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I have a story to tell, and drat it, I will tell it. This is the tale of my psychotic in laws. Like all good stories of craziness, it starts out mediocre and escalates over time. I’m going to tell thing chronologically, and things did start out slow. Bear with me and we’ll get to the underage panty sniffing, screwing over parapalegic children, the attempted arson, the hired rapists, and the wedding sabotage in no time. I should say that as of present date these are now people I have no contact with. I’m not looking for advice, per se. I am looking to vent, and to get this off my chest. Because of the nature of some of what happened, I’m not really at liberty to talk to people in my “real” life. People either wouldn’t understand, or would retaliate and make things worse. So I’m stuck with all of this stuff that happened and no way to really work out my feelings. By the way, this is an account I registered just for this. Please don’t internet detective me. I will be telling one or two things that could be traced back to my identity, and I beg you not to make it worse by trying to track me or any of the other people in this down. I started dating a great guy named Chad just shy of four years ago. We’re scheduled to get married in May, and everything would be great if he didn’t have two relatives who are the worst people who have ever existed. Let me start by introducing you to my fiance’s cousin/brother, Josh. I met Josh two times once Chad and I were dating seriously. We took him with us to the movies, nothing that I interacted with him too much. He struck me as internet nerdy, a little whiney, overweight with a mild hygiene problem, WoW addiction and a bit misogynistic. Nothing extraordinary you don’t see at any Gamestop on any given day. Then one day Chad’s mother called him to she tell him she hated me. HATED me. I had never seen her or even spoken to her, so Chad was taken aback. The only reason she hated me so much was evidently Josh had told her that I disliked him and was rude to him. Chad hung up the phone and called his cousin. “Why did you tell mom Hairnet Soup hates you?” “She does. She never invites me to ANYTHING. Did you see on her facebook? She had a party and I wasn’t invited.” The party in question was a girls’ night out to celebrate my recovery. And when planning a get together for my female friends, I certainly have to admit that my boyfriend’s nerdy cousin wasn’t top of my list for invites. Chad tried to explain this but gave up. It was a situation of Geek Social Fallacy in spades. I had been with friends. He was not there, ergo I didn’t like him. So, next time we together I make a point of telling him that the next time I have a get together he will be invited. We were at Chad’s house, waiting on pizza and I had just set my laptop aside. Josh leaned over and asked if he could check his email quick. I let him on the laptop and thought nothing of it. The pizza arrived, and we started eating when out of nowhere Josh asks “What’s a potluck?” Not thinking, I explained the concept and continued eating, when something in the back of my brain puts two and two together. “Why did you ask what a potluck is, Josh?” “Party on Saturday is a potluck.” gently caress. He had apparently decided to peruse my facebook. I am a member of a professional performing arts group that is only active three months out of the year. Most members travel to different jobs and roll into town for the session. During that three months, we’re sleeping in each other’s living rooms and swapping clothes and working together at least 12 hours a day six days a week. It’s this intensive thing where people become friends and enemies and lovers and back again. And then suddenly you don’t see each other for 9 months. If someone misses a season, it’s even longer. The “party” in question was our reunion picnic and business meeting. Basically for one day we rent out a park and have a big BBQ and catch up, then pause halfway through to vote on business decisions, plan out schedules and hash out the upcoming season, then we go back to our reunion. As I was one of the few locals, I had volunteered to be the organizer of the whole thing, contacting everyone online, renting out the place, collecting the money for the BBQ stuff and the rental that sort of thing. I explain this to Josh, figuring he’ll realize it’s not anything he should be invited to, but I’m slowly realizing that he’s not getting it. “So we’re all in this sort of club together.” “Right” “It’s like a family reunion and an office party combined.” “Okay.” “And everyone there will be in the club. Everyone.” “Yup” “Chad’s not even coming. Because he’s not in the group.” “Uh huh.” He’s bobbing his head, oblivious. “I’ve never been to a party like that before.” I give up. I am still trying to be polite, it’s early in the relationship. So I talk to Chad. Chad is more angry that Josh helped himself to my personal information while on the computer, and he and Josh have a little fight over the whole thing, during which Chad makes it clear Josh wasn’t invited to the BBQ and that he had no right to snoop around my computer. Hop forward to the day of the event. I am greeting old friends, gathering money, handling the grill. And suddenly I look up and see Josh. He is sitting off at a picnic table, glaring at people going by. There was some talk about this among my friends, and general consensus was to let it go. After all, we were a happy family, we could support one more. Now, not surprisingly, Josh didn’t bring money for the event, or anything for the potluck. But when we called that the food was open, he hauled himself up and hustled down the table. He walked the length of the table, then huffed and glared at me. Then he looped back, got to the end of the table and “Harummph”ed. Finally, he called out to me “Hairnet Soup! There’s NOTHING here I can eat.” The meats were grilled chicken, hamburger patties, hotdogs, black bean patties, and grilled vegetable kabobs. The potluck had everything from pasta dishes to tasty vegan pieces to trays of fruits and veggies. I had no idea what he was talking about and asked for clarification. “I know why I am so fat.” He said “It’s because I have too much sugar.” One of the actors is a major fitness freak and low carb advocate and jumped at this, suggesting dishes from the table. Josh was offended “Not low carb! That’s a fad. The problem is SUGAR. Just SUGAR.” There was some polite questioning, trying to help him find something to eat. He was really insulted by this. He wasn’t restricting calories, he was upset when we mentioned carbohydrates. Furthermore, this diet of his own making he had apparently started just that morning. Finally, he huffed off. He drove by a minute later, cruising by the pavilion. The entrance was on the other side, he had looped back around to do this. He showed up a half hour later with a bag from McDonalds, and pulled out two burgers and a bag of fries. He took a bite, then looped back to the condiment table. “Hairnet Soup! Hairnet Soup! There’s NO mustard!” One of the actors standing nearby quickly handed him a bottle. Josh stood, seething in anger for a moment afterwards before exploding. “Honey mustard? HONEY mustard! What part of no sugar don’t you understand! HONEY mustard!” He slammed the bottle on the table and ate his mustardless sandwiches in relative, angry, silence. As the meal wound down, the president of the society called to order the business meeting, banging a pot with a ladle to get everyone’s attention. We all quieted down and turned as he started the meeting up. Suddenly Josh was at my elbow. “What’s going on?” I explained it was the business meeting. Josh pursed his lips for a moment, then loudly talked over the president “What do you have for us to do if we don’t want to be part of the business meeting?” There was silence, the president looked confused, then commented everyone there needed to be there for the meeting to be an active member. Josh grunted, then thought for a moment before storming away. He didn’t show up for the rest of the meeting and I mistakenly thought he might have left. After the meeting, a couple of the guys decided to play soccer out on the back field. I was chatting with friends, when one of them came back and let me know that Josh was hanging around by the field. I followed him back. Sure enough Josh sat at the edge of the field, just staring at everyone like a creeper. He ended up staying there until after everyone went home at dark. His car was still there when I left around midnight, so I have no idea how long he lurked there. The next day I saw I was tagged in a post by him on facebook. It’s since been deleted, but to paraphrase: “Was invited to a party. They wanted me to pay for the privilege of going and bring the food. When I didn’t, they wouldn’t let me eat. Everyone was doing crap I didn’t want to.” I ended up having to explain what really happened to Chad, who was terribly confused. When the performance debuted, Chad came to opening night and, inexplicably, Josh insisted on coming along. Afterwards we had a little reception for friends and family. I’m chatting with Chad and another friend and I see that Josh is glaring over my shoulder. “That’s him.” He growls. I follow his gaze. He’s staring at a friend of mine, CJ. I rack my brains trying to think if he had any interaction with CJ. “What’s wrong with him?” “He hogged all the women the day I went to that party. I would have scored some digits if he hadn’t have been there.” CJ, I meant add, is the biggest gay bear I have ever met, physically and otherwise. There really is no question as to his orientation. Everyone had been paying him a lot of attention because he had missed a season and we hadn’t seen him in two years. My friend started laughing loudly, then yelled across the room “Hey CJ, you stealing women?” CJ came over and asked what was up and my friend told him what Josh had said, the whole time I’m trying to shush him and change the conversation. Josh got all embarrassed and left, storming out. Problem was he rode with Chad, so he ended up sitting in the rain by the car for an hour until we left. Rest of the season everyone ran around yelling “HONEY mustard.” And CJ wouldn’t enter a room without bellowing out “Watch out! I’m here to steal your WOmens!” Now, things got progressively worse the longer I knew Josh, but this being the first interaction I had one on one was a pretty good introduction to the craziness. Knowing what I do now, I wouldn’t have been so scared about alienating their bitch of a mother, but I’ll get to that eventually.
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Dec 22, 2012 02:11
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Backstory! Some backstory is probably necessary. My fiance’s aunt passed away tragetically and fairly young, and his father had never been in the picture. My fiance’s mother jumped in and took custody of the boy, so even though Josh is my fiance’s cousin, they were raised as brothers for most of their life. Everyone sort of uses cousin and brother exchangably, and depending on how angry they are at Josh at the moment. For all accounts, Chad’s mother despised her own children, for reasons I’ll get to later, but loved Josh. My mother in law is by all accounts a horrid woman, and I have plenty of stories to attest to it from both Carrie and Chad. She was physically and psychologically abusive, to say the least. Chad was kicked out of the house at 16 but got his life together on his own. By the time I met him he had earned his GED, put himself through college and was still taking business classes with a successful job, plenty of friends, and was going places. Chad had decided to reconcile with his family mostly because of his sister, Carrie. (Chad had actually adopted Carrie when she was a kid.) Their mother had moved across country, so he rarely sees her, but Josh lived less than an hour away. I’ll fill in more backstory later. The family dynamic is insane.
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Dec 22, 2012 02:30
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DUNCAN DONUTS posted:He probably already posts here. Ironically no. It came up once, during the Reddit bomb thing. He hates SA and refuses to come here. Made it the perfect place to vent. Ironcially that was a week or two before he tried to have me raped, so he deserves Reddit.
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Dec 22, 2012 02:33
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Josh doesn’t go dutch After the party debacle, I didn’t see Josh for a bit. I honestly don’t remember along the way where I learned his financial situation, but I knew about it by the time the next story happened. It seems that when Josh’s mom was killed, there was a massive lawsuit that was settled out of court in Josh’s favor. Chad’s mother actually invested it really well, and Josh came into possession of it when he turned 21. I’ve never heard numbers, but it is substantial enough that Josh bought a very nice townhome/condo on the better side of town, and the dividends of the settlement paid his mortgage, the payments on his car, his utilities, and left him with some money in his pocket every month. One of the few things I don’t have against their mom and Josh is that money management, it was done really smart. Basically, if he wanted to he could do nothing but sit around for the rest of his life comfortably, but he he spent a ton eating out and buying figurines and stuff. So, he supplemented this with a 10 hour a week job stocking shelves. None of that is bad and if Josh wasn’t such an rear end, it would all be great. The night in question was Chad’s sister, Carrie’s, birthday party. She was having a little get together at an Italian place, and Chad, Josh and I were invited. Now the restaurant is average, a local place I’d say is a little nicer than say, Olive Garden, but certainly no Ritz. Chad was wearing dress slacks, a button up top and tie. I wore a nice dress and heels. We picked up Josh. He was wearing jorts, socks, sandals, and “witty” tshirt. When he got in the car, he made a snide comment about how Carrie wasn’t worth the effort we had gone through getting dressed up. Josh insisted on always riding shotgun, and I was in the back seat. Chad apologized that he had to make a quick stop. He had just switched banks and direct deposit hadn’t kicked in. He wanted to deposit his paycheck at the ATM before it got forgotten. He drove up to the ATM, filled out the deposit envelope and tore off his paycheck stub and stuck it in an envelope in the glove box. The second he leaned out the window to key up the ATM, Josh pulls open the glove box, pulls out the slip from the envelope and starts to read it. “Holy poo poo you make a lot of money!” he said. Chad pulled back into the car, took the slip out of his hand and calmly gave him a look. “No, I don’t.” “gently caress that. My paycheck is only a fraction of that. I didn’t know you were rich.” “Josh. You pay for nothing. I have to pay for my mortgage, I have to pay for my car. I’m paying off student loans and paying to go to school now. I have medical bills, and the money I’m saving up for the business. And almost nothing’s left over, okay? It’s not all spending money like you.” Josh crossed his arms and sank back into his seat grumbling something. We didn’t talk until we got to the restaurant. There were a dozen people there, and we ended up sitting at the far end of a long table by Carrie, while Josh sat on the opposite side. It was all in all a good night. I met Chad’s cousins from his uncle, all nice awesome people. I don’t think I so much looked at Josh all night. Things were wrapping up, and the waiter approached Chad with one of the biggest smiles on his face. “Here are your checks.” “Checks? More than one?” “Well, yes.” The waiter looked worried. “Gentleman at the end of the table said you were handling your check, the birthday girl’s check, and his.” Josh was long gone from the table at this point, and Carrie overhead and thanked Chad before turning to her other guests. Chad opened the folder. Carrie’s check was first, it was $30 and Chad murmured that was fair, no one should have to pay on their birthday. Our check was next. We had splurged a little with an appetizer, and each had a glass of wine with dinner, and split a dessert. It was a $80 bill, which we had expected. Then Chad flipped to Josh’s bill, he paused and turned to the waiter, who was still standing by, sensing something was wrong. “This is for the guy at the end?” “Yes.” “And ONLY the guy at the end?” “Yes sir.” Josh had ordered two appetizers. He got two of the most expensive entrées and added sides and add ons. He had ordered a bottle of the most expensive wine, and two desserts. All told, he single handedly had managed to create a $356 bill for one man. I looked across the table to his seat and was horrified to see that over half the food was being cleared away, uneaten, and the wine had barely been touched, and left at the table. Chad slowly turned red with anger, but the waiter was waiting, all excited for his tip. Chad handed him his card, and paid for the entire thing, looking like he was ready to explode. I walked out of the restaurant before Chad, and coming around the corner I saw Josh leaning against Chad’s car. I can’t even describe the look on his face at that moment. He has this tendency of pursing his lips when he is smug, and the self-satisfied, gloating look he shot me made me want to punch him in the face. Then Chad came around the corner. Chad is the definition of a big scary man. He stands 6’5”, with broad shoulders and giant, strong hands. He used to fight heavyweight class, and still trains regularly, and has the cauliflower ear to show for it. And at that moment, he was pissed off beyond belief. Josh looked at him and turned white. By the time we got down to the car, he was shaking. But, you could tell he had a retort on his lips and he was hell bent on saying it no matter what. As we walked up to him, “I knew you could AFFORD it.” Chad didn’t say a word. He walked around Josh, unlocked the passenger side door and escorted me into my seat, and locked the door behind me. He unlocked the driver’s door, started the car, and drove off with Josh running after the car, yelling. We got back to his place silently, before his phone rang. It was his mother, bitching him out for abandoning poor Josh. Chad listened to her without talking. We found out later Carrie tried to give him a ride home and he refused. The restaurant called him a cab, and Josh refused to take it. Finally at some point he walked the five miles home. It was a while before I had contact with Josh again after this.
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Dec 22, 2012 03:01
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Background, Part Two Carrie was the one pressuring Chad to reconcile with Josh and their mother, and I think the only reason that Chad hadn’t killed them both. With Carrie’s background she’d be well within her rights to cut them both out forever, honestly. Josh is 6 years younger than Chad, and Carrie is about two years younger than Josh. I’m a year older than Carrie, for the record. When Josh was adopted, Carrie was still in diapers, and their mother just sort of stopped caring for Carrie. Chad has a lot of stories from his childhood about providing pretty basic care for her, like going to the neighbors and begging for baby food when his mother hadn’t stocked the house with food, that sort of thing. He’d take her away to their uncle’s house when things got bad. It was the uncle and aunt who apparently handled her medical visits and figured out she was type I diabetic. Chad was the one administering meds when she was only a toddler. Now, the story of how Chad came to adopt Carrie comes to me through bits and pieces a decade after the fact, so I may have some skipped stuff. Essentially though Chad had been kicked out of the house at 16, and was lucky enough to find a situation with people who cared about him. He pretty much had his act together young. He apparently would come over after Carrie got off of school a few times a week and pick her up as she got off of the bus and would take her to different things so she didn’t have to go home. Their mother apparently had no problem with her daughter disappearing and had no clue where she was. (I found out this later when I met her mother and she accused Carrie of being a child prostitute to account for that lost time!) But when Carrie is in eighth grade she comes home from school to find a bag of her clothes at the mailbox and a note saying she was no longer allowed to come home, that her mom was kicking her out. I’ve heard it contained other insults, but that changes depending on who is telling the story. She obviously is a wreck over it, and heads over to a friend’s house to call Chad. Chad calls their uncle and gets out of work as quickly as he can. Somehow during all of this, Carrie realized that the bag didn’t contain any of her medication, and getting that was the priority. Chad took Carrie away to calm down and be safe, and her uncle went over to their mother’s house to confront her with a friend who was an off-duty cop. When they got to the house, apparently their mother slung some horrible insults about Carrie around, and shoved the uncle. When he said he just wanted Carrie’s diabetes supplies, she disappeared into the next room. They followed her after a moment and found her tossing all the medication into the fireplace. Apparently she said that it was bought on her insurance she could do what she pleased. The cop disagreed, obviously, and called in CPS. Because of this, the assault, and the condition of the house and a few other things it’s best not to talk about, she was arrested and Josh was taken away from her. The uncle apparently wanted to take Carrie in, but money was really tight for him and he had kids of his own, so he gave support to Chad. Chad set up a bedroom in his apartment for her, and even though he was young, they allowed her to stay there. That summer, in order to get Josh back, their mother signed away custody of Carrie, and Chad was able to legally adopt his sister. The move across town ended up placing her in a superior school district and she basically hit her freshman year of high school with a new start. Two offshoots of this whole thing. First off, in the initial CPS battle, their mother repeatedly told authorities that Carrie was mentally retarded. Somehow it ended up in her records, and they had to jump through hoops getting her school records and getting her tested to prove that she was actually above average intelligence. It somehow followed her up through college with her records and was a thorn in her side. Despite the fact that it was completely untrue (as was the allegations that she was a child prostitute, which her mother tried to claim) her mother will claim both to this day. Josh occasionally does this too. Never when Chad is around, but I’ve heard him call Carrie “Tardo” and claim she’s too stupid to understand basic things. The other offshoot was that Josh still holds it against Carrie, and refers to this as “The time Carrie got me taken away from mom.” Carrie, by the way, graduated third in her class out of high school. She evidently sent the pictures of her getting school awards to her mother. It was the first time she contacted her mother since she lost custody. This let her mother know where she was. Evidently, she sent a letter, which Chad kept away from Carrie. He won’t tell her what it said to this day. The school does this big after graduation party thing, and their mother showed up and made some huge fuss outside. I don’t know the whole story, but she’s complained about how it started all these rumors about her in her graduating class, and it’s part of the reason she attended school out of the area and is moving. As far as why Carrie has chosen to reconnect with the people who did this to her, she got in a relationship with a guy who was the son of a minister. They are a really close family, and convinced her she should patch things up, because it’s what Jesus would want and sort of kept pushing her. Chad basically supports his sister’s decisions, although he’s let her know he doesn’t agree with them. Her new family haven’t been pushing for reconciliation since the debacle of the engagement party and wedding, it was the first that I think they realized how bad and abusive things were. I’ll get to that later. There’s so much background craziness I could fill a dozen posts. I’ll add one more thing for good measure, actually: Carrie and Chad are full siblings. Chad was the result of a high school fling and resulting shotgun marriage. They divorced when Chad was real young. At some point, his father decided that he should get his life together and get to know his son. The first time he came over to visit, though, he and Chad’s mom ended up having sex, the result being Carrie. His father basically fled in terror after that, and Chad’s mother blames the kids on the fact that she was alone. I’m trying to go through this chronologically, so it makes decent story telling, so sorry this isn’t terribly trainwrecky yet.
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Dec 22, 2012 03:29
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Ugh, may have to turn in soon, too much typing.Toriori posted:Jiminey Christmas I don't think he's autistic. I have a brother with Aspergers (literal, therapist diagnosed), so I'm sort of familiar with it, but he doesn't have any of the symptoms. He's literally the result of his psychotic mom and an overblown sense of self worth. I'll seriously answer any questions as best I can (ask away, guys), but I have to be a bit vague about his mom. First of all because from all I've heard she was a pretty decent woman who had some mental issues, and as I never knew her, I won't speak well of the dead. Chad often says that the aunt he remembers would be horrified at how her son turned out. She died as the result of a corporation that made choices that damaged people when they knew and hid the potential harm of their product. Any more will give away too much identity.
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Dec 22, 2012 03:35
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Fatkraken posted:Dear god, it's trainwrecky enough. Please tell me that Carrie is alive, safe and no longer in contact with these people though Carrie is awesome. She has married a great guy with an awesome family, and is actually preggers with her first baby. We should find out real soon if it's a boy or girl. (another reason I don't want internet detectivery, she is moving forward with her life) But the inlaws tried to ruin her wedding repeatedly before her new family realised how bad her mother and Josh were. It was actually a horrible horrible thing. This is very liberating to type up so far and I hope that when I get to the actual painful bits it won't be too hard to write....
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Dec 22, 2012 03:38
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Vordulak posted:Wow, the combination of OP's excellent storytelling and the complete wretchedness of Josh actually led me into a two-minute daydream of kicking Josh's rear end. And it was most satisfying. SchrodingersFish posted:Even if it was possible to have this "follow" Carrie through college, her professors and the administration would be be falling all over themselves about how much she had accomplished while facing such debilitating disability. Regarding the transcript: Carrie is a great woman who will be a great mom. That said, she's very much about image. She has to have things very picture perfect and 'normal'. She was not the type to ever accept help, ever, and if anyone had approached her to offer help it would be obvious she wasn't mentally challenged at all. And knowing her it was a blemish and embarrasment that it made it in her transcripts. The thorn in her side was more that it existed. And anyone noticed it had to be explained WHY it was in her transcript when it was obviously false and then she had to acknowledge all sorts of nasty stuff about her past. It really sticks out to me because after all that her mom did to her, she more or less sticks to that as being the really hurtful thing. There's obviously a lot of unresolved stuff floating around about this. She doesn't even really talk about the fact that Chad had custody of her in public. I mean to say she's grateful, and among those of us who know she will discuss things from that era of her life, but if there's a stranger in the group she sort of likes to gloss over major portions of her life in order to maintain this sort of perfect facade. I really don't mean to rip on her, though. I adore her and I wish I had my life as together as she does, but she went through hell and didn't come through it completely without lasting effects. And yeah, this is all true. I will admit that names are changed and place names are changed to protect people I'm going to keep some things vague. Also, I am chosing my words to make the story more enjoyable. But the biggest sin is sometimes truncating the timing of things so that the story is a little more understandable so you guys can enjoy it a little better. And obviously I'm phoning most of the dialogue in, but you'll get the gist off of it. natetimm posted:Ugh, he's not autistic, he's just utterly and completely poisoned by living in proximity to his mother his whole life. He really never had a chance, and that's probably why his siblings still tolerate his poo poo to a certain degree. He was the one that got left behind and warped into the wretched creature he is today. Deep down, he's probably jealous of both of them for being able to get out, and it's no surprise the mom favors him so much, he's her Frankenstein monster. Yes, a million times yes. I don't want to armchair psychologist the man too much, but he seriously has most of his weirdness to blame on his mom. When he talks about his childhood, it's like he discusses Carrie and Chad as just being bad. Don't doing bad things, but just as intrinsically BAD. And he was good, equally for no good reason. And his mom used to just reward him and punish them. Example, real quick. For a while we were seeing a lot of Josh before things got bad, and he told me a story about the last Christmas Chad was there. Their mother had purposefully not gotten any presents for her two biological children, but had gotten plenty, including a Playstation, for Josh. Apparently she made the other two kids sit and watch Josh opening presents, one by one, while they got nothing. Chad was old enough to handle this, but Carrie still belived in Santa, and just cried and cried. Apparently, their mother took offense to the crying, and locked them outside on the patio, and she and Josh sat down to eat while the other two kids, aged 16 and 7, stood in the cold and watched them eat. Finally, at some point, Chad walked Carrie away, and they went to their uncle’s house, and he fed them. When their mother realized they were missing, she was furious, and rounded them up, took them back to her house, and after some screaming and spanking, locked them in the basement for the night. Now, Josh was the one telling me this story, and from him, this was a hysterical thing. He’d pause, laughing, as he told it, oblivious to my horror. You can tell that he’s told this tale before and it’s always been just this one up story where he talks about how epically awesome he is compared to his siblings. I sort of pointed out how horrible of a story it was. A mutual friend had a kid about Carrie's age then, and I asked him if he could imagine anything that kid could do that would deserve it. And it honestly bothered him, I don't think he had ever really regarded Chad and Carrie as "real" when they were kids. And I think when he sees Chad and Carrie getting rewarded for their hard work and having educations, friends, significant others, etc, it's just bothering him because he is still looking to be rewarded and for them to be punished. I think that's why he retaliated so much down the road. I mean, a hell of a lot of armchair psychologist there, but I've seen a lot to back it up. He's still pissed that he didn't get to be married first, for instance!
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Dec 22, 2012 07:31
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Josh and Carrie's New House Carrie and her boyfriend decided to rent a house together, (much to the chagrin of his parents), and of course we were on hand to help. The day before the big move, I had some time so one of Carrie's other friends and I helped Carrie pack up her kitchen, load it into the pickup and drive it to the new house. It got all the fragile stuff out of the way and meant a lot less boxes the next day, plus she could cook immediately. We unpacked the kitchen and Carrie sort of directed where everything needed to be put, and we went into the next day with at least one room set and ready to go. Parts of the house were a big of a mess from the previous renter, so some of the people helping went to the old apartments with the UHaul to pack up furniture and everything else, and some of us stayed at the house and cleaned so we weren't putting furniture on dirty floors. To describe the basic layout of the house, it's a "modern" house built in the late seventies. It's built into a pretty drastic hillside, and parts of the house are actually inside the hill. You enter through a huge deck area, and the bottom floor is a little entry area, little bathroom, kitchen and dining room. Second floor is living room area, and third floor is all the bedrooms. The entire front of this place is all glass windows, and from the outside the house almost has a step like appearance to it. Having attacked the kitchen and dining room the previous day, we were focusing on cleaning the other two stories. At this point I have no idea where Josh is. I guess I thought he was moving furniture. We see the truck pulling up the front, and the four of us head down to help start unloading. As we do, we pass by the kitchen. Every cupboard is open, things are all over the counter, and Josh is standing there moving things around. Of course, we ask him what he's doing. And he ratherly smugly tells us "This was all set up wrong. I'm moving it around so it's right!" There's a bit of a silence, and we tell him to please stop. It was the only room we were done in, and Carrie had it set up the way she wanted it to be. Josh wasn't happy. Carrie gets to work putting everything back away and we ask Josh to help us with the furniture. As we're moving things, he is just grumbling about how that kitchen was set up all wrong, and Carrie would regret setting it up that way. At this point I figure it was Josh honestly trying to help and just failing, a lot. But Carrie started hosting a lot of parties and BBQs at the house, and Josh made a point, every time, to open up the wrong cupboard and loudly declare how he figured this is where the cups would be and gee, it's like everything was set up completely wrong in this kitchen, he can never find anything. Moving furniture with Josh, as you can imagine, was a treat. Between the whining, the refusing to lift properly and him dropping and banging everything down, he was pretty soon asked to move light, non breakable stuff instead.
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Dec 22, 2012 15:34
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Lyz posted:These stories are horifically fascinating. I am dearly hoping they end with a restraining order against Josh and Chad and Carrie never speaking to their mother again. How things stand right now. No one I've talked about has a restraining order against either, although their mother has numerous restraining orders from other people attesting to her crazy. I met their mother once. The visit ended with her assaulting Carrie and basically leaving the state again. Josh attempted to ruin Carrie's wedding, and failed at even that. I think (but don't know) that her new inlaws laid down some physical punishment. Really after that he started doing the really underhand and dangerous stuff. He's decided anymore to pretend everyone does not exist. I hope he rots alone in his creepy empty house forever.
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Dec 22, 2012 15:52
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Grandpas a Racist posted:Runaway dad... Also she is crazy. Yup, pretty much that's it. I wonder sometimes if there's more too. From what I understand, there was a time when things weren't as completely batshit as it was later in their life. I know Chad at one point went to Boy Scouts and his mother would take him, which seems totally uncharacteristic of her. Chad also talks about back when Josh was first adopted how Josh was his "little buddy" who would follow him around and mimic him, and how he remembers Josh crying at night for his mommy and holding him. I don't know if there was some huge catalyst to change things, or if she just descended into crazy over time. All of this backstory I have sort of gathered up and made sense of over the last four years from all of the different folk who were there. I don't exactly walk around demanding details about their painful, abusive childhood. A lot of it I actually have heard from their cousins, who are much more willing to discuss things.
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Dec 22, 2012 16:04
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The Fireplace In the living room at Carrie's is a fireplace. It's one of those that's in a glass cylinder that goes up into a brick sort of cone thats in the middle of the room. It was a few days after Carrie was in, and we came by to see if she needed any unpacking help. She had another friend there, and Carrie began to feel guilty Josh wasn't invited, so she called him up. He gets there, things are uneventful, we're chattng and helping her unpack her books and movies, and the friend suggests we light a fire. Neat! Carrie had bought one of those firestarter logs, and went to get it. We look over and there's Josh with his hand on the flue. "You got the flue, Josh?" "Yup! Got it!" So we pop in the log and Carrie tosses in some personal papers she wants to destroy for good measure. And, after a few minutes, we realize that smoke is backing up in the glass cylinder. This was the first time they lit a fire here, so there's some panicked discussion. Is the chimney blocked? They hadn't had it cleaned. Plus, as I said the house is semi in a hill, so the chimney comes out of the hillside basically at ground level. They were worried that the chimney had been damaged or maybe an animal in it. I'm saying this all calmly now, but at the moment everyone was in the mode of freaking out about the fire. Room's filling with smoke, everyone's coughing, and we're all sort of panicking. Two of them take off to go see if the issue was the chimney. As Chad leaves, he looks at Josh and says "You are SURE you opened the flue?" "Yes!" Carrie and I focus on the fire. We're afraid we'll make the smoke worse if we dump water and she didn't have a fire extinguisher for some reason. It's actually getting hard to see through the smoke. Most of the front windows don't open, so Carrie is running around, opening all the doors and the skylight windows and turing on everything resembling a fan. The smoke detector goes off. I say we have to call the fire department. And Josh is sitting on the couch through all of this and finally says "Well, maybe I didn't open the flue." I sort of stare at him in disbelief, then try to grab the crank handle on the flue. It's so hot I burn my hand. Carrie disappears to the kitchen and comes back with a potholder and we wrestle the flue open. The smoke starts going up the chimney, and we are left in a smokey, room. Everyone comes flying back inside. They were standing over the chimney when the smoke started coming out, and wanted to know what happened. Josh is balled up on the couch, and we explain what happened. It wasn't his fault, he insisted. He wasn't really sure what a flue was and didn't want to look like an idiot so he said he had handled it. It wasn't until the smoke got bad he figured out what it was we had asked him. When Carrie moved she had to pay on the deposit because the entire ceiling there was all sooty from this.
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Dec 22, 2012 16:37
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Tommofork posted:The cool thing about crazy is that it uses its own logic and by that logic the crazy makes perfect sense. Oh wow. I know I have a great aunt who was perfectly normal until she was in her 60s and had a stroke. She's still partially paralyzed, and lives in an assisted living home and is still pleasant, wonderful and lucid. And then she will tell you about how when they were treating her for a stroke they accidently attached someone else's hand to her. She hates her paralyzed hand, will rip into the doctors who made the "error" and beg that it will be removed. When you point out it's her's, she makes you compare her "normal" hand with the horrible atrocity on her other arm--which looks exactly the same. Seriously, if the hand never comes up, you can take her out and everything is wonderful, and she still has an active life despite the wheelchair. Just don't mention her hand!
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Dec 22, 2012 16:41
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Sephyr posted:Quick question to sate some armchair-psych impulses: Basically, yes. For a long while there, I was actually spending a lot of time around Josh. Between Carrie pushing for a full reconciliation and Chad just basically wanting to try to help Josh, we invited him along to basically every social event we went to, and we're all very social people. Josh almost always came along, and for a while I was seeing him on basically a weekly basis. Josh was always uncomfortable around people, and usually would just not interact. He always just stayed in the off corners, and was quiet. Sometimes he'd be really upset and be all folded in on himself, literally huddled down. Mostly though, unless someone talked to him, he'd be by himself. Usually when he does talk, it's either about video games or WoW or whatever movie he saw recently. He was always a complainer, but him sort of grumbling about the weather or whatever was par for the course. But none of that is really story telling quality. Really, I probably only have a dozen or so tales of him flipping out, from the whole 2 years I had good interaction with him. But when he did, it would be so over the top it was memorable. And if he wasn't such an rear end, I wouldn't be telling stories of my socially uncomfortable brother in law. It's not really that remarkable, and I'm not that mean. I promise I'll get to the attempted rape, although I'm sort of bracing myself because I don't know quite how I'll write it up. I've spent a lot of time working on it with a psychologist, but I've avoided TALKING about it. And having a anonymous venting point will be a good thing, I think. But it happened literally after I stopped contact with Josh. I'm visiting relatives out of state right now, so I'm sort of back and forth to the computer, so I'll be back tonight.
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Dec 23, 2012 01:14
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Ookay... Hell of a lot of drama going on over this. Look, if a mod has an issue with anything, or thinks another board would be more appropriate, or if you just want me to stop posting, let me know. It would seriously be no problem, I didn't mean to get E/N in an uproar. The reason I went here is because I saw this as $10 therapy. It is still something of an issue in my head, and I am working through it. I got to take some time and take things that are a little painful and reframe them in a more comedic way in a anonymous context. That's all. It's been actually kind of cool in a way so far because it lets me just see all of this in a different color. I also am realising myself how BAD Josh was at these early stages once you sort of cherry pick his fits out of that year. One thing I will say because it's apparently been a question is that I'm a girl goon. I don't know why that was a question. I'm going to type up some more Josh tales now, and just slog on. I have a few stories that were just socially inappropriate things he pulled that year, and I'll just ignore the rest of the drama for now...
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Dec 23, 2012 03:58
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At one point, Carrie invited us all out for dinner. She had just had a promotion and wanted to celebrate. Her boss was going to be there, and it was sort of important that we all made a good impression, it was at a nice restaurant, and all that. The night before, Chad was talking about it, and happened to mention it was on a Sunday night. He paused, and then said we had to run over to Josh’s house. Chad just let himself in the house. It was the first time I was in Josh’s place. His place is creepy. Literally the entire place is empty, to the point that it echoes. There’s literally no furniture or belongings or signs anyone lives there. Chad sort of walked across the living room and to a door. Downstairs is what Josh refers to as his “man cave” and it’s as cluttered as everything else is bare. It’s set up with a computer, entertainment system, a rancid looking futon, bookcases and stacks full of movies and posters. One wall is piled high with trash and the smell was horrific. When we walked in, Josh was playing something on the computer. Chad said they needed to talk, then looked at me and asked if I would step out for a moment while they chatted. I walked back upstairs and did a lap around the abandoned living room, the empty family room, the empty front room, through the empty dining room and into the kitchen. Then I got nosey. The fridge was running, but empty. No dishes in the cupboards, they were bare. I glanced upstairs and the curiosity got the better of me. The bathroom at the top of the stairs was obviously used. There were towels across the floor and the toilet was grody. But peeking into other doors, there were two small bedrooms all empty. The master bedroom at the end of the hall was the exception. It was set up lovely, with an expensive looking bedroom set, wallpapered with a floral pattern, and the bed was perfectly made. I snuck back downstairs, confused. Echoing up from the basement, I could hear Josh and Chad’s voices raised. I couldn’t make out the argument, but it was heated. Finally Chad came upstairs, parting a shot behind him “If you’re not, I swear to god I won’t let you in the restaurant.” We drove away, and I started asking questions. Turns out the argument was because Chad realized that Sunday was going to be the worst day on Josh’s schedule. It seems that Josh had long ago worked out a schedule for bathing. He showered Monday and Thursday. And that was all. Meaning that when he showed up for the Sunday evening dinner he was going to be at his ripest. Chad had come over to force Josh into fitting another bathing into his schedule, creating the whole argument. As far as the house it seems Josh lived in a large three bedroom townhome, but lived entirely out of the basement, except for using the upstairs bathroom. The weirdly formal bedroom was a guest room for when his mother visited, and she made him keep it set up to certain standards. But since moving, she had only visited once, (and since then only a second time, before Carrie's engagement party) (Actually when I was coming up with aliases for everyone, I was REALLY close to calling Josh "Norman" as in Bates thanks to the whole weird mother thing. But I couldn't resist the inspiration for Carrie's name!) Anyway, he bathed for that dinner, thank god. Actually Josh and bathing, I have another insane story that happened. It's really out of chronology but I think I'll tell it next.
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Dec 23, 2012 04:28
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Like I said, abandoning chronology here. This would be the better part of a year later. For Chad’s birthday, I had a party at my old place. I really rarely hosted anything at my place because I had such a small place, and this was actually the first time Josh had been over to my apartment. Carrie couldn’t come, and most of the other guests were mutual friends of ours, and mostly other couples. The exception was Vanessa. Guests started arriving, wine was poured, and Josh was the last person there. Whether Josh was just smitten with Vanessa or if he saw potential in the only single woman there is up for debate, but he was immediately hovering about her, laughing too loud at what she said, and staring at her. We don’t know if he thought he was making headway or not. I was checking on dinner when Vanessa asked out loud if anyone else smelled something nasty. We passed it off somehow to try to save Josh some embarrasment, but Chad sort of pulled Josh to the side and asked if he had showered before coming over. Josh had a moment of social realization and must have realized he stank. He sort of wandered off, and I hear the bathroom door shut. Now my old apartment was an open studio. There was a small lofted room where I slept, and over to the right the galley kitchen. The back was where I had my dining room table and the bathroom was right next to it. It was a huge bathroom considering the size of the place, and had this great vintage clawfoot tub and a pedestal sink and one of those toilets with the tank up at eye level. We were up close to the front of the apartment on the couches talking with the tv on at the moment when the timer went off for the stuffed shells. I started setting the table and one of my guests excused himself to the bathroom to wash up. He came back a moment later, looking confused. “I think your boyfriend’s brother is in the bathroom.” “Okay…” “I think he’s taking a bath.” I was completely confused, and wandered over to the bathroom door. Sure enough you could hear the water splashing in the bathtub. Now, if you forced me I don’t think I could explain what social moray is broken by randomly bathing in someone’s bathroom without asking the first time you are invited over to their house for dinner, but it’s just wrong on some fundamental level. I honestly didn’t know how to respond. So I just continued to get dinner out. Everyone else comes around the table, and we turn off the tv. Without the extra noise everyone could hear the water in the bathtub. Josh was a noisy, noisy bather. We sort of discuss this. Do we wait for him? Do we get started? We sit around uncomfortably before deciding to eat. Every time there is a lull in conversation we’d hear Josh in the next room. He is, at this point, talking to himself, little exclamations and noises, and singing quiety. One of my friends confessed later she thought he might be masturbating, but I really think he was just enjoying his bath. He sounded more like a little kid in there than anything. We finish up dinner, but we’re clearing up plates and Josh is still splashing away in the bathroom. At this point, another problem surfaces. I only have the one bathroom, and some of my guests have to go. Chad knocks on the door for us. “Hey Josh. Other people need to use the facility.” “I’m ALMOST DONE! Christ!” comes the response. We wait, then I go and ask a friendly neighbor if my guests can use their bathroom, claiming mine is broken. We sort out the dishes, I get out the cake, and we have another discussion. Do we wait for Josh? He’s been in there an absurdly long time, maybe he’s finally done? My guests are joking about it at this point. “If he sees his shadow do we get six more weeks of winter”, that sort of thing. I decide to make coffee while we wait. We manage to split another bottle of wine. Finally, we decide to have the cake. The second we finish singing Happy Birthday, the door to the bathroom slams open. Josh dashes out, “You didn’t wait for me!” Without thinking, I apologize. Now I later realized that Josh managed to come out with his hair dry. Apparently his lengthy bath didn’t include hair time. He also managed to splash enough water on the floor that I had standing water, enough that I had to wet vacuum. He also left a sock in the bathroom, soaked in the standing water. After cake, everyone sort of started to leave one by one. Chad and Josh were the last one there. I had to finally tell him that, no really, you need to go home. It was more surreal than anything.
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Dec 23, 2012 05:06
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Queej posted:OP, quick question. Why didn't Chad step into the bath situation? Chad is the closest relative to Josh. Why didn't he try to reign in Josh's behavior? We were, at the time, really trying to help Josh. I'm about to make us all, myself included seem really horrible, but I think we all sort of babied Josh. Even though he's phsyically fine and everything, it was like he was disabled somehow. He'd do these inappropriate things or throw a hissy fit and we sort of forgave it and moved on. We were also talking a whole lot about just helping Josh. When we were really active with him, it was the most he socialized since school, and we hoped that being around us would rub off. And like I said, 90% of the time you'd take him places and he would just sort of sit there, so it wasn't like normally he was that in the way. It was just the tag along brother we brought along to everything. Actually, story about a time Josh came with us. We went to an event at a nightclub and invited Josh along. He was really excited about this evening. On the car ride over, Josh explained to me why. Josh had planned for this to be the night he met a woman. I should mention, Josh’s definition of getting women was to “score some digits”. He used that term over and over again in describing his goals for that night, and pronounced the word “Deeee jatz sah”. The whole way over he was pumped about this, really talking up himself and his chances. We arrived, greeted friends, mingled, drank, and danced. Josh sat in the corner of the table we had gotten, slumped over in his hoodie with the hood up, drinking a Pepsi and glaring at the people when they came too close. One of my male friends had spent the night with one girl almost exclusively. We were teasing him about it on the way out, asking if he was sure he got her number. Suddenly, Josh piped up “I don’t know about that, but I scored.” There was silence, absolute silence. Finally Chad asked for definition. Turns out a girl had stopped by the table, set her drink down and rummaged through her purse. Then she paused, smiled at Josh, and said hi. Or as Josh puts it. “She broke my bubble, she was totally up near me, and she smiled.” No digits, though.
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Dec 24, 2012 00:56
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So a few handful of little stories of Josh before I get to the real trainwrecks. One day, Josh called Chad and told him he was towed. Could Chad give him a ride over to the impound lot? We picked him up, and asked why he was towed. Josh talked around the issue and avoided it for a while. Finally, it turned out it was because he parked illegally to make a point. You see, the front door of his townhouse went down a few steps and into the sidewalk, but the same sidewalk was shared by his neighbor. The sidewalk terminated smack dab in the middle of the front of a parking space. And that parking space was the one that Josh wanted. But occasionally that neighbor would park there. Meaning Josh would have to park one spot to the left, or one spot to the right. And that, to Josh, was unacceptable. Worse, occasionally that neighbor would have guests, meaning Josh had to park a full two parking spots down from the prime spot. So Josh had gone to the property maintence guys and insisted they start assigning parking spaces. They refused him, repeatedly. At this point, it's was just the petty stuff that always happens with neighbors. But down at the end of the row of condos, a woman moved in, and according to Josh, she got her own parking space reserved. Strange, no? Josh, to prove a point that all the spaces should be assigned, decided he would go out of his way to park there, and had gotten towed. So we show up at the impound and Chad and I go in with him. The guy quotes them a price to get the car out, and Chad notices the cost is WAY higher than it should be, and asks why. Impound guy looks at Chad and asks if he knows why Josh was towed. Josh at this point starts going "no no no no no!" and insisting he will pay the full fine, just let it go. But the impound guy is hellbent on telling us. Turns out that the woman down the way didn’t have a reserved parking spot. She had a HANDICAPPED parking spot for her 12 year old daughter. It was the only spot she could get the wheelchair out of the car to reach the ramp. Chad stood there for a moment just composing himself. Josh had headed to the corner all pale “I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d be mad!” Yes, Josh had basically stolen from a parapalegic sixth grader, but was worried about what we’d think. At this point Chad just motioned to me, thanked the impound guy for his time and we headed out. I guess Josh ended up paying the entire fine, I don’t know. A bit later, Josh started telling the story at Carrie's place and evidently forgot I knew about it. I just pointed out that it was less a tale of sticking it to unfair rules and more hurting an innocent, and he didn't handle it well. REALLY strange thing about Josh, btw? He likes kids. Not in a creepy way, but he talked about looking forward to being a father, and when kids were around he would interact with them much better than he would with the adults. Josh can do a ton of card tricks and magic tricks, and he'd always do them for the kids. I think he hadn't thought of himself as hurting a child when he did this, because that really really seemed to bother him.
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Dec 24, 2012 01:10
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Fatkraken posted:But you should forgive yourself for wanting to help him In all honesty, had Josh not tried to hurt us directly, we would still be putting up with him and bailing him out of the stupid situations he got himself in. Chad and Carrie are very pro-family and while he was still under that umbrella they really bent over backwards. As far as me. Well, typing this poo poo up, I'm realising what a pussy I actually am. People are asking me why I didn't do this or that and in retrospect I'm asking the same drat thing. Like, why the hell did I never speak up for myself or for my significant other? Yeah, so read all this with the understanding that apparently I suck and I will take the lesson to be more stand up in the future! That summer, Carrie hosted a ton of BBQs at her house. Out front of her house there was this amazing deck (which was the only nice part of the drat place, coincidentally) and a huge yard. Her neighbors had a pool we could use. And almost every single weekend she had some sort of get together. So for a while I was seeing a lot of Josh. At one of the BBQs I brought a friend. Now, to be very vague as 1) He knows I am writing this and 2) He asked that I absolutely don’t give away any info about him, this friend is an artist. In his field and genre, he’s actually very well known and well regarded. He was there just as a friend, and no one really knew who he was. Down by the back edge of Carrie’s property is a tree that got struck by lightening at some point, and regrew. It’s twisted and snarled in all sorts of amazing ways. Honestly, it’s unique and beautiful, and my friend thought so too. He had gone down to look at it a few times, and then ran out to his car and grabbed his sketchbook. Josh happened to notice him by the property line, and asked what he was doing. “Drawing the tree, I guess.” Josh looked intrigued and wandered over to him. A few minutes later my friend storms back up to the house, looking pissed off as hell. Josh had approached him and told him his sketches were "okay". Then he asked if my friend could draw a well known movie character. My friend said he could, but didn't really do pop culture work. Then Josh asked if he could draw said movie character naked. My friend said he was uncomfortable with this. Josh said that if he did, Josh would try to sell those pictures. Did I mention he had no intention of actually paying my friend for this? Josh wandered back up to the house, completely confused over why he was given the cold shoulder.
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Dec 24, 2012 01:38
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I have nothing planned tonight, so I'm going to wwrite up a few more stories so that I can get to the engagement and the real trainwreck tomorrow. Another fun moment from the Carrie's BBQs came when I got my settlement. When I met Chad, I was recovering from injuries from a car crash. Now, the accident had happened when a guy on the clock driving a company truck was texting while driving, jumped the curb and came IN THROUGH THE WINDOW of the building I was in at the time. I was pretty badly hurt, and actually in a wheelchair for a few months. I had won a suit against the company, it covered my medical bills, lost wages, etc. But while waiting for it to come through, I had to keep my budget pretty tight. I was talking about looking forward to being able to loosen up a little. Josh was upset. “I could never do that. Take money from a business like that.” There was sort of a weird silence before Carrie broke in. “Josh…. You live off of the settlement from your mom?” That was completely different to Josh, as his settlement came from a major corporation, and mine from a smaller company which, somehow, made me greedy. Besides, he said, the accident "was Hairpin Soup's fault?" Carrie asked how the hell it could be my fault when I was hit by a car while INSIDE a building. “She wasn’t aware. You got to expect stuff like that. You have to be able to react. Like Chad’s car up there? If the breaks failed, it’d come rushing towards us, but I’d be aware. I’d just jump out of the way, like this.” With that Josh did this jump to the side. It was amazing. I think in his head he was trying to do a slow cinematic leap, but instead it ended up being this awkward, fat boy hop to the side. He landed offbalance, and toppled over the edge of the deck. Unfortunately, this put him in the middle of a holly bush. Next thing you know Josh is yelling in pain, scrambling to get out, and tearing himself up further. We haul him out of the holly bush and he’s covered in scratches and mildly starting to swell up with some little reaction to it. He spends the rest of the party glumped over in the corner, legs sticking out of his shorts all red and scratched. At another one of the BBQs, we had a mutual friend there we hadn’t seen in a while. He had just started his own business and was pulling 70-80 hour work weeks, and just hadn’t had time for socializing. We’re chatting with him, catching up, and he is telling us about his crazy schedule and how it has affected his life. Suddenly Josh pipes in. “We all work you, know quit hogging attention.” We all sort of ignore Josh, but he insists on getting in more aggressively. “Last week? Some girl called in sick and they called me in. I ended up with five extra hours.” Keep in mind Josh lives off of the large settlement of his mother’s death, and works about 10-12 hours a week tops. It set my friend off, but he tried to avoid Josh. Josh was really in a rare whiney mood that day, complaining about everything. Our friend was just getting more pissed at him. Finally, a few beers later, the guy sort of shoves Josh two handed back into a chair and tells him to shut up. Josh sort of sat there, opening and closing his mouth like a fish for a few seconds, then BURST into tears and ran away. For the next week, his facebook was hourly updates about how he was in a fight, about how the guy didn’t dare do it again, and about how he was not going back to a BBQ there ever again, then about how if he sees that guy again, he was going to beat the crap out of him. The next time we were over at Carrie’s he sat meekly in one corner of the living room. Every time a car pulled up, he’d peek out the window, making sure it wasn’t the guy who shoved him. At one event I am sitting with one of Chad’s cousins I am friendly with, the two of us chatting about something or other on the lounge chairs when Josh comes over. He pulls up a chair right between us, and sits, looking from one of us to another. “What’s up Josh?” He is, at this point, really, uncomfortably close sitting, his knee digging into my side. “I want a girlfriend.” He announced. “Ready to get into the dating scene?” I asked. “No, I don’t want to date, I just want a girlfriend. And I know what I want.” For the next five minutes Josh prattled off his girlfriend wishlist, in a sort of scripted way that left no breaks for his cousin and I to intercede. He ran on for a bit, plenty of specifics. He finished rambling and took a deep breath. Then he gave his cousin and me each a long, poignant stare, stood up and left. His cousin and I sort of gave each other weird looks, and then went on with our conversation. At the next BBQ he caught up with us. “So, any luck?” “With what?” “Finding me a girlfriend.” His cousin and I sort of looked at each other confused for a minute, and Josh, realizing we didn’t have his dream girl, started to get upset “You didn’t even TRY!” Turns out Josh had heard a good way to meet girls was through mutual friends, especially other women. So he had sought out two women, gave us his “order”, and expected us to basically go through the secret female Kaballah rolodex and locate dream girl in two weeks. I also found out a great story at one of the BBQs. When Josh told a story, you had to cut through the layers of bullshit. He would always construct tales with a healthy layer of his ego being stroked by everyone. So Josh’s twists aside, he told the story of a date he went on. Josh wasn’t religious, but he went to church every week at his mother’s insistence. There, he met a middle aged woman he harped on as sort of a surrogate for his mother issues. At some point, this woman decided to hook him up with a girl she knew. The girl, apparently, initially passed muster. She was attractive, she was the right age, she was quiet and meek. Their first date, apparently, went decently. Date number two, Josh at some point mentioned not wanting to date a divorcee. She agreed. Then he mentioned that he couldn’t stand a girl who had been married. She apparently then told him she was a widow. According to Josh, he slammed his knife into the table and said, “So you’re a liar, I told you I didn’t want no sloppy seconds!” and stormed out of the restaurant. Personally, I don’t know whether or not to believe that. Don’t know if I want to. Some time passes. He speaks to the woman who hooked them up. She points out that she was married at 20, only married for 6 months before her husband was killed, and had only started dating again recently. Josh began to rethink his choice, “Not like she was married for a long time, and he didn’t die of cancer or nothing like that.” (No, I don't know why dating a cancer widow would be that horrible) So he called her up, and told her “I want you back.” Not surprisingly, “Bitch told me she was with someone else, told me not to call again.” Yeah; bitches, man. If I really picked my brain there's a lot of other small weird stories of Josh just being weird and creepy, but none stand out as huge. Which means onto the good stuff. Edit: Whoa, fixed and thanks for the heads up guys!
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Dec 24, 2012 02:32
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I guess I only sort of knew about the existance of the PUA community, just did a little reading and ick. Just ick. And hey to everyone else who has known a "Josh", makes me not feel so alone. Okay, this is basically going to be a little less than two years into my relationship when this happened, and it's the first time that Josh started to step over the line from being just bumbling and awkward and it started that I had to look at Josh and say that maybe he is a bit dangerous and from this point on it just got worse and worse. I was out with Chad when he got a phone call from Josh. As he talked, Chad’s voice softened, “Hey, hey buddy it’s okay, alright? Why don’t you come over, we’ll talk.” It turned out Josh’s biological dad had OD’d and died a few days before. He had just found out. Now, Josh’s father had been out of his life since before he was born. He was in and out of jail most of his life, and he had only met him once or twice, I think. But when Josh got to Chad’s house, it was obvious he had some severe issues with his passing. Josh was crying, we made cocoa and he sat and talked. Josh was almost hysterical over it. One second he was telling us how he had plans to meet his father, and beat him up for not being there for his life, not being there through his mother’s death. He’d take him in a fight, he’d kill him, he’d stab him. The next moment, he was telling how he would plan a meeting with his father who would embrace him as the son he needed and they would live together and make up for a lost childhood. It was really sad, and probably the most human I ever saw Josh. After a bit, they started talking about their childhood and some of the painful stuff came up. I left early, leaving the two brothers together and heading for home. Chad hugged me at the door. “This is going to be Josh’s Aha moment.” He said. Chad thought that maybe this would be enough to push Josh into a new sort of way of thinking. Maybe to reconcile what happened through their childhood, maybe open a door to improving his own life and living conditions. Sort of a bottom of the bottle moment that Chad could use to help Josh. He texted me later about how he was trying to talk Josh into going to a therapist, and Chad had gotten Josh's pastor to talk to him about some things. It was a busy few weeks for me at work, and I saw very little of Chad, just a passing coffee here and a lunch. From texts and whatnot, I knew that Josh had taken to coming over every night. Each time we talked, Chad seemed less sure that there was going to be a grand realization from Josh. Although he was initially receptive of Chad's suggestions, he had refused the help from the pastor and wouldn't go to a therapist. Chad complained about how he would drive home from work to find Josh already sitting outside the apartment, complaining if Chad was late. Chad wanted to be there for him, but it was now less helping a brother and more having a freeloader. Finally Chad had a sitdown with Josh. He was welcome to come over, but this was excessive, he had to call ahead of time, and he was allowed to be there one night a week, tops. Josh apparently took it really poorly. My project at work ended not too long afterwards, and Chad and I decided to celebrate. We got dressed up and headed out for a nice dinner, saw a band, and had a really nice night. Chad decided to stop off to buy a bottle of wine, and meet me at his apartment. I walked into the lobby and was met with the accusing glare of Josh, who was sitting in a corner propped up with his bookbag. “Where the hell is he? I’ve been buzzing him all night!” I said we were out. He got mad that no one had told him. I said I thought he wasn’t going to be over. “Chad said once a week, well this is my once a week.” I had the key to Chad’s place, and I started up the hall, Josh a step behind me, yelling that he didn’t understand why I had a key and he didn’t. He brushed by me as soon as I opened the door, and I didn’t know how to handle things. I texted Chad, and headed to the bathroom. When I came out, Josh had his laptop set up on the dining room counter. “What’s for dinner?” I said we had already had dinner, but he was welcome to my leftover pad thai, or he could heat something up. Josh scoffed and clacked away at his computer. I decided to avoid the issue and headed to the bedroom. I keyed up facebook and the first post is from Josh. “when I get a girl it won’t be a BITCH like my brother has. Offered me table scrap, can’t cook.” I was pissed. I came out of the bedroom in time to see Chad coming through the living room towards Josh. “Look what your brother just said about me!” Josh looked up from the table, then frantically started clicking on the computer. “No, no, no, no! No, it’s gone. See, it’s gone!” He jumped up from the table and tried to snatch the phone from my hands. “Reload the page, okay? It’s gone, see it’s gone.” I wouldn’t let go of the phone, and Josh was twisting my hand around still yelling “no no no”. Chad stepped in and pulled Josh off of me and took the phone. While Chad read, Josh just wrung his hands “No no… it’s gone now, I didn’t… It’s gone.” Chad just pushed Josh away, told him this wasn't alright, and asked him to leave the apartment. Josh sort of stared blankly for a moment, then took a deep breath, and screamed. The next few moments was surreal. Josh started packing up his things, intermittently just screaming at the top of his lungs, wordlessly. Occasionally he’d take a breath, then look at us and start yelling “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me! I'm an orphan! I can’t believe you’re doing this!” But the whole time he was calmly packing his stuff. It was like his voice and his body were operating on two different programs. His bookbag packed, he walked out in the hall, and weirdly started throwing himself against the walls as he made his way down the hallway, still cycling through wordless screams and “I can’t believe you are doing this!” all the way down to the elevator. There was a moment’s silence, then the buzzer went off. It was Josh, screaming on the other end of the line. “Don’t abandon me! Don’t do this! I’m an orphan!” Punctuated by top of his lungs screams. Chad flipped the buzzer to silent. There was a few more moments before the phone started ringing, with Josh’s number. We turned the phones off. For a while, we had some peace. I turned on a movie, we poured wine, and tried to settle down. The movie was mostly over when there was a knock at the door. It was the police, asking us if we knew who Josh was. Turns out he had taken to buzzing other apartments and screaming at strangers when he didn’t get an answer from us. He had escalated along the way to threats of killing/hurting everyone who lived there and burning down the building. He was arrested for disturbing the peace and spent a night in jail. Carrie bailed him out. Edit: I should add that in an attempt to appease Chad after this, Josh deleted all of his posts off of facebook. He kept the account open, but now it's just a blank page.
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Dec 24, 2012 15:29
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Josh would have been arrested late fall, right before Christmas, and Chad and I had planned to have Christmas with my grandparents, who live up north. Carrie was having Christmas with her then boyfriend's family, in Florida. Meaning that Josh, who for the past 2 years had had Christmas with his brother and sister, was suddenly going to be alone. He lashed out about this quite a bit, and really did think that we were doing this not because of building our new families, but because we wanted to spite him. Carrie offered to take him along with her to Florida, but that wasn't enough. The only thing that would make Josh happy was if his siblings stayed and had Christmas there, with him. Now, I obviously was still upset over the whole thing with facebook and the arrest, but Josh seized on that one thing as being what set this off. So he tried to apologize to me. I started getting flowers at work, and then at my apartment, sometimes two bouquets a day. At first they were blank with just "From Josh" on them, but then he started adding notes. They went from apologetic to vaguely threatening. "You will forgive me" and that sort of thing. I sent Josh a text saying that we'd talk about it and to please stop with the flowers. He sent another bouquet with "Why aren't I having Christmas". (Which incidently became a sort of meme around my work afterwards) Worse, Josh got my address wrong so the flowers were actually being delivered to my neighbor down the hall. So not only was I getting creepy inappropriate flowers, I having to have my confused neighbor drop them off. And I wasn't about to correct Josh on the address, either. This literally went on for most of the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. He must have spent a fortune on the flowers. I ended up starting to drop the flowers off at the nursing home across the street from me to be delivered to different random woman there. Figured that way they at least went to someone who would be cheered up by them. But, as Josh didn't get his wish for Christmas, he was from that point really furious and against me.
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Dec 24, 2012 15:51
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ZepiaEltnamOberon posted:There was the mother-in-law. The one who treated her biological children like poo poo while heaping favors on Josh and once called OP to express her hatred of her despite never having even seen or talked to her before. Yup! Only met her once. She managed to jam pack that day with so much crazy it is remarkable.
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Dec 24, 2012 16:35
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t_violet posted:The mother-in-law is still around, right? (unless I maybe missed something) Why doesn't Josh spend Christmas with her? If she dotes on him so much, it seems like she'd insist on it. The mother (by which I mean Chad and Carrie's biological mother and Josh's adopted mother) is alive, but moved across country a few years back. Which is itself is a good story, I'll type it up when I get back. Both of Josh's biological parents are dead at this point though--his biological mother when he was little, and his biological father just recently.
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Dec 24, 2012 17:04
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slutpixie posted:I'm sorry you've had to deal with that sort of poo poo OP but your husband sounds loving awesome and a credit to his own efforts and the members of his family who actually gave a poo poo. I am sure you are extremely proud of him and I hope he's just as proud of himself. I have to give props to the people who made him the awesome guy he is. His uncle and his wife are amazing people. When Chad got kicked out he had a lot of anger issues (understandably) and wouldn't take their help. He spent a month on the street in a nearby city, before his uncle managed to sort of reach him. Chad wouldn't take direct help, but his uncle knew a guy who owned a gym. He talked him into giving Chad a chance. Basically Chad got a room and food in exchange for cleaning the place and helping out. The fact that a business owner was willing to open his business to a street kid he knew nothing about says a lot. Basically Chad had a lot of respect for them, was working really hard, and the guys who went there kept Chad honest and pushed him to go back to school and helped him. The gym sort of catered to more middleaged business types, so he made a lot of connections there, and had sort of a crew pushing him to succeed. Later when he went to get custody of Carrie, he had all of these local wellrespected guys standing up as character witnesses, which helped a lot. But I can honestly say that if a lot of people hadn't stepped up to give him a hand, Chad and Carrie would be drastically different people right now, and not the successes they are.
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Dec 24, 2012 17:22
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Okay, because there some confusion, I'm just going to start calling Chad and Carrie's biological mother/Josh's adopted mother Dolores. Dolores had moved across country before I met Chad, and how she got to Wisconsin is just insane. It seems that Carrie and Chad had no contact with her after the graduation fiasco for a few years. Then, out of the blue, they got a message from her. She wanted them all to move with her to Wisconsin. Why Wisconsin? It turned out that she had started a torrid affair online with a guy who lived there. She was prepared to uproot her life, relocate across the country, marry this fellow, and start a new life with her family in tow. Of course there was a no from Chad and Carrie, but apparently it caused a breakdown for Josh. He had just bought the house and didn’t want to move. This was before Chad and Josh reconciled, and it was the first that Chad had contact with him for a while. Chad convinced him that it was alright to make his own decisions and that he wasn’t a horrible son if he didn’t move. But Dolores decided to move alone. She packed up her belongings, quit her job, sold her house, drove the UHaul across the country, and showed up at this guy’s front door. Did I mention she didn’t tell any of this to him beforehand? Turns out though he had no desire to marry her and start a new family. He was ALREADY married, had several children, and had just been having a “safe” online affair with someone too far away to be a threat to his marriage. Of course he had neglected to mention this to Dolores over the internet! Dolores decided to become very aggressive trying to get him to leave his wife. Then she started threatening the wife, his kids, his work. They all summarily filed for protection against her. So she starts going to his church. Always a different service, so she was within the bounds. Then she started stirring some sort of trouble among the congregation--the details are sort of unclear on that one. Finally the congregation banned her from stepping foot on church property. She picked up this crazy religious streak along the way, started forcing Josh to go to church himself. And despite knowing no one, and having no friends, her rear end decided to stay in small town Wisconsin, literally just to make the online boyfriend angry. Of course, I heard all of this from Josh, who sees Dolores as the martyr in this scenario, making it even more weird.
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Dec 24, 2012 17:55
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Professor Shark posted:I don't know if this has been mentioned, but how old is Josh supposed to be? Carrie is 28, I am about to turn 29, Josh would be 30 or 31 and Chad is 36. So, yeah, we're all grown ups. As far as how Josh saw Dolores as the victim in his telling the foul and evil online boyfriend lead his innocent mother astray, causing her to abandon friends and possessions and when she came for help, he cruelly turned her down. Of course her only recompensation was to make sure he never forgot the harm he caused. I'm exaggerating, of course, but that's basically how he thought. Picking back up, Christmas came and went. We had plans to go to a public party for New Years. We invited Josh as a sort of olive branch, but he refused to go, citing me as the reason. We're at the party that night and Chad gets a phone call. Carrie's boyfriend proposed! We congratulated her, did a toast in her honor over the phone and all was well. A few minutes later, she calls back in tears. She had called Josh to tell him, and he got angry at her. Chad tells her to go celebrate with her fiance, not to worry about it. Meanwhile his phone is lighting up with texts from Josh angry that Carrie would do such a thing as get engaged. Over the next week, Josh Chad and Dolores ended up in a wicked back and forth of emails. Dolores lashed out that Carrie had done a thing like get engaged without her permission and blessing. Plus, she said, she had promised that Josh would be married first, followed by Chad, then Carrie last. She just wasn't going to have it that Carrie be married first. At some point, Chad just responded with a scan of some of the paperwork from when she relinquished custody of Carrie. Then Dolores came up with a genius idea. Carrie had said from the get go they wanted to get married in Florida. Her fiance's family was largely from there, and they wanted to move there eventually. But Dolores's plan was that Carrie have her wedding in Wisconsin, a state where they knew no one but their estranged mother. She spent a bit of time detailing why Wisconsin was THE state to be married in. Obviously that was a no as well. So Dolores threw a hissy fit. If they didn't meet her demands she wasn't coming to the wedding. Chad responded that he'd let Carrie know. A few asides of stuff that happened along this time. We weren't actively inviting Josh to anything since the arrest, so I wasn't really seeing him anymore. Another aside is Chad ended up buying an old, fixer upper home on the cheap, and was starting plans for a major DIY repair on the thing. I planned to live with him there, so in the meantime I moved into his apartment so we'd have more money for the repair. Okay, I'm off to go to a church service in a language I don't speak to appease my grandmother. Hopefully I can type some more tonight!
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Dec 24, 2012 23:15
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WebDog posted:I'm just giggling at this mental image of nice old ladies getting elaborate bouquets of flowers with "You will forgive me - Josh" on them. LOL! I solemnly swear I took the cards off, but the image of the home full of terrified women whispering in fear of this unknown figure "JOSH" begging for forgiveness.... It's too much. I'm going to type up the engagement party before tonight is over....
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Dec 25, 2012 03:40
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Because the wedding was a few states away, not everyone could make it, so we ended up hosting an engagement dinner/bridal shower event for the couple. I shared hostessing duties with two of Carrie's other friends. When this happened, Josh was pretty ticked at us. As I said, we are all pretty social people, but we hadn't been making a point of inviting Josh along, so when we did hear from him, we got a lot of comments about being left out. But one of the scariest moments came when Josh called Chad a bit before the party. Point blank he says "Mom says I should ruin Carrie's marriage." Chad of course was angry, but Josh seemed confused by the whole thing. Chad talked to Josh about how much Carrie had helped him, and wanting Carrie to be happy, but Josh answered that he was angry that Carrie wasn't inviting him over anymore, and maybe she deserved it. So we went into this whole thing a little on guard. Chad tried to warn her family that this was not a good thing, but they weren’t believing him. He warned me. This was the most upset I had ever seen the man in the time dated. I decided to concentrate on the party itself, and set out Pinteresting center pieces and whatnot. The day of the engagement party, we had rented out a room at a restaurant. I am there setting up beforehand, and a middle aged woman comes in and stalks around the restaurant. She was a middle aged woman, caked with layers of makeup, including bright blue eyeshadow Her foundation and powder literally were cracking. The woman was wearing a few pounds of QVC’s finest jewelry, and her nails were claws. She made her way across the room and stared at me. I introduced myself, held out my hand, and she sniffed and let out a huff. She started to wander around the tables, picking at the tablewares. I figure she's just wandered in from the main restaurant, so I tell her this is a private party. She answers that she knows, it's for her daughter. It was Dolores. She had just HAPPENED to decide to visit Josh the week of the party. I sort of am shocked and leave to text Chad, but by this point Carrie's new father in law had shown. He is a pastor and was really pushing to reconcile Carrie and her mother. He introduces himself to her and basically ushers her into a seat and thanks her for coming. This would lead to healing, God's healing! When Josh arrived, he basically followed around his mother like a puppy. Meanwhile, she alternated between saccarine sweet and rude standoffishness. No one knew what to make of her. Carrie was obviously upset by her mother being there, but swallowed it. Chad was just watching her the whole time. She was trying to get me upset for a while. The first thing she actually said to me is "I'm surprised Chad could find a girl as normal looking as you." Chad had warned me that she had the ability to lie and not lie all at once. But in practice this is an amazing thing. For instance, it is a fact that I met Chad while we were both in physical therapy, which some people say “physical rehabilitation”. It’s also a fact that I popped a Tums before I ate, as I had an upset stomach, which can be considered an over the counter medication or drug. But telling Chad’s sister in law “Oh, I can’t believe Hairpin Soup has drugs in her purse. You know they met in rehab, right?” somehow wasn’t right. The sister in law knew me, and called me over to clear it up. Dolores played it off, the sister in law must have misunderstood her! We all settled down to dinner, and there was a round of toasts, and some happy chat. Then, at one point, Chad had to excuse himself from the table. The second he was gone, Dolores launched into a rant of how impressed "we found someone willing" to marry Carrie. At this point, I could tell Carrie was getting upset, and fighting back tears. I'm looking from the faces of her inlaws, praying someone would stop this. Then Dolores started telling funny stories from Carrie’s childhood. Particularly, she told how Josh used to sneak into Carrie’s room and take pictures of her, or take pictures through the door of her in the shower. Plus, he would steal her underwear and sell it to the school janitor along with the photos! Keep in mind, Carrie left home at 14. The whole time, Josh is laughing along with this, "Hnuh Hnuh!" like it’s the funniest thing. Her new inlaws are sort of shocked, but no one is taking action. Finally, we all sort of start loudly talking about other things, drowning her out and ignoring her. She finally stops talking, and sits there stewing. Dinner is served, and as dessert is coming around, Carrie passes out some presents. Everyone got something, but in some there were requests that the people be in her wedding. I got asked to be an usher, and it was attached to a pretty little bead necklace Carrie made. Chad got a flask asking him to be one of two best men (the other one was Carrie’s fiance’s twin brother). Josh, to Carrie’s credit, was asked to help with the champagne toast. But it wasn’t enough. You see him leaning over, whining to her mother about it. Finally, Dolores stands up and says loudly “Carrie! Why isn’t your brother your best man?” There’s silence for a moment and finally her fiancé grows a pair and responds that they have decided and that is final. Dolores glares for a moment, looks at Carrie and sayd "You little whore" before sitting back down. Everyone was quiet for a while afterwards, but things sort of rebounded. Afterwards we are all mingling and talking when we hear a scream from the next room. A bunch of us run towards it, and as I get close I hear Dolores yelling “you slut, you little slut,you bitch…” In the hall, Dolores has Carrie by the hair in one hand and the arm in the other and is just kicking her and screaming at her. I dashed back into the room to grab my cell phone, and by the time I come back I see Dolores is being held by one of the guests and trying to pull lose. Carrie is on the ground, collapsed and crying. Her shins were all scraped up and bleeding. As I stepped forward, Dolores pulls free and runs down past me out the door. Chad and Josh showed up a few seconds after it was over, and Chad went to check on Carrie. Josh run down the hall after his mother, and both disappeared into the night. And that is the first and last time I met my mother in law.
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Dec 25, 2012 06:12
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Landwhale posted:
Umbridge was definitely why I chose the name, but not as much for image. Her makeup and hair was much more harsh and dark. As far as Josh, he doesn't wear glasses, and will routinely buzz cut his hair, and let it grow out to a few inches before letting it grow out again. Overweight and bad hygeine, yes. As far as stopping the party, I was horrified, but was really afraid to say anything. I'm not really terribly confrontational. The more I examine my behavior, the more I realise that I need to stand up for myself more. I'm admitting that, but I can't change what happened and what I didn't do. I can move forward stronger.
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Dec 26, 2012 02:21
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After the engagement party, we didn't hear from Josh for a bit. When we did, it was a series of emails. Josh told us Dolores left town the next morning. He also said he was upset over her actions, that she had been out of line, and that he wasn't talking to his mother. And we all sort of got together and assumed that maybe he had finally had a breakthrough. We invited him over to one of Carrie's dinners. He was quiet, quiet even for Josh, and really subdued, almost to the point of being weepy. There was a general consensus that maybe, just maybe, he was going to be sane about things. Carrie decided that he was still going to come to the wedding, and kept his invitation to be involved with the reception. Between Carrie planning the wedding in another state, and Chad and I working on the house, we weren't really socializing as much as before, but when we did get together, we weren't really going out of our way to invite Josh to anything. Chad and I decided to head down to Florida a few days early to take a litle mini vacation (which was lovely, thank you for asking). The before the rehearsal dinner, a few members of the wedding party were getting together for a little dinner. We had been out that morning, came back to the hotel and got cleaned up and dressed. As we came back through the hotel, we found Josh sitting in the lobby. He came up to Chad. He hadn't reserved a room and hadn't been aware of how expensive the rooms were. He asked if he could stay in our suite for the wedding. We told him no. This was right before the dinner, which he said he was planning on attending. Josh was a mess at this point. I don't know how he travelled to Florida, but he looked more dishelved than normal. Chad said that Josh could get a shower and dressed in our room, but right after dinner he had to go find his own hotel. We settle down to watch tv. After all the history, we didn’t trush Josh to not go through our stuff. So we were in the room when Josh started freaking out. He called Chad over to the door, and hissed at him through the entrance. Chad looked confused, then walked over to me and asked me if I had my period or something. I didn’t. Josh glared with one eye through the doorcrack at me. It seemed, Chad said, that Josh was upset by a “female item” in the bathroom. I said I had no idea what female item it could be. Chad sighed, and walked back over to the bathroom, and entered the door. There was a little fuss. Chad emerged. The female item in question was the packaging for the pantyhose I was wearing-the cardboard and label. Which had been in the trashcan. But it was ON TOP of the other trash, and therefore offensive to Josh. We made it to dinner late, but with a relatively clean Josh. The dinner was pretty uneventful. The next day a few of the other wedding party members and us hit the beach all morning. I didn't know that Josh was there. We then got dressed for the rehearsal. Josh showed up at the rehearsal, despite not having a role in the actualy ceremony, and sat in the pew. Afterwards, we went to the dinner. It was a rather dressy sort of event, but Josh was wearing khakis and a polo shirt--the same khakis and polo he had worn the day before. He looked like he was ready to work at Target, rahter than eat at a four star restaurant, and the clothes were showing wear from being worn for two days. Chad pulled him aside. What was he planning on wearing to the wedding? Josh responded that he had packed his "good" clothes-the ones he was wearing-and that he planned to wear the same outfit to everything. Chad told him there wasn't a chance. He ordered Josh to find different clothes by the next day, and to show up showered and pulled together. Josh grumbled. He sulked in the corner. And eventually, he made his way over to the bar. Josh usually would have a beer at get togethers, but this was a few more than usual. Then he walked over to one of Carrie's fiance's brothers and started talking. From what I learned later, Josh left early, although I didn't really notice. I wasn't paying attention, I was enjoying the party. The brother was walking around a bit later, talking in hushed tones to a few people, then finally they pulled Chad out of the room. Chad came back looking distressed. The party was wrapping anyway so Chad pulled me away and we went back to our room. Josh, it seems, had been bitching about Chad and Carrie, then expressed to the brother that he planned to ruin Carrie's wedding the next day. At this moment, there was little Chad could do. We had no idea where Josh was staying, and no idea what he had planned. The next morning we got ready for the wedding, but everyone was sort of on guard. We all decided not to let Carrie know what was going on, and sort of let her fiance know that Josh was no longer welcome to the wedding. We figured there was no reason to distress her too much. We get the bride to the church, we get the guests seated. Music starts, Carrie comes down the aisle looking beautiful, Chad gave her away. Meanwhile, everyone in the know is just on guard and hypervigilant. The wedding has just started, I am up near the front of the church, and I hear a fuss out in the vestibule. It continues on for a few moments, then goes silent. A few minutes later, one of the husband's brothers, and two of the ushers come into the sanctuary and sit in the back row. It was after the reception that I found out what happened. They had waited back by the doorway to see if Josh arrived. He did. He was wearing an egregious sort of tux. It was described as being the sort of ugly tux usually worn by high schoolers making a point at prom. He had in tow what they described as a "hard looking street woman", in other words, a hooker. He had hired a hooker for the wedding. I don't know what he had planned, but he was gearing up for something. They let him know that he wasn't welcome. The hooker took off pretty much immediately. Josh started to make a fuss, demanding entry. And the ushers say they made him leave. I don't know exactly what anyone did. I like to think they beat the crap out of him, but I don't know. Chad and Carrie found out about Josh, and took it hard. Carrie was most upset just because of the betrayal aspect, she just took it to heart. Chad was more angry than anything. But it was almost treated as a death by them. We started asking ourselves basically, did Josh plan to ruin the wedding since the engagement party? None of us think he was that good of an actor, but in retrospect the emails and everything seemed so faked and weird. It was honestly a really hard thing for everyone, but we all just decided our relationship with Josh had ended.
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Dec 26, 2012 03:28
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HondaCivet posted:I . . . I can't even imagine what would be disgusting or upsetting about pantyhose packaging? No fricken clue. As far as the engagement party--I'm not sure what everyone expects I should have done. No one in the room at the time with the exception of Carrie and Josh had ever seen this woman before, the groom's family is all being super nice to her. Do goons really expect me to have dived across the room screaming "nooooo!" and punched her in the face? We're at a nice restaurant, we're all dressed up, we all just sort of put our heads down and hoped it went away. As far as the hooker goes, Chad believes Josh's mother was the one who thought of that idea. Just because to him it seems like the sort of thing that would be her idea. Total aside, but someone said English is my second language. Close, I was raised somewhat bilingual until I was in middle school. Is it that obvious?
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Dec 26, 2012 16:14
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I seriously doubt that the majority of the inlaws knew too much about the background between Carrie and her mother. A fair amount of it only came out to me after we broke contact with Josh, and even then a lot of it I found out through Chad or their cousins. As I've said before, Carrie tends to give a somewhat sanitized version of her childhood, and I doubt the in laws had more than generizations. The father in law in particular was just being incredibly nice to Dolores when he got there, way nicer than you'd treat an abuser. I think he believed this was some sort of mild rift he could settle. Whoever said they guessed he was like Mr. Rogers was pretty close, he was very seventies feel good sort of guy. Alright, I'm sort of coming to the end of my stories here, and some is going to be a bit weird for me to type up, so bear with me.
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Dec 26, 2012 20:54
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For a while, Josh was completely out of the picture. Carrie and her now husband were making plans to move to Florida, looking for jobs down there, looking into the job market, etc, and talking about how long they'd wait to have a baby. Chad and I were working on the new house. There was a bit more damage than we originally realised, and we had to do some work on the subfloor and replace a water damaged wall downstairs, and ended up needing to hire help. The entire kitchen needed to be overhauled, but we did all of that work ourselves A note: If you're doing a project like this, find your local Habitat for Humanity Restore and just lurk there over a few months. Anything you get will need work to make it fit, but if you're willing to give the labor and creativity, you can do some extraordinary things. So when we had the kitchen and downstairs front finished, we decided we'd move into the house, even though the upstairs and the back of the house was in construction. We put a lot of our stuff in storage and moved in. After we moved in, we went out for dinner to celebrate. We sat down to dinner and Chad said he'd been thinking all day and had realised he didn't want to live with her girlfriend. I started to get all upset. Then he said he would prefer to live with his wife, and pulled out a ring. :-3 Josh had become so much of a persona non grata that I honestly didn't really think too much of him, and it was summer before he came up again, and that was when we started to get stalker-y.
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Dec 26, 2012 21:22
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NESguerilla posted:What does Delores do for a living? I can't imagine her holding down any sort of job. When they were kids I know she worked in a bottling factory as a secretary. These days, I honestly haven't a clue.
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Dec 26, 2012 21:24
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Josh first contacted Carrie that summer. He was sick, he said, and needed Carrie to come take care of him. The previous year Josh had gotten pretty ill with the flu, and Carrie and I had gone to his house with a basket full of get well things, like medicine and chicken noodle soup and a heated blanket. The difference was, when we did that, we were all on pretty good terms with Josh. Carrie basically told him that she wouldn't help him anymore since his attitude at the wedding, and that when she said he was out of her life, she meant it. Carrie called me up to tell me this, as telling him off shook her up. No sooner had she hung up the phone with me than Josh called me. I let it go to voicemail. The first message he asked for me to help him with being sick. He called back a few times later. Each message got angrier. Why weren't we helping him? Then he accused me of turning Carrie against him. Finally, the messages were just angry slurs against me. Carrie's phone was also ringing the whole time. I was shaken up, and played the messages for Chad when he got home. Chad was really upset, and told me to never answer the phone when Josh called. I got a bouquet of flowers from Josh. So did Carrie. She was really upset over it, crying. I called the florist and told them not to deliver any subsequent bouquets to us, to donate them to somewhere. I should explain that Chad's job has him working in two locations. His old apartment was pretty much equal driving time to both, but at our new house, he was right next to the one location. During the time he was at that location, this was great. He biked to work when the weather was nice. But at the far location, it made it over an hour and a half drive. He had worked it out so that he would spend Tuesdays at the further location, and the rest of the week work from the closer location. He came into work one Wednesday and found that a coworker had left him a message that his brother had stopped by the previous day. Chad talked to the coworker, who said he had a nice chat with Josh, told him that Chad spent every Tuesday away, told him where his office was, and gave him his office phone. Chad sort of told the coworker that if his guy shows up again to not let him anywhere near anything. Chad got a call later that day from Josh on his office phone. He basically cut Josh off as soon as he realised who it was and told him that he wouldn't talk to him, and hung up. He got a call late that day from another number. The person on the other end just hung up when he answered. The number called again, and the same thing happens. He stops answering for that number, and it calls again and again. Chad is more pissed than anything, and stresses to me to not talk to Josh, block his number on my phone. It was either later that week or the next that Chad comes back from lunch and finds Josh standing in his office. Josh starts to whine that they're ignoring him and he is sorry and wants to be back part of the family. Chad lights into him, telling him that by no chance would that happen. He had overstepped the line too many times and he was out. Chad told him he didn't believe his apology, and that he had no right to try to ruin Carrie's family. And, furthermore, Josh wasn't invited to our wedding. Josh apparently only reacted to the last bit, and started freaking out that Chad was getting married. He said Chad couldn't do that, and started to really just get loud. Chad called for the security guard to escort him out. As Chad is on the phone, Josh starts keeps repeating that Chad can't marry me. He says that I cheated on Chad. Chad says he doesn't believe him. Josh says I cheated with a friend of Chad's. Chad repeats he doesn't believe him and tells him to leave before the security guard gets there. Then Josh says that I cheated with HIM. Chad says he REALLY doesn't believe him. Finally security shows up, and Josh takes off running away from him. Chad found out later, incidently, that one of the employees let Josh in, after all he was Chad's brother. Josh was banned from company property. The next morning, Chad realised that his keys were missing. Retracing his steps he had locked the door in the morning, biked to work, biked back, and I was home when he got back and he hadn't unlocked. We searched the house. He looked at work. We figured that maybe he had dropped them on the bike ride. He normally clipped them to his messenger bag, maybe they broke off? He took the spare and we thought nothing of it. Chad had a few more phone calls from an unknown number. He answered one, and Josh responded. He screamed insults at Chad. Chad was ugly, bald, a betrayer. Chad blocked the number. I was walking back from the grocery store one day, and passing by a parked car realised that Josh was in the driver's seat, staring up at the house. He didn't notice me, and I snuck back around the block and came in through the back door. The next day I realised the same car was parked down the block. I could get out the back, but I started thinking and realised that the car looked familiar and I thought it had been there before. When Chad got a call from another unknown number, he picked it up, thought he recognized Josh's breathing, and yelled at him to stop sitting outside our house. I saw Josh one more time. He saw me leaving the house and started screaming at me. I was a slut, a whore. I was marrying a old, ugly, bald guy and he hoped I was miserable. I pulled out my phone to call 911, saw a neighbor across the street coming out of his house and screamed for help. Josh took off driving. Wow... harder to type than I thought. Taking a break now.
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Dec 26, 2012 22:23
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Probably won't post another bit until tomorrow. Already emotionally drained today. So, instead I will answer questions! Baronjutter posted:Did you marry an old ugly bald guy or is that also untrue?? Josh was trying to hit Chad where it hurt. Chad is older than me. It bothers him sometime. Chad also has male pattern baldness, yes. When I met him, he was keeping his hair longer, but his hairline finally receeded so far he just keeps it shaved. Chad is a little touchy about it because he has bad cauliflower ear on one side, and his nose is crooked, both from when he used to fight when he was younger. So he's not going to win any beauty contests, no. The Architect posted:You mentioned his facebook a few times. How many/what kind of friends could this guy have? His entire social circle is/was online. He actually would get a bunch of people responding to him, although it was always the same core group of folk. It was sort of a socially inept circle jerk. And no, we don't have restraining orders yet. I'll take the abuse for that. We sort of overwaited that.
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Dec 27, 2012 02:42
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confused posted:Thanks for the excellent thread, OP. I had one thought for you. I wouldn't be surprised if the guy Wisconsin never even knew he was in a "relationship" with Delores. You said that he was certainly surprised when she showed up at his door. Do you know anything else about him or the situation? Nothing. Story was told by Josh and that's basically the extent of it.
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Dec 27, 2012 03:08
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Quite alive. On a whirlwind holiday per wedding tour of relatives, meaning no Internet at some points. Following the thread on my iPhone and dreading when I do type more
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Dec 29, 2012 18:10
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