I did it.

Thursday afternoon, at 2:59pm I filed my lawsuit.

My attorney has lost her marbles, I'm not really sure what's going on there; hopefully she finds it. (Her mind, you know. Perhaps under the couch? Perhaps they rolled under there?) But I, myself and I screeched into the parking lot at the courthouse at 2:56pm, and ran through the door just before the court closed at 3:00pm. I had to stand in line and thought for sure they wouldn't stamp my paperwork, but they did, and not only that, they stayed afterwards and talked to me for like, 40 minutes. The clerk was way more helpful than my attorney.

But then again, my attorney lost her marbles.

But we are filed. We are officially suing. TA-DA!

And what a huge relief I felt. I went right out (IN PUBLIC, IN A RESTAURANT!) with my friend and had lots and lots of appetizers and dessert. It was great! Such a huge relief to meet the deadline and just get it done!

August 3rd I hit my 2 year anniversary and I was just numb. 2 years? How is this my life? That's another post.

But that's where we're at.

We got an offer

So I'm a little behind. I am struggling financially right now, and it's got me on edge and that means no blogging, in sum. I should have like 20+ weddings booked for next year. I should be booked 18 months out, but I'm not. I have 1 booked. I don't know what's going on. The part of me that has said it will be fine is starting to get a little panicky.

It's interesting to me that this whole law suit thing is totally separate to me from that issue. Like, despite the fact I'm struggling, this still isn't about money. (Although spending thousands of dollars on therapy is not helping my situation.)  Case in point:

WE GOT AN OFFER.

After my attorney sent the cockroach letter (I hope you enjoyed that), we got a letter back from their attorney going on and on about how we had no case, it would never get past demurrer, blah blah blabbity blah. (They ignored all of the valid parts of our case that are active, and reasonable, and that didn't require breaking new ground, which my attorney is trying to do a little bit, at least as far as I can understand.) Then they said they would give us $1,000 just to make it go away, as long as I signed a FULL release and promised to never talk about it ever again.

Attorney said she couldn't imagine me taking it, but that it was her duty to present me all offers, and that if this was really so stressful for me, maybe I should just take it and start over and try to wash my hands of him. I took a couple of days and talked to a lot of people.

Ultimately I decided I would rather go to court, set $1,000 on fire and lose than take it from him.

It's not about the money. It's about telling my story. It's the cathartic process. It's about telling someone of authority what he did. It's about turning him in, and exposing him for what he is. Even if I lose, even if they don't believe me or think I'm half cracked. Fine. At least I got my 5 minutes.

I hope he thinks not settling is worth giving me my 5 minutes of humiliating him and telling the whole freaking world what a lunatic he is!

(Even if the "whold world" is 5 people comprised of a judge,  a court clerk, a balif and my parents.)

Also, my friend pointed out, they want me to sign a FULL release for $1,000? This is all I talk about!! I'm going to sign a NDA promising to never talk about this ever again? It's like promising to never speak again as long as I live! This is all I eat, sleep and breathe! For $1,000 to give up my right to talk? What else would I talk about? The weather!?

And obviously my story holds some value to them or they wouldn't need me to sign the release.

I told my attorney to tell them they can shove that offer up their a**.

We are going to file instead. So we are really doing this, we are really suing. I'd rather do it sooner than later, but attorney says no hurry.

Ugh. I just want him served.

Cockroaches

The attorneys are going back and forth like waves on a lake shore. Just kind of softly lapping.

Slightly annoying. Very stressful. Ever present.

From my attorney's latest letter,

"citizens have already had their fill of out-of-control police officers spraying handcuffed citizens like cockroaches,"

I admit it. I enjoyed that. And it made me want to go to court. REAL BAD. And 20/20. And where's my Lifetime Movie deal?

Something called the "heartbalm statue" was brought up by retard's attorney, which, my atty has responded to by saying that we can sue in spite of that. (It says you can't sue for a broken heart, in essence.) I'm offended he brought it up at all.

That's not why we're here, and let's be clear about it. This isn't about me being pissed we didn't get married. This isn't revenge and this isn't about punishing him or his family.

The man committed violations of our civil code for which the law provides a remedy. (For one.)

The man crossed all lines against human decency. (For another.) And no one did anything about it.

The man is running around free and clear to do it again. He has no deterant. If anything he's been shown his actions have no consequences. His power as a peace officer has been maintained. He can continue to freely victimize people.

I can't make him be fired. But maybe I can motivate to hesitate before the next time. Is that enough? No. But it's better than nothing.

He has cost me THOUSANDS of dollars in therapy. He forever changed and destroyed my life. I'm sitting here reading about cases of these women... can't be alone with men, can't go in public. They won [in court]. I can't live my life. He purposefully, and with malice, victimized me.  By law, I am entitled to be restored to the state I was in before his actions. That will never happen, or it will take years. But they can try. (With duct tape, and money they can put me back together. Starting with my credit card bills for therapy.)

I told him I had depression. I told him I had been harrassed by another man (an ex-cop at that), and that I had been molested. And he went for it. With gusto. He was senistive, and caring, and used me when he needed me. He told me he was depressed and suicidal and needed space for his own sanity because he knew I would understand, when really, his wife was on his tail and he was trying not to get caught. He knew I would be overly concerned and would do whatever he said because I overly related to what he was telling me.

He financially benefitted from our time together. Not to flatter myself too much, but he physically benefitted too. He had the daily pleasure of my company as I drove 90+ miles a day to visit him on duty wearing that fake name tag. I lost money in gas, wear and tear, time, gifts and who knows WHAT else as he persued the fraud.

I haven't read this in a long time, but I used to have it memorized:

Infliction of Emotional Distress--Elements.

--For purposes of the tort of intentional infliction of

emotional distress, outrageous conduct is that which exceeds all bounds usually tolerated by a decent society, and is of a

nature that is especially calculated to cause, and does cause, mental distress. Ordinarily mere insulting language,

without more, does not constitute outrageous conduct. Behavior may be considered outrageous if a defendant abuses a

relation or position that gives him power to damage the plaintiff's interest, knows the plaintiff is susceptible to injuries

through mental distress, or acts intentionally or unreasonably with the recognition that the acts are likely to result in

illness through mental distress. Moreover, the extreme and outrageous character of the conduct may arise from an abuse

by the actor of a position, or a relation with the other, that gives him actual or apparent authority over the other, or

power to affect his interest. The extreme and outrageous character of the conduct may arise from the actor's knowledge

that the other is peculiarly susceptible to emotional distress, by reason of some physical or mental condition or

peculiarity. The conduct may become heartless, flagrant, and outrageous when the actor proceeds in the face of such

knowledge, where it would not be so if he did not know.




Someone left a comment and said I should listen to the song "Over you." But, I'm not. I'm not over my Matty. This person? The one I'm suing? It's not him. This guy is looney tunes. I don't even know who he IS! This guy is a freak show! A sociopath! He is a totally different person to me. It's not him. It's... I don't know. The closest I can come up with is perhaps an evil twin? LOL My Matty... I loved my Matty, but he is dead. He is never coming back and I know that. I will always miss him (I think), but he is gone. He's like Prince Charming in Cinderella... he was a wonderful fairy tale for awhile... I loved him so much... But he's dead.

Have you ever heard the expression, "Sometimes your knight in shining armor is just a retard in tin foil,"?

Pass the tin foil.

I hate these people.

Stupid opposing attorney responded finally. More than 3 hours past our deadline. He is just a manipulating retard.

This is how this is going to go. He is going to stall, piddle around, ask a lot of questions, and push paperwork back and forth until he sufficiently runs up his bill. Then, if forced, will make a piddling of an offer. I am calling it right now. And I am mad.

My attorney got a fax from them that was overly polilte, wanting to know exactly how we had come up with this idea that Matt owed me any money, because they talked to him, and they plumb well didn't get it! We're STUMPTED!

MYSTIFIED!

PUZZLED!

BEFUDDLED!

Then they asked a series of specific questions citing statutes and theories, blah blah blah. All of which I looked up so I made sure I understood. Fair enough. I assume this is normal when you are trying to similtaneously run up an hourly bill and minimize a settlement offer?

The summary of his questions were: You can't sue for a broken heart, aren't you supposed to sue the government entity first?, my dear, statute of limitations has run out, tick tock!, and, I just don't get where you're going with that.

He didn't contest several things listed that we claimed. At least, I didn't think he did.

If I didn't have so many darn issues with men I would run right over there and choke his fat little neck and tell him to stop being a turd!

SIDEBAR: They TALKED to Matt. How weird is that? Somebody talked to him. They talked to him about me. They asked him questions and he had to answer honestly. (Well, you would assume.) It is both strange and upsetting and overwhelming. I talked to my friend on the phone and it just felt so real. "His" attorney. "My" attorney. We both have attorneys. This is real. Meaning, what happened to me was real. He really did that to me. For real. I have been in therapy for almost two years for what he did to me. Really. Really?

When will I start believing it?

Deadline (They're stalling)

The deadline for Matt to respond to the demand letter was at 12 noon today. (1 hour, 3 minutes ago.)

I assumed he had not responded, but when I checked my email, I had a bcc'd message from my attorney at 11:28am

Please be advised that my client Matthew  has asked that I respond to your letter of June 12, 2012.  I will try to get a letter out to you this afternoon.  This will not meet your 12:00 deadline, but my secretary is out at this time.  My apologies.

They're stalling. (You've had 13 days to respond nimrod!) My atty said I would probably agree to a short extension on the offer. (As long as you're not just trying to stall to force us past the statute of limitations or to otherwise benefit yourself dipturd!) As soon as I saw his [real] last name in my inbox my heart start pounding and I just felt so panicky. I didn't know what to expect. I assumed it was my attorney saying they hadn't responded. But it wasn't. I don't know what to expect. I'm just scared. We'll see. I'm trying to breathe.

If we do settle, I'l have to sign a non-disclosure agreement and won't be able to discuss the terms. But let me say this, she asked for a lot of money. More money than how old I am.

And I am not really 25. I've just celebrated by 25th birthday the last 5 years for fun.

Pray for me. And pray for them. Pray that they do the right thing. Because the "right thing," here is for him to take responsibility for his actions. He has put me into debt paying for therapy. That is an absolute fact. The pain and suffering (overused phrase or not) he has caused is REAL. The damage he caused is REAL. And he needs to take responsibility and pay for what he has done. Pray that he recognizes what he has done is wrong and that he does the right thing by me. I loved him. He betrayed me in the worst way possible. He eliminated my ability to trust anything that I can even see, touch, feel or even KNOW as truth. I can KNOW it to be true, and still not even trust it. You can't put a price on it. He held my face in his hands and told me he would love me forever. That I was the only one we wanted to be with for the rest of his life. That I could trust him. That I could give his heart to him. That he wanted to make babies with me. That he was a police officer and that he was the law and he would never do anything to hurt me or to violate our bond. He told me he wanted to be my husband and that he wanted to make love to me. That he would try to restrain himself past our second week of dating before he proposed marriage. That our children would be beautiful. That I would be an amazing wife and mother. That I was the most perfect partner for him. That we fit perfectly together. That our bodies were made for each other and we were a perfect fit; a perfect match. That we were soul mates.

Pray he does the right thing. And that he repents for what he did to me. And to his daughter. And his wife.

Thank you and MORE back story about Matt

Thank you so much everyone who has written me and asked for invites. I can't actually tell if anyone is reading any of my new posts on here because I don't think it's showing up on your feeds, so none of you are clicking on the direct links. So although I have responded to and sent out more than a dozen invitations, it looks like no one is here.

So if you're out there, please feel free to drop me a comment to let me know you got in here okay and found my posts and are getting updated. This is the third post since we went private.

Post #1 Why I went Private and My Big Secret from You

Post #2 Monday Really Sucked and the Content in Post #1 Scared me into Derangement

Post #3.... You're reading it right now. But here's a link for fun anyway.
I'm still updating at the old address when I update here so you can see in your feed when you need to switch over.

*********************************************************************************

The reason I made the big switch on the addresses and made everything private (did I actually say this before?) is because of the lawsuit.

When I was trying to figure things out back in August 2010, I knew something was going on with Matt but I didn't know what. I hit a certain point in my snooping and I couldn't go any further. I was SURE he was lying, I had already caught him lying about his parent's first and last names, and his brother's, wife and their children's names and where everyone lived. I had confirmed all of that. But I didn't know what his name was, or if there was more to it than that. I was stuck.

I emailed his cousin, who I found through searching who I thought were his parents (actually were his aunt & uncle) on Spokeo and a bunch of other websites and found his cousin, who is a wedding photographer. I recognized the logo pop up in the image search results and I tracked her down. After a lot of hesitation, I emailed her from an anonymous email address and asked for her help. She was very hesitant, but agreed to help me as long as I did not "out" her to her family. Up to that point, all I told her was that I was in a long term relationship with a guy and I thought he might be lying, but I wasn't sure. There was a possibility he might have lied about his marital status and parental status, but I had no idea. I said she should be able to know these things off the top of her head, and I reassured her that this person was NOT her husband or Dad or anything like that.

She hesitated, but said fine.

So I launched into it, and I told her, basically, the sum of my relationship with Matt in a paragraph, including his alma mater, where he grew up, and his full name and career history.

She emailed me back asking for a picture for us together and I burst into tears.

Then she asked to know how I found her.

Then she answered. She told me everything and it was SHE who outed him. She had no idea what he had been doing either, but she told me his real middle and last name, that he had lied about the college he went to (she went to U of O, not him), he had used her parents names, but he did tell the truth about their occupations. She also told me he was married, and her name, and that they had a child. It was she who told me that the tattoo on Matt's back was not of the officer friend who died in the line of duty, but of his daughter's name. And that he had gotten it on vacation in Hawaii with his in-laws... When he was calling, texting and emailing me, claiming to be on a guy's trip.

And during all of our email correspondence back and forth I made a BIG mistake.

I sent her the link to this blog.

At the time, this blog had a giant header of me and Matt; one picture when we first started dating, and another at our on year anniversary. The caption: "Loving since April 2009."

She was totally appalled, and then, as we went through my options, proposed she send the link to my blog to Sydney claiming she had "accidentally" discovered it. I told her no way, it's a private blog, I don't publish the address on search engines, etc., and there's no way you would have found it. My clients don't have access to it because it's private from them. I need that boundary. I gave the cousin my phone number instead and told her I was going to the house. She texted and tried to talk me out of it, but we went back and forth and I TOLD her:

1.) She wouldn't believe a phone call. I'd think it was a prank. The story is too ridiculous.
2.) If I wrote a letter, there's no telling he wouldn't get it first and shred it.
3.) Again, an email, it's not believable. It's not real.

The only real option was to go to the house and tell Sydney what he had done face to face. I told her because she deserved to know. Because she deserved to protect herself from her sociopathic husband, and I deserved to have been told and no one did. I told her, because someone should have told me.

I realized that the other day.

I did for her what should have been done for me. I did it, because *I* deserved it.

When I was in the house she thanked me over and over. "Thank you for being honest." "Thank you for coming to me. " "I am so glad someone could." She said this last one nastily giving Matt a dirty look, but still, it's true. We both deserved to be told. We both deserved for it never to have happened, but since it did, we had the right to know. To protect our hearts, minds, bodies, and for Sydney, her daughter. That she declined to was her choice. One I don't understand, but it was her choice.

Anyway, I know Matt's cousin had the address to my blog. And when I started getting a bunch of weird hits (30 a day?) in a town 10 miles from where he grew up, and where his family still lives about 6 months ago, I freaked out.

Now that we are 5.5 days away from the deadline we gave Matt in the demand letter, I don't what anyone in his family turning up on my blog. I don't want to go to court and have this stuff out there. For the record, if it did, I don't have anything to be afraid of or ashamed of. This is the truth of what happened and what he did. But that doesn't mean I'm going to print the thing out, laminate it, and Fed Ex it to his front porch.

I might do that with some dog poop, though. Can you laminate dog poop? Will it retain the same odor?

I've been watching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Amazon Prime before bed, (because it makes me excited for kickboxing class) and in the later seasons there is what is called a "Vengeance Demon" who grants wishes to wronged women. The Vengeance Demon became a demon when her boyfriend cheated on her with a "bar maiden." So she turned him into a troll.

I want a Vengeance Demon for Christmas, please.