The Last Straw

I'm still not quite sure which straw was the last.  Jaymie had been quite good at ignoring me for over a year.  What made her decide to take a stand now?  I already mentioned the fact that I feel confidant Daddy James and Geek Boy Kevin were ready to throw a tight lid on the pot I'd been stirring, but what was the last straw?  Would Jaymie really be willing to face me because the men in her life told her she should?  Maybe, but I'd be willing to wager there is a bit more to what broke the little skanky camel.

I think I know what this particular straw was made of and why it sent Jaymie over the edge into Crazy Town territory.  I mean...she had to be nuts to want to face me in court.  Even if it meant getting me out of her low life for good, she had to know I was gonna let it fly.  Daddy James and Geek Boy would never be able to look at her the same again.
So what was it?  I had not contacted her in over two weeks.  Why now?

The last straw may have been Sharon, Jaymie's ex-employer  The job Richard got for Jaymie with Sharon was undoubtedly the best one she had ever scored.  It was a bright star on an otherwise dim resume.  When I asked Sharon to help me get Jaymie to talk, I was tipping the scales, adding one final stick of straw too many.  Jaymie knew I'd tell anybody about my wayward husband and his baby whore to get what I wanted.  Until now, none of those people might be detrimental to her future.  That bright star in her work history was becoming overtly dark and smarmy.

I could be totally off base.  Jaymie had been fired, so maybe she wasn't listing Sharon on future job applications at all.   Sharon already knew about the affair.  I mean, I did walk into her office shouting, "Did you know Richard was fucking Jaymie?"  (That was quite a day! You can read all about that here:  Manic Meltdown Part 2)
Truth is...who gives a damn?  The last straw may have been named Daddy or Kevin or Sharon or maybe just Jaymie is sick of Shawn's shit.  Regardless, the straw was not to be denied.

Jaymie got no satisfaction from the call made to me by the sheriff on 11/11/11 but even though I had not tried to contact her since October, the following week, on 11/18, she filed a restraining order against me.  I didn't know about it until after I started this blog on 12/01/11.  I guess they were a little back logged at the Sheriff's department.  Not a lot of available staff to drive around delivering paperwork for restraining orders based on bull-puckey written by a dip-shit that thought sleeping with a married man nearly three times her age was a good career move.

My timing has never been great.  Just as I had decided to move on, to find a way to heal myself, Jaymie was stamping her foot and was getting ready to rumble.  Ironic, right??
I start writing.  Putting my pain into words on a computer screen in hopes of discovering the beginning of my Road to Happy.
Less than a week after I started typing my story, I found  The Healing Heart.  The blog was a good first step.  The members of the Healing Heart message boards were a giant leap.
A couple of days after that, Richard gets a call from Sharon.

Jaymie was kind enough to call and let Sharon know about the restraining order.  Again, not sure why she decided to keep Sharon in the lurid loop.  If I had to surmise, I'd say she wanted very badly to make me out to be the evil bitch in all this.  She was playing the poor innocent young girl taken advantage of by a filthy old perv and then terrorized by his wicked wife.
Whatever her motives, it served me well.  I knew about the restraining order before I ever got served publicly.

I wasn't dreaming about getting served the subpoena at my store.  My business partner, Nikki, knew all about my time in Crazy Town, but it wouldn't be fair to her to bring it to our place of business.  Nor was I enthusiastic about the Sheriff showing up at my house with the paperwork demanding my appearance in front of a judge.  The thought of my kids answering the door wanting to know what Mommy did to require a visit from law enforcement was very unappealing.
No prob.  As soon as Richard got the call from Sharon, I drove straight to the court house and served myself! So simple.  I wasn't hiding from this.

Even though I had made great strides to find a new road to recovery that didn't involve Jaymie, I was more than ready to hang a U-turn on the Road to Happy I was just beginning to discover.
The last straw that broke Jaymie's back set in motion the opportunity I had wanted for so long.
I was gonna throw dirty straw all over the courtroom!
So much for finding my Road to Happy just yet.

Face Off

(Gotta warn you, dear readers...I was a little heavy handed with the Jaymie bashing on this post.  I think the anonymous commenter that defended Jaymie from my last post got under my skin.   It never fails!  Tell me not to do something and I do it double time!!  Whatever.  Bashing Jaymie is harmless, satisfying and if it gets Anonymous riled up...Bonus!)

Don't get it in your head that Jaymie was growing a pair.  Geek Boy Kevin and Daddy James were behind this transformation of sorts.  I was certain of that.  If left to her own devices, Jaymie would have continued to ignore me because facing me meant facing herself.

Not unlike myself, I think she had been Living in the Land of Denial for the past year, too.  Could you blame her?  She had been given the dirt end of a shit stick by a man she begged not to leave her.  He dumped her, shunned her and let me run over her repeatedly.
That's gotta shake your self confidence...that is if she ever had any to begin with.  Dealing with me left the door wide open for her to be Focused on the Rear View Mirror.  Why would she want that?  She had Geek Boy and Daddy James throwing a massive tarp over any reflective surface that examined her part in the affair too closely.

Daddy James and Geek Boy must have convinced Jaymie to put a stop to my "harassment".  What they didn't know was I could not WAIT to get inside a courtroom with the Bitch-Whore!!
A FACE OFF!!  The chance to tell the world (or at least a little piece of El Cajon) on the record how I had been damaged, how I had been brutalized, how I had been betrayed.

If Jaymie was gonna force this Face Off, she had better be prepared for Daddy James and Geek Boy to hear every sordid, sleazy, despicable detail of the time she spent with MY husband.  I was almost giddy thinking about letting it all fly!  Way back when I made A Visit to Casa Jaymie, with my BFF Julie, to pick up all the goodies Richard had so generously given poor, unemployed sudo-hooker Jaymie,  I told Daddy James I had no problem airing Richard's dirty little secrets in court.  If I had to sue Jaymie to get back the swag, I relished the opportunity to shout from the witness chair that my cheating prick of a husband and his precious prostitute of a daughter were fucking every which way and back again.
You think he'd have remembered that.  How could he forget?  I was abundantly clear.
They must have wanted me gone even more than they were concerned about the fitful prospect of meeting me for a final Face Off.  That says something, People.  They were truly tired of being reminded about the truth of the events a full year previous.  Daddy James and Geek Boy wanted to see Jaymie as redeemed from the stupidity of her time spent as a lying, home wrecking tramp.  Time to go all in to make it be all gone.

The first call from the Sheriff's office came right before Julie's wedding on 11/11/11.  (Great anniversary date, right?)  Don't worry!!  I didn't have my phone on during the ceremony, but I did listen to a voicemail right before Julie walked down the aisle, from a deputy scolding me for my... what was the word he used....ridiculous?? I think that was it.  My ridiculous behavior.
I'm telling you it was like he was talking to a 7 year old.  He said something close to, "You don't wanna make me have to serve you with a restraining order.  You should just stop bothering Ms. Simpson.  This behavior is ridiculous."  LOL!!  It was absurd!  This particular deputy didn't think much of Jaymie's complaint.   It seemed like he made the phone call just to shut her up and send her packing.  He obviously had no interest in the paperwork required to even establish a case number.

Here's where I am still confused....I had not attempted to contact Jaymie since 10/25/11.  This is the last email I sent her:

I hear you're leaving soon.  Daddy buying you a trip, huh?  It's good you have someone to pay your way.

I still need to talk to you.  There are too many loose ends, too many question marks, too many holes to fill.

No way I can do it without having a conversation with you.  This will never be over unless I get the answers I need.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to just move on?  Forget the whole sordid mess?  You haven't even sent one email that says. "No!  I won't talk to you.  Never contact me again."  That leaves the door wide open.  Your dad and Kevin slammed the door, but we all know it's not them I need to talk to, even though I would LOVE to share some of what I know about you with them.  

Call me.  Get it over with.  Be done, so you can go on your little trip knowing I'll be nothing but a bad memory when you get back, instead of a shadow hanging over your head.

If you do the math, that's over 2 weeks of no contact before I got the call from the Sheriff.   I hadn't looked at her Facebook page.  I didn't leave any voice mails for Geek Boy to share with her.  I had sent no communication, electronic or otherwise for 17 days!  For the past year, I had rarely let more than a week go by without stirring the proverbial piss pot, but the warning from Sharon about the possibility of a restraining order did give me cause for consideration.  It made me think hard about how far I really wanted to go, so I hit the "contact" pause button.
Why did Jaymie want to go to the Sheriff now?  Why wake the sleeping antagonist?

At this point, it could've gone either way.  The fact that Jaymie was yanking my chain, challenging me, would tend to make you bet on me striking back, right?  I had been determined for over a year to get her to talk to me and in court, that could almost happen.  She might not be talking TO me, but she sure would have to listen.
Or...I might finally be ready to move forward and forget Jaymie ever existed.
As it turned out, just when I was ready to back off, Jaymie geared up for the Face Off.
Game on, Biyotch.

Close to the Final Trek

For this trip through the mountain range of Crazy Town, I enlisted Sherpas to help carry the load.  I had been climbing higher up the sheer cliffs of "Contact Jaymie" for over a year.  For what I believed would be my final expedition, I recruited Richard and Sharon.  If you don't recall, Sharon is the attorney that rents office space from Richard.  She was Jaymie's employer at the beginning of the affair.  They signed up for what would turn out to be close to my final trek up the arduous bluff of "Contact Jaymie".
Close...but I didn't quite reach the summit.

I hear you screaming at your screen...Why in the hell would they do that??
Depends on how you look at it.  The positive spin, I can be very persuasive.  The other side of the coin, I can be wickedly manipulative.  Look at it however you want, I was usually good at getting my way, except for my multiple failures scaling "Contact Jaymie".  The lack of results from my efforts the past year were infuriating!!  My resources were so limited.  It was time to bring in fresh reinforcements.

I still was not ready to admit to myself that Jaymie was of no use to me.  To be clear...not just useless, detrimental.   Over a year past DDay and yet I wallowed in the lovely transference method of dealing with my pain.
When would I learn?  When would I Let the Bitch Whore Go?
Soon, but not until I had to take a little field trip out of Crazy Town and into El Cajon Court.

For successful reconciliation, it is beyond important that the wayward spouse show deep, sincere remorse after DDay.  Richard had displayed massive amounts of guilt and repentance.  I didn't wanna hear it.  I wouldn't accept it.  Instead, I exploited it.
I crossed another very thin, precarious line.  Stepping over this line turned Richard's bona fide desire to earn my forgiveness and save our marriage into punishment for his sins.
To be completely authentic about my time in Crazy Town, in case you don't quite get it yet, I must admit this....when I lashed out at Jaymie it was to punish Richard.  I knew it killed him to see me so out of control.  I craved seeing my husband suffer.  I didn't really NEED the emails.  Even back then I think I knew, there was nothing Jaymie could offer me.

Richard's new marching orders were to talk to Sharon.  Come up with a plan between them that would get me a conversation with Jaymie.  Once again, Richard did not disappoint.  It wasn't too tough for him to convince Sharon to help.  She had witnessed my Manic Meltdown back in January.  I think she would do just about anything to please my husband. (Well, I hope not "anything"!)  She hired totally unqualified Jaymie as an assistant to appease him.  Why wouldn't she help him clean up the fall out?

Sharon placed a phone call to Jaymie, using the script prepared by me, pleading the case that there was little chance of me ever going away without satisfaction.  Jaymie might as well get it over with.

Richard drafted this email, approved by me of course, and sent it off the same day.

Dear Jaymie:    

I am searching for closure for Shawn, for you and for me.  The last year has been hell for Shawn.  She can't get past any of it.   That's why she has gone so far trying to contact you.  She has many questions that I have tried to answer, but my words sound like lies to her now.  Please consider one email, one phone call or one meeting with her, your call.  Answers might give her closure.  She has been telling me the same thing for months.  She needs answers to move on.

I pray everyday for her happiness and yours.  I am so sorry for the pain that I caused her and my family and for the turmoil that has occurred to you and your family. My selfish, mid-life breakdown should never have involved you or Shawn and I deeply regret my behavior.  Thanks for listening and considering the idea. 

I know it's a lot to ask, but I had to try. 

Rich

Richard followed my lead through Crazy Town so blindly.  I wonder if he knows today, like I do, that when he gave in over and over to appease me, he really wasn't doing me, or us, any favors.
I also wonder if Sharon really followed my script.  In hindsight, I think not. She talked to me about how badly she felt for the pain I had endured.  Showed appropriate sympathy for my man, her landlord, as well.  But, for an attorney, her powers of persuasion were apparently no better than mine.
Jaymie had no intention of granting me any type of communication.

Sharon did manage to obtain one crucial piece of info.  Jaymie was going to the sheriff.  She said she was so totally over me disrupting her life.
I think the term she used was "harassment".  Oh...and maybe "Restraining Order."