When All Else Fails......

I would like to say that life has been cruel, but that would be self-serving. More to the point, I have been a fool. I suppose I watched too much TV as a kid. A whole lot of "lawyer-type" shows that demonstrated that truth would prevail, the good guy would win and judges upheld the law...happy endings. Well, I was to get an education without going to law school, while I kicked, screamed and vomited at the injustice.

Sure, I was subjected time and time again to stand before a judge that had no intention of rendering any kind of a decision. She has since been removed from the bench, but that was no help to me then. What my new wife and I did experience was loss, complete and total. I'm not talking about possessions, that was all meaningless, we lost something of infinite value, we lost ourselves, we lost each other. My wife nearly lost her very life on numerous occasions due to a stress related illness, from which I swore to protect her. While all this was going on, I stuck my head in the sand waiting for it to simply go away.

I do remember the pivotal moment when I realized that it wouldn't end, that there was no salvation. In the hallway of the California Superior Court, ( where all things really happen ), we came to the decision to give the Troll everything, the money, the house, everything...all she had to do was accept and put an end to the suffering....the answer we received was an emphatic "No". I knew at that very moment, that this wasn't about money or "things", this was about destroying happiness, this was about destroying lives. It was about hate and jealousy. This was about winning, in whatever way that was perceived by the Troll. Even more tragic and appalling than her behavior was that the judicial system would not allow us to simply quit. We were not afforded the option to just raise the white flag of surrender and walk away. The judicial system would not allow it.

The position of the court inspired the Troll to ever increasing degrees of psychotic behavior. Our home was surveilled, my wife became the focus of obsession, my son became a tool sent into our home to wreak havoc. The unending barrage of phone calls, ( which now went unanswered ), were predicated by long, dissertations, attacking my wife and myself. At my wife's insistence, we recorded some 150 of these things, submitting them to the District Attorneys Office, nothing was ever done. We were abandoned by a system that I grew up thinking actually worked and protected people, I was wrong, there  was no Adam 12, no Mod Squad, Perry Mason coming to our rescue. The good guys didn't always win.

The Troll also developed a perfect and deliberate sense of timing, causing episodes of mayhem that just so happened to coincide with every major holiday to include birthdays and any special trips we might have planned. Even the expanse of a continent and an ocean could not prevent the Troll from harassing us...apparently Europe just wasn't far enough away.

And so I was to be proven horrifically mistaken, not only in my estimation of the Troll's dedication and lust for chaos, but in my own ability to cope and remain resilient. These two enormous factors would lay course to all events that followed and ultimately destroy the greatest gift that life had ever bestowed upon me. I would chose to ignore, rather than respond, truly believing that this unending assault would desist. People tire, become distracted, they move on...that's how it's supposed to go, right? People move on. Not in this case. Like a cancer, the Troll's need for attention and control of a situation that was not any of her business, grew and began to infect us all.

Each action, every phone call, every ridiculous court proceeding initiated by the Troll eroded the happiness that I had found, much like unrelenting waves shape the shore, bit by bit, my life and happiness was transformed.

And through all of this, my wife and I did the right thing...on the advice of law enforcement, we documented everything. We kept logs, we filed reports, we did it all, diligently. Everything began to suffer. Trying to untangle our marriage from my mess was proving to be impossible and a full time job. The fallout of the Troll's behavior affected every relationship in our family. Some of those relationships, to this very day, have been lost, including that between my wife and I.