The Restraining Order

The Restraining Order

The judge bellowed from the bench set high above the courtroom so as to separate his meanness from the rest of us and so that if you looked up at him too long your neck crooked in such a way that his bark became bite.

The poor petitioners' that dared misuse pronouns or lacked proper proof of their claims were summarily dismissed in rapid succession and left the court with their heads bowed low, and some whimpered wantonly.

Everyone came to court this day seeking a restraining order. A protective order to protect them from some fear or stalking or other offense requiring legal restraint, but this judge brutalized most plaintiffs worse than the defendants they were there to get away from.

What the hell am I doing here? I asked myself from the front row where I purposely picked a seat close up so I could hear everything that happened and hope to learn a thing or two. What I learned early on in the day was that I would be lucky to get out of there with my ego intact, let alone a judgment in my favor. There were 31 cases on this judge's calendar. I was number 29.

No one was winning. Every case presented had a particular flaw or the judge was just having a horrendous day reflected in his horrible mood. I couldn't tell which from witch. And the cases were horrific – mostly family court kind of drama; baby mamas and reality television sort of craziness. This one beat this one up, and that one broke visitation rules, and another one calls and calls, and so on.... The judge, unmoved, moved to dismiss one after the other, but not before scolding them into oblivion for their own misfortunes and misrepresentations.

Way down the line, someone won! Wow – a ray of dismal hope. Still, one out of 17 cases is not a score to count on for success.

So why was I there?

Because I had had enough. Unfamiliar with stalking or harassment or laws about similar crimes, I had put up with an unwanted individual for nearly a decade. Annoyances, “things” left at my house, comments (shouts, really, but I'm being nice), a whole host of unwanted and unwarranted overtures from a person I wanted to only leave me alone. Cameras had been put up at my home per police suggestion, and I ignored this person despite the botheration because I felt certain that if I ignored long enough it would stop.

It did not.

Ultimately, a violation of vandalism provoked me to this court. The last straw in a long sequence of last straws.

This person had bothered me into this courtroom where a blustery judge was beating up those that had already been beaten down.

~

It made me think of Him.

The person I thought of as a dear friend that had become alienated and distant and I didn't know why.

Nowadays there's a term for it, I learned recently. It's called “ghosting.”

When someone you love or someone you thought you knew well, or had a relationship with, or a friendship, suddenly ignores you. Doesn't return calls, letters, emails, any messages at all. Simply disappears off your radar and out of your reality. It's painful at best and viciously vacuous of the other person who doesn't have the courage to communicate in some way (in any way!), what for or why they have decided to delete you from their life.

Recently, someone I've been great friends with for 30 years (30 dang years!) did this ghosting thing to me and it stings and it makes no sense whatsoever. So much for great friends who turn out to be not so great.

But, back to Him....

I didn't do anything wrong that I was aware of, but I sure missed my friend and had made several attempts to contact him by email or phone, but when he didn't return my reaching out, I stopped. What choice did I have?

All I could do was wonder what I did to deserve denial. I had no answers. Life is like that sometimes.

On his birthday, just to honor him, I dropped off some special soup he liked at his office, but he wasn't there and I was glad about that, actually. I never heard anything from him afterward.

The coworker I left the soup with was a friend to me and she called to tell me not nice things about the way He accepted or rather accentuated his distress about the benign Birthday blessing: He Raged.

“Really?” I asked.

Yes. Really.

She tattled that He scolded her for accepting anything from me, said that I was “stalking” him; that he had a “restraining order” on me already … he fumed furiously at her for – well, for what? For me bringing him a bowl of soup when he wasn't even there?

Apparently. Yes.

From the way this coworker claimed He carried on, you would think I had sent him a tantric sex tutorial or something --- rather than some soup!

I was devastated.

Furthermore, I had no idea what the truth was. Either she misunderstood Him, or exaggerated, or flat-out lied, or He really said that, or something like that, in which case HE flat-out lied … since obviously I would know if someone had a restraining order against me.


(And if He truly did have the nerve to tell her that terrible lie, then I would like him to know that it's not so easy to get a restraining order....)

One of them lied. And I will never know which one.

~

So here we are back in the battleground of this jurisprudence jungle when Judge Jerk jerks me from my daydreaming of this person's disrespectful disavowing by bellowing my case number and name for the second time into the now near empty courtroom.

I gathered my documents and the last of my wits about me and approached the bench.

Fortunately for me, I had a police detective as a witness and supporter – in case I felt the need to commit my own crime against humanity and attack this offensive magistrate who might mangle his obligation to do justice and grant me my order.

Only one other case had won. (In case you're keeping score, that makes two).

No, it wasn't easy. He scolded me too. Just like all the others. Cut me off, sliced me up, and severed my common sense from the rest of any sense, while he ceremoniously circumvented my well-documented years of struggles with the offending defendant, but … and this is BIG … mostly the judge scolded me for putting up with it for so long! He asked my police detective pointed questions (with respect, of course, for the law abiding uniformed officer) and then rightfully signed off on a restraining order.

Petition Granted. I Won!

That makes three.

Only 3 out of 31 won their case that day.

I didn't care that the judge decimated my verve, only that I would avoid more otherwise unavoidable encounters with the offender.

I left the court with my head held high. I survived a hanging judge! Victory tastes delicious. That person would not be able to bother me again, without going to jail.

~

But it wasn't until I got to my car that the dam of pent-up emotions collapsed away from the strong foundation I'd faked all day in court. The tears felt like a betrayal of my anger, clung and then dropped from the edge of my jawbone. I drove home, the day's events reviewing through the peculiar mind that is mine, with the pressure of the operose process upending me in a peculiar way....

I burst into torrential tears, wailing in recognition that someone, Him, felt that same way about me:

That's the way He feels … if He really said I was stalking him … if He really spoke of a restraining order … He wants me to disappear … He's angry … He feels threatened … has fear ... This is the lesson and why I had to go through all of this … so I would know how HE feels … about ME!

The spokes of karma are powerful. Do unto others, and all that … what is done to us, we may be doing to others, just as what we don't want done to us, we shouldn't do to others.

I'll never know what was said about me between those two – the one who tattled; the one who rattled – I'll never know the truth.

But I know I got badly hurt. And there's no restraining order to protect my heart from the hurt I got. From someone I loved.

Just Another Lori Story