune their knowledge of inter-cultural communications, observe attitudes and perceptions across different communities, and influence or co-opt people accordingly;
3) Undermine my credibility, while drawing attention away from their own doings.
What would you do in this situation?
I've been at my mother's place for two days (partly as a reprieve from the heating problems in my apartment). I woke up from a nap around 5:35pm and went downstairs. No music to be heard.
Headed to the basement to change a load of laundry, and came back up. As I stepped into the kitchen to get some food, 'The Rose' sung by Bette Midler started to play. This is about the fifth time the stereo's started playing this particular track out of the blue. (See November 15 post, 'More anomalies for mother.')
Later on, my mother and I finish watching a TV program, 'When Angels Come to Town.' I hug her goodnight, and the phone rings. It's 11:30pm; I know it's going to be a wrong-number/crank call. My mom answers it. Sure enough, it's a wrong number, bordering on crank call.
So well-timed. How long will it take before other people will recognize all this as persistent harassment? It's not just this week, or this month, or even this year. It's been three years, and possibly as long as five years.
Chill Out
Haven't yet described my week's adventures with the landlords, my lack of heating for an entire month (despite a new boiler in the building, and new radiator knobs), how I had two blown fuses twice in 24 hours - and so much more. Lots went on during these miserable days without heat or working outlets.
(Among many other choice comments, my landlord kept emphasizing, 'it's the two fuses on the left.' There's only four fuses in the whole box. I have reason to believe my surveillers play me off as different things to different people: thief or criminal, lefty socialist-activist, racist, businessperson hiding my wealth (woohoo), someone disloyal to my own race, or conversely, strong proponent of the Asian Invasion, and so on. Whatever it takes, right?)
Funnily enough, the 'fuses blew' the day after I concluded my therapy in an anger program I've been in for a year-and-a-half. Diagnosis: no progress. Actually, I've made a lot of progress. I've reduced my anger without being on medication, and I'm more congenial and less reactive - in spite of harassment. =:-)
Part of my anger (fear, hostility, sarcasm) is due to being constantly harassed, yet not being believed. Like being continually molested, beaten, or raped, but no one else can see it's happening. So to others, I remain an angry nutter, who's made no progress and is obsessed with surveillance.
Mentioning therapy here will undermine my credibility. Fingers will naturally point at me as being a constant hell-raiser, left, right, and centre. True enough, I am hyper-sensitive, emotionally imbalanced, and sometimes antagonistic. Often, in my frustration, the words just come out wrong (as the song goes).
Establishing ties with people over the past several years has been a challenge. At times, when relationships or situations might have been healed or strengthened, I believe my surveillers have occasionally influenced circumstances, so my connections with people remain distant.
How? By harassing me with phone calls, staging strange or threatening encounters, sending targeted spam; and creating living discomfort, like no heat, broken appliances, vandalism, etc; and worse, creating diversions for the other parties, or even co-opting them. That's a lot of effort to expend, but I haven't been your typical surveillance subject, either.
My seeming like a suspicious, delusional freak has many benefits for my surveillers:
1) Study group impacts and social dynamics;
2) Finetune their knowledge of inter-cultural communications, observe attitudes and perceptions across different communities, and influence or co-opt people accordingly;
3) Undermine my credibility, while drawing attention away from their own doings.
What would you do in this situation?
posted by outside the box... at
11:53 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home