I had my hearing for a restraining order, and it was both anticlimactic and annoying. I went to the Magistrate Court on Monday (the first day it was open following the events depicted in the previous post) to get a restraining order. I filed the application, and had a hearing scheduled for really early today. The ex-boyfriend did not show up. I explained in detail everything that had happened, from the day I kicked him out through the events the other evening.

Then the judge told me that the ex-boyfriend's mother, the oh-so-honest-and-reliable ex-boss sent a letter to the court, telling them that the ex-boyfriend had left the state and "would not be back for a long time, if ever" - I explained to the judge that his mother was under investigation for theft and embezzlement, was known to lie, and had made threatening statements against me, but that was discounted. I was told that since his mother said he was no longer in the state, they would hold the case in a certain open status for 180 days... basically making it so that if he showed up and/or bothered me during that time frame, they would re-consider issuing the restraining order.

Now, I went home and immediately googled the type of open status that I was told the case was placed in. (If you're my facebook friend, you've seen the term that was used.) Apparently this is not a real legal term. I am not even using it here because if you google the two word term in quotes, you only get TWO pages of results... only ONE result has anything to do with the law... and it is a link to my local county's Magistrate Court website!

I was feeling OK about the whole thing when I left, thinking they'll keep it open, so if he bothers me again I can get a restraining order.... although I was annoyed that I have to wait for him to leap out of my bushes at me AGAIN in order for this to happen. But the more I think about it, the more it just pisses me off. I came in and was placed under oath, and yet the ex-boss wasn't placed under oath or even there, and they took her word that he is no longer in the state! Must be nice to have mommy write you a note to get you out of trouble. And then I find out that the alleged legal status of my case isn't a real legal status, it's just something that exists in my weird, uneducated, southern county. I really feel like cussing a lot right now.

Late yesterday afternoon, I had been cleaning my house, and I’d left my phone on my bed, unattended for quite some time. At some point I picked it up, and it was filled with all these voicemails and texts from the ex, all saying “Please call me or I’ll just have to go over there and see you.” Now, I’d been rather attached to my phone number – mainly because I’d had nice business cards made up for the non-profit my mom and I are working on which had that number printed on them – but at this point I just said, ‘fuck it, I can’t take this any more, I’m getting a new phone number.’ I went over to my mom’s to go online and do just that, and I hung out there for a while and didn’t get home until around 10:30pm.

I’d been thinking that there was a good chance the ex might be there waiting for me when I got home, so I’d intended to scour all the nearby driveways and such pretty closely before getting out of my car. However, as I pulled up, there was a car approaching from the opposite direction, driving very slowly. All my attention was focused on that car, because it seemed very much like it was driving slowly to get a good look at who I was. Turns out I was right about that part at least – it was the cop who has my block as his beat. Relieved that it was just a cop and not the psycho ex, I pulled into my driveway, turned off the ignition and began getting my stuff together.

That was when I noticed the ex’s car parked in the back of the neighbor’s driveway, and the ex himself running up to my window. I immediately turned the car back on, and told him through the window to go away and leave me alone. He pulled out a piece of paper, and asked me to take it, saying he’d leave if I just took the note he’d written me. I should’ve known that was a ploy, but at one point I’d actually liked and cared about this guy, and part of me still wanted to think that there’s some facet of the good/nice person I’d thought he was inside there somewhere. Hah. Won’t be making that mistake again.

I’d rolled the window down a couple of inches, and he immediately grabbed hold of the window frame and began begging me to take him back. I started to try and drive away, but he wouldn’t let go, and said I’d just have to drag him or that he would hop on the hood of my car. I told him I was going to call the police and took out my phone and began to dial 911. At that point he started freaking out, shouting “Why would you do this to me? You’re just trying to ruin my life.” and then he reached his arm in and tried to wrestle the phone away from me. Luckily, the window wasn’t open far enough for him to do that successfully, although he did end up slamming the side of his arm into my face in the process, which hurt, but not badly or anything.

As soon as he heard “…County 911, What is your emergency?” he literally ran for his car and tore out of there. The cop was there within two minutes (having driven past my house half a minute or so before all this began, he wasn’t very far away), and took my statement, and advised me to get a restraining order on Monday. He said that given everything that had happened that night, I shouldn’t have any trouble getting a restraining order. He said that this way if the ex shows up, even if he doesn’t do anything threatening to me, he would be in violation of the order, which would cause him to get arrested. The ex’s car is pretty distinctive, so he said he’d keep an eye out for it, and would definitely make sure they got him out of there if he showed up.

Also, when I told the cop the ex’s name, he repeated the last name like he was trying to place it. So I said, “His mother is the former boss of the ex-job.” To which he said, “Oh. Yeah. She’s a loon.” (And that’s a direct quote!)

But you want to know the scariest part of the whole thing? I’d been in my car the whole time I was talking to the cop. When he was getting ready to leave, he said he’d stick around until I got in my house. At that point I noticed that my front porch light was off. Sometimes I do forget to turn it on when I leave, but that usually happens when I leave my house in the daytime and come home at night. I rarely leave after dark without putting on the light, although it has happened. My first thought was, ‘this *would* be the night I forget to turn on my porch light.’ However, it was only after I’d been inside for a good half hour, with the cops long gone, that I remembered that the front porch light was off and went to go turn it on. Except that it WAS turned on. The asshole had unscrewed the lightbulb to make the front porch dark.

So as y’all know, I’d been in contact with my ex. This was in part because I do think that being in touch with some of my exes actually helped me to get over them. Your exes treat you differently when they’re your ex, and has at least helped *me* put things into perspective in the past. Meanwhile, it was obviously not helping the ex, since he continued with his begging/pleading/crying routine every time we spoke. He also continued calling me all the time, and then started showing up at my house.

Slight interlude: Something I hate more than anything else is people who call and call and call. I have run across several of folks like this in my life, and I just don’t get it. If I call a friend and they don’t answer, I leave a message. If I don’t hear back within a certain amount of time (which, depending on how well I know the person and how urgent it is… but this time can range from a day to as week) I will call back and either talk to them or leave another message. And unless it’s a close family member or someone that I’m worried might’ve had an accident or something, that’s it. At that point, I stop calling. Then there are people who call over and over and over. If I don’t answer, it’s because I can’t talk to you, or because I don’t want to talk to you. This should be obvious! Now, I have a bit of a phone phobia to begin with, and to be honest, this whole calling over and over and over thing really freaks me out, even when it is done by someone annoying but innocuous. When it’s the crazy ex, it’s really disturbing.

Yesterday I was in class from early morning to mid afternoon. He knew that it was my first day of class. I had my phone set to vibrate (luckily, my vibrate setting is incredibly quiet – I can’t hear is at all when it’s in my pocket) – and he called and texted me over and over non-stop all day! The initial message was something like, “Please call me back, I have something really important to ask you.” Each successive message got crazier and crazier, ie “Please call me back. Why are you doing this to me? Please stop ignoring me. I just need to ask you something.” When I finally got out of my last class and went home, I was so pissed off, that I decided this was it – I was going to do like so many of you have advised and just cut off contact with him completely. So when he called again, I answered, chewed him out for calling me all day, and informed him that I wasn’t going to continue communicating with him, and told him that if he continued to call/text/visit I would get a restraining order against him. I then hung up and sent him a text message saying the same thing. This way if I do have to get a RO, there will be proof that I have indeed told him to stop doing these things.

And then I stopped responding. He called over and over and over and texted over and over and over…. Finally, when my phone hadn’t rung in about 30 minutes, I thought I would at least go through and delete his obnoxious texts and voicemails, so that I wouldn’t have to deal with them when I received texts/vms from people that I actually want to hear from. Well, his messages were all “I’m going to kill myself if you don’t talk to me” and finally one (both a text and a vm) that said “I’ve cut myself and am bleeding all over the place. I hope you’re happy.” To be honest, I didn’t care at all… except that knowing his mother and her crazy obsession with cockamamie lawsuits, I figured if he really did die, and she discovered that he’d messaged me in the process, she would try and sue me. So, I called 911.

I made sure the dispatcher knew that he was my ex, and had been threatening to kill himself as a means of getting me to call him. I told her I had no idea if he’d actually done anything or if he was just trying to get me to call him. She sent both the police and EMS. (I have to admit that the thought of having the police show up at the ex-boss’s house thoroughly amuses me. Also, why have they not yet arrested her? Grrrrr.)

Anyway, later in the evening (and this morning, too) I received several texts and vms from him. “I’m in the hospital.” “I just got out of the hospital” “I’m so sorry” “I’m not mad at you for sending the police to my house” “Please call me” “Please call me” “Please call me” Blah. Needless to say, I did not answer, and I am not going to do so.

I didn't hear from the now EX-boyfriend at all yesterday. Two phone calls and one text so far today. I'm not replying.

So here's the story you've been waiting for. I'm telling you, the previous post is more interesting! I decided to kick the now EX boyfriend out as soon as I got home from taking my last final exam yesterday. I literally told him the instant I came in the front door. Something that had never occurred to me before (mainly because he was usually drinking) was that every time I had tried to dump him before, he had been drunk. This was the first time I ever tried when he was stone cold sober. He went through the same routine that he had done the previous times (crying, begging, wanting to know what he had done wrong, promising to change, etc, etc) although I think since he was sober, what *I* was saying ("I don't love you and I want you to move out") actually got through to him somewhat. After about an hour of repeating myself over and over, he finally started packing. He also called his mom. You know, the psychotic ex-boss, to ask if her husband (his step-dad) could come and help him transport his ridiculous $1000 TV (you know, the one he bought with the one bit of money he earned this summer instead of helping me pay my bills). I was actually the most worried that the ex-boss would show up, but only her husband came. They loaded everything up and were gone. He did try a couple more times to get me to let him stay, and even tried to get me to agree to being separated but still dating (to which I said no). All in all, it seemed pretty easy, which really surprised me, considering how he had always just not listened to me and wore me down with hours of arguing before. That was when I realized that he had always been drunk before and this time he wasn't. What a difference that made!

Anyway, even though he did give me his keys back before he left, I went ahead and had the locks changed (who knows - he might've made himself a copy, or his psycho mom might have made herself a copy one day when he was passed out drunk at her house), so now I have all new locks.

Last night around 8pm he began calling me. He literally dialed my number over and over for an hour and a half, and left me a total of 8 messages, all begging me to call him and talk to him and all telling me how depressed he was. I did not call him back. His last message was that he would stop calling me, but if I had any morality in me at all, I would at least call him back the next day. Being moral-free is fine with me, apparently, because I did not call him, and don't intend to do so.

A couple of weeks ago, I made up my mind that as soon as finals were over, I was going to kick the boyfriend out. Not that I wouldn’t love for him to go NOW, but I know that kicking him out will cause a really big, stressful scene, and I’d rather not have that at the end of the semester when I’m trying to get all my projects turned in and study for finals and such. I ended up trying to get him out before my self-imposed deadline, and it was disastrous.

The other day was horrible. It was a Thursday. I had C class that night, and the first part of my P class final exam the following morning. That afternoon I had a severely upset stomach. In between bouts in the bathroom, I spent the afternoon curled up in bed with one of my pets, feeling physically miserable and not studying.

Now, the boyfriend does not like having pets in the bed. Now, while I’ve had pets in my bed all of my life, I know and understand that this is not something that everybody does. The boyfriend is one of those people who is opposed to pets in the bed. So, I keep the pets out of the bed when he’s in it, and when I’m in the bed alone, I keep the pets on my side. I think that’s a pretty fair compromise.

Anyway, so there I was in bed, having really painful stomach cramps, holding the feline and trying not to cry. The boyfriend knew I was sick. He also knows that my pets are very important to me. Anyway, he came into the bedroom and ordered (!) me to get the animal out of the bed, and I told him no. He stormed out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind him. I fell asleep, holding my pet.

I woke up and had to leave to go to C class. He was sitting on the couch, drinking and playing video games. I was not feeling particularly friendly, but I said, “I’m going to C class” to which he replied, “I don’t care what you do.” I just picked up my things and walked out. I didn’t want to have a fight right before going to C class for my final review.

I came home from C class, and he was still drinking and still playing video games. I didn’t say anything, just microwaved something for dinner, and went into my study room to study for part 1 of my P exam. He cranked the volume up on the TV *and* put on headphones and began shouting the lyrics to bad rap songs. I couldn’t study at all because of the noise, but didn’t want to go out in the living room, so I just stayed locked inside the study room. Eventually he decided to go and buy more beer. Joy. As soon as he left, I locked the screen door and took my stuff into the bedroom and locked myself in. Of course, the “lock” on the screen door was easy for him to pry open and he was very angry when he came in… especially when he found that I’d locked myself inside the bedroom.

I could hear him out in the living room cussing and banging stuff around, and finally he said, “Are you going to come out here and talk to me, or are you going to stay in there and be an asshole?” Now that I think about this, remembering what a friend who’s been through a similar situation told me, that was probably the specific kind of statement to get me to come out of the bedroom… it really pissed me off. *I* was the asshole? Seriously? So I went storming out. I was so furious I was crying and shaking and shouting. He was going on and on about how he had only ever asked me for one thing, no pets in the bed, and how he just bends over backwards for me, and I just walk all over him, and won’t even do this one little thing, blah, blah, blah. I pointed out that he had been walking all over me for months, that he constantly tells me what to do and how to live and never does anything to support us financially, and all he does is drink and play video games, etc, etc. And then I told him (for the umpteenth time) that I didn’t love him and wanted him to move out, that I wanted to be single, to live alone, and to be able to have my animals in the bed whenever I wanted.

Of course, as soon as I brought kicking him out into the mix, he immediately changed his tune: he loved me so much, I was the best thing that ever happened to him, he couldn’t live without me, he would do anything to make me happy, blah, blah. I countered all of that with nice logical arguments for the longest time, sticking firm to my, “I don’t love you and I want you to move out mantra.” But he just kept at me and at me over and over and over… and it was getting later and later, and I knew I had part 1 of my P final at 8am the following morning, and meanwhile, I was hysterical, had a splitting headache and had not studied any. Finally I decided that I needed to go to bed, or else my P grade would suffer even more, so I just went to bed. He followed me to bed, but I made it clear that I was going to sleep and that there wasn’t going to be any cuddling or screwing around.

I had to take two Excedrin for my headache, and of course, Excedrin contains caffeine… so it took me FOREVER to fall asleep. Meanwhile, the boyfriend was out like a light within minutes. I finally fell asleep, but had to get up a handful of hours later to go take part one of the P exam. I thought I totally bombed it, considering how exhausted I was and how I hadn’t studied, although I got my grade back on it and it turns out I did pretty well. No idea how!

I decided that if the boyfriend wanted to pretend that nothing had happened, I would go along with that until after my last exam (part 2 of the P final, which is Wednesday at 8am), and then try again. The problem is that I don’t think he will go, no matter what I say.

I do not understand this behavior at all. I have been in two relationships in my life where I truly believed I was in love (maybe *I* was, the dude in each instance wasn’t, apparently). Both times when I was dumped, I was miserable. Hysterical. But I was miserable and hysterical because I knew it was over. If a guy tells me, “I don’t love you, I love X person,” or even a simple, “I’m sorry, I just don’t love you,” as painful as that is to hear, as soon as I have heard these things, I have accepted that the relationship is over. Both times this has happened to me I still had feelings for the guys involved, it wasn’t like I could just stop loving them… but I certainly didn’t just keep throwing myself at them, refusing to leave.

Anyway, I know from experience what will happen when I tell him to get out. I know because we’ve been over it and over it. My mom tells me, “Why don’t you tell him this or that or the other?” except that I have told him this, that *and* the other and he hasn’t left.

The only way (in this state, anyway) to get someone out of a property you own is to go to the Magistrate’s Court and file a notice of eviction. (We learned this when a guy my mom had been paying to work on one of her properties began squatting there and wouldn’t leave.) I think that the only way I can get him out is to first tell him that I want him to leave, and that if he doesn’t go voluntarily, *I* will leave, then file an eviction notice and get a restraining order… Then, if he doesn’t go voluntarily, actually leave and file the orders.

Sounds like a great plan… except there are two problems: Where do I go? and What do I do with my animals? These two problems are inextricably linked, since if I had no animals, I could go anywhere. Additionally, I have numerous things scheduled in the area over the upcoming that are very important, which I *must* do. As such, I can’t go too far from the city where I live. He knows where my mom lives and where her other two properties are, so it’s not like those would be secret locations. Plus, I have 16 animals at the house; 12 feline and 4 canine. One of the canines could stay with my mom. I could put the injured feline that is in my bathroom in my mom’s spare bathroom. Unfortunately, since my mother has something like 19 felines and 6 canines at her house, that’s as many as she could take. The others would either have to go with me or be left behind. I don’t think the boyfriend would do anything to the animals, although I know he wouldn’t feed them or clean up after them. Also, there are 3 in particular (one feline and two small canines) that I would be really concerned about leaving there without me to take care of them.

So that leaves me with the thought that I could go *somewhere* with the two small canines and the one feline, and get my mom to go over to the house to feed and clean the remaining critters. I literally couldn’t take the 3 animals to her house, as there really isn’t room for them, so that rules out her house. I don’t know that many people in the area, and none who could accept me and the 3 critters.

I had thought about campingat a nearby state park, which has electric hookups, showers and allows pets. I could stay in mom's van, plug in a space heater, and be fine, but it's $23 a day and I am poor. So then I thought that perhaps I could crate up the three beasts somehow and lock them in her office, and sleep over there, even though that would be very difficult and not a secret location… but…

So that’s where I am now. I’m back to thinking seriously about camping in my mom’s van with 2-3 canines and a feline. Suggestions?