"Huh... you made it?" (My Story / Chapter I)

It is a difficult thing to admit that your family is conspiring to destroy your life. They rely on anybody you tell about it thinking you're crazy. That stuff doesn't happen. It's all a part of our culture of denial. If you're not in denial, the culture can become quite hostile. My gangstalking experience is such a twisted mess that, though I've got it figured out, it's difficult to know where to start. It wasn't until during the time that I was being mobbed at work and stalked in public that I figured out that my family, specifically my issues-laden brother, is behind it all. I saw all the little things, but didn't see the big picture. I was in denial. Big bro alluded to that directly a couple of times. He liked quoting from "American Beauty" right in front of me to my sister who was also part of it, "Denial is a strong emotion." He once whispered to me on Christmas Eve--it all went down on Christmas Eve--"Something's wrong and you just don't know what it is." More on that later.I took a job as a security guard with a private contractor at a midwest manufacturing plant in July of 2008. I was relieved to obtain work as I had been unemployed for over a year and just starting to recover from the portion of my gangstalking conducted by a angry, psychotic woman who's out to destroy men with whom I lived briefly during the summer of '07. She asked me once if I saw the movie, Gaslight. She was part of it too. Possibly the source. More on that later.

Will got "hired" as a security guard, I believe about a month after I got hired. When he pulled up in his new, shiny black Trailblazer, I had to wonder why this guy would be working a midnight shift at the rattiest gate at a recently idled manufacturing plant for $9.50/hr. On top of that, he turned out to be a retired Sheriff's deputy. He said midnights were the shift he was accustomed to working. Will wasn't very tall, about 6', I'd guess. He was slim and in good shape, in his early 50s with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper horseshoe circling the base of a highly polished age-spotted dome. He sported small, wire-rimmed country-style specs that hung low on his nose and a bushy mustache that varied in neatness of trim from week to week. Think of Wilfred Brimley about 40 pounds and 20 years ago and you you're looking at Will-- just another high level drone.

Will was the head guy in the mobbing I experienced at work. He's not the one who framed me, but he was clearly the head guy orchestrating the systematic psychological abuse I was subjected to at work. On that first night, when he walked in and busted out the 8x10 glossies of the car accident in which he badly injured his leg, again, I couldn't help but wonder. I've seen Law and Order. Who hasn't? In regard to getting to know each other, it was a little heavy right off the bat. Will, when you get after a legitimate suspect, please remember this.

It was in November when I mentioned to him that I was considering making a trip to New York for New Year's Eve. He walked up close to me, kind of got on his tip-toes but maintained a firm stance, blew up his chest like a puffer fish and said, in his biggest, baddest, deepest, most intimidating cop voice, "That would be a good opportunity for a terrorist attack, eh, John?!" Up to that point, the directed conversations and veiled hints indicating that I was under investigation hadn't really bothered me that much, because I was and am guilty of nothing. I've never been arrested, let alone charged with even a misdemeanor and I was thinking that in time this will all blow over. But this exact line of questioning made me think, "Woah! Hold on a minute, Tiger." At the time, I answered him with the exact thought that came to my mind: "Well, yeah, but I'd say Obama's inauguration would be a bigger one, wouldn't you? I'd say it's the biggest security event of all time." It was an unnerving moment, to say the least. I'd heard about the attacks on the civil rights of innocent people with illegal surveillance and harassment since the implementation of the Patriot Act, but I had no idea it had just landed on me.

It was over the coming weeks, that while pondering why Will would make such a comment with such a tone that I was reminded of three past occurrences. First, a trip my mother and I made out of state to visit my brother, a earlier trip my brother made to visit my girlfriend and I, and my brother's later insistence upon purchasing a computer for me as a gift.

My mother was diagnosed with ALS in April of 2002. ALS is a disorder of both the voluntary and involuntary motor nerve system that slowly paralyzes the victim. It finally gets you when it gets to your diaphragm and prevents you from exhaling. At the end of 2002, I had been considering leaving New York, and made the decision to return to the midwest, in part with the intention of being closer to home during this difficult time. I ended up staying home and acting as a primary caregiver during mom's illness. During that time, we made 2 or 3 trips to visit loving brother.

On one of those trips, upon arriving at the security gate before departing the midwest, a female security guard approached my mother as she sat in her wheelchair and did nothing less than molest her, feeling her all over, sticking her hands between her legs, lifting her breasts. I, along with many people waiting in line behind us, was in shock. I was frozen with my mouth hanging open as I turned my head in slow motion to face the other security personnel in search of an explanation, or at least acknowledgment. None came. I was in such shock over the illegal frisk, that I didn't see the significance of the 2 sheriff's deputies standing at attention with the arms folded and looking as intimidating as possible. I had no reason to think anything of it. The emotional impact of the insult my 72-year-old paralyzed mother, a champion, model American, dying of a horrendous disease which she'd already watched 2 of her older siblings succumb to, had just suffered at the hands of this overzealous, badly mis-lead, clearly lesbian, security guard was bewildering.

It took a few minutes, until after I'd been made to take off my shoes and was wanded by the intimidating deputies, that the shock wore off and I realized that what had happened was wrong and started to wonder, as I wheeled her down the tunnel, why we were being singled out. The fear induced by the intimidation tactics and the shock of the egregious violation of my mother's personal privacy made it difficult to assimilate the situation. Then, as an attendant helped me carry my paralyzed mother to her seat, I noticed a man sitting about 4 row behind our seats. He was in his mid-40s, with graying hair in a military style cut and he wore a dark gray suit. He was visibly shaking and sweating as he glared at me as we fumbled our way to our seats. After the attendant helped me get my paralyzed mother comfortable, I turned to look at the guy, and he maintained his glare. Still shaking. Still sweating. Because there is no legitimate reason for me to be the subject of such treatment, I wrote it off to profiling. I'm not pale-skinned with blue eyes and blond hair.

After we landed, one of the pilots assisted me in carrying mom to her chair. As we did this, the guy sitting a few rows behind me stayed in his seat. I couldn't help but look in his direction. When I did, I happened to catch his visible, obvious sigh of relief as the pent-up air left his lungs. It was all so unnerving and happening so fast that it was difficult to add it up at the time. Shock and awe, right?

Before the flight, they also took my mother's wheelchair and gave us an airport wheelchair. I figured this was normal and maybe it is. It wasn't that big of a deal. After landing and arriving at the baggage claim, upon receiving mom's wheelchair, I found that the handles for the handbrakes were missing. They're basically metal sticks covered in chrome with rubber handles and they are designed to be removable. When I inquired at our airline's service desk as to what happened to the brake handles, they curtly responded that they'd lost them. I'd had about enough at this point, so I curtly responded, "Well, you need to find them." They did.

Here's the good part. We got our baggage and went out to the street to meet my brother. He pulled up right on time. He got out of the car and walked around the back of the car to the passenger side where we waited. He stopped, paused, and looked at me with a mock air of surprise in his eyes, and said, with a mock tone of surprise in his voice, "Huh... you made it?", as in, he was surprised that I'd completed the trip successfully.  Why?  Then, as he rubbed his chin the look changed to one of intense, semi-psychotic, semi-angry concentration, like he was trying to figure out what went wrong and/or what he needed to do next.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew there was significance in all of this, but it was my first flight since 9/11 and other than the molestation of my mother, I thought maybe it wasn't all that out of the ordinary. I was glad to see they're on the job and kept telling myself that when they latch on to legitimate suspects the job will get done, something I've been telling myself for months now. And of course, as my brother knew full well, I was unaware of what the combination of his intense envy toward me and his other deep-seeded issues had done to his mind. An angry con artist with a grudge--it's a bad thing.

Joseph C. Zoccali, Clearwater, Florida; Rick Wilson, Niles, Ohio; Christine Faranda, Cleveland, Ohio; Len Spector; Marc Greece, A&E Networks; Reverend David Plank, Palatine Bridge, NY; Carrie (Plank) Bruno, Queens, NY; Cynthia Green, Tech Recruiter; Sioux Logan, Red Stream Technologies; Mike Tricario, MTV; Sean Newman, Columbus, Ohio; Jim Reed, Columbus, Ohio; Zynga; Marty Eggert, Cleveland, Ohio; Kathy Haxton, Cleveland, Ohio, St. Joe’s Medical  Center, Warren, Ohio; Coleman Professional Services, Warren, Ohio; Laura McCormick

An Pham, anpham1111@gmail.com; Anna Stepnova, stepnova@aol.com; Barbara Anne Wolf, wolf.barbara.anne@gmail.com,  (415) 812-4926; Brian Montague, jetbpm@aol.com; Charles Crites, critesfam@sbcglobal.net; EHSOH, lovycera@gmail.com; Elizabeth Nicolosi, elizabethnicolosi@hotmail.com; Kristy Guertin, guertk@spu.edu; Meagan Franz, meaganfranz@hotmail.com; Miyako Abe, mtea2006@yahoo.com; Nora Salah, nsalah01@yahoo.com; Teresa Keller, teresa@rtwwithus.org; Natasha Warder; 

Kathleen Kashay; Erica Agyeman; Darcy Estes; Alison Victor; Tracy Dietz; Kaitlin McGaw;

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