Invincibility by Association

A new phenomenon I've thought about some recently is Clark's uncanny ability to make his targets believe they can behave outrageously and get away with it. He will, in fact, talk others into doing things he himself is not brave enough to do, yet somehow he is able to convince them that even though he won't do something, they are within their rights to do so. He can even convince them it's a good idea.

Case in point: the ex-business partner Mallory. He talked her into creating a giant scene in a public venue, very much a public place, but one that is frequented by the same group of people over and over. She offended the people there horribly. However, he then somehow managed to talk her into returning there for a casual visit. Of course, this made her look ridiculous, vicious, and insane all at once, because everyone there knew remembered what she'd done. She, however, had obviously been bolstered by him that she had every right to do so, and that there was nothing wrong with the move. And yes, she had every right to be in a public place. But rights and being downright stupid aren't the same thing. As a note, also, please keep in mind that he was in said place at the time, and even while he had been the person to invite her to come and bolstered her courage to her face, behind her back he was telling everyone in the place how he couldn't believe she came, etc.

It's something I dealt with recently, actually, having run into what I think of as his "target family." This is an actual family of people who are not his primary targets, but his fallbacks, and, incidentally, the persons he currently uses to back him financially, both in life (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) and in his crazy, half-baked ideas. He trashes them openly behind their backs and even admits to others that he is "only using them." In fact, he treats them terribly, but he has also love-bombed them to such an extent and attached himself to their lives so thoroughly that they practically worship him. The Matriarch, which is another post for another time, as well as the spawn, who we'll call Trina, might as well be the poster-children for what I've come to think of as moron mode--the condition you have when you begin to realize something is "off" about a sociopath, but you value him as a friend so much that you overlook the discrepancies. In fact, it's my belief this is the very reason you hear about so many serial killers, etc., having wives or girlfriends who didn't "know" what their sociopath was. You think to yourself, "Wow, she's so stupid. How could she have not realized?" Easy. She was in moron mode. It's the combination of being love-bombed and lied to and is the direct result of your sociopath emotionally attaching himself to you, parasite-style. He has done exactly what he needs to do to a target: made himself the perfect companion so that no matter what awful things you hear, you won't believe it of him, because it's not the person you know. I digress...

Anyway, I ran into the target fallback family, and Trina was unbelievably shocked when I was less than congenial to her. She went so far as to comment on my "rudeness," when in reality, over the past months after Clark had painted me crazy to them, she had publicly threatened me (Charles Manson cult-esque, anyone?). Yet, here she was, brazenly expecting me to be polite and courteous to her as though nothing had happened.

All I could think of in that moment was the incident of Mallory returning to "the scene of the crime," and how because of her associations with Clark, she'd been under his spell to the point where she completely believed that she could take actions without consequences. It is because he lives in a world where he doesn't live by the same social cues the rest of us do, but it is because for him, the rules are not the same. Most of us understand what is acceptable and what is not, but in his world, anything is acceptable if he would like it to be. (Yet, God forbid someone does the same thing to him. It would be unforgiveable. There is very much a double standard in behavior expectations in that way. It's very Hitler, but again...another story for another time.)

Home Away from Home

Wow. I'm sorry to have neglected this poor little blog for so long. After a time, I stopped thinking about all of this constantly, though it's always an underlying current in my mind. Today, though, I started to remember that it is the same reason why people can't find enough information when they're abandoned, so here I am, to post another update.

Well, well, in my last post, I referenced how I'd later find out why we couldn't go to his apartment. The short answer would be that one thing Clark was not good at as a sociopath was maintaining focus to follow through with anything. He was, however, very good at getting what he wanted in the short term. So, just like he moved from target to target on whim, so did he move from home to home.

The cycle, I learned( particularly in hindsight) was something like this: lock target who can either furnish room in their home or pay for a home for him, use home until the home has nothing left to offer and begins to fall into ruins, abandon home for new home. (Ha! Sound familiar?)

You might wonder what I mean when I say he let a home fall into ruins. Well, let me clarify. Clark was always far too busy juggling lies and his own whims and targeting people to bother with piteous things like cleaning or laundry. Those things would only get done for one of two reasons: 1.) he could use taking his laundry to a target's home as an excuse to visit for some ulterior motive or 2.) he would clean so as to present himself a certain way to a certain target. This became a particular problem when combined with another problem: he makes his living leeching off of other people. Therefore, if he somehow manages to estrange his current financier, he will in no way be paying bills or rent.

I remember the day we "couldn't go to his apartment" because it was "a mess." I stayed in the car while he went inside, however, and got his clothes together to leave to spend the night elsewhere. It was a few months later that he was at my house when he received a phone call telling him he was being kicked out of his apartment. His things would have to be put into storage by the next day, but unexplicably, he couldn't be persuaded to "get help" with this from me. I know now that it was because he got help from another target who had heard different circumstances surrounding his eviction. That's another important rule of the sociopath's: never, ever let other targets talk to each other without you present, but I digress...

I would later learn his rent was months overdue, and one reason he had not been staying at his apartment--ever--was because his electricity and water had been turned off long ago due to his not paying the bills. Strangely, though, as a sociopath, this actually worked to his advantage. It worked as one of those infamous pity ploys I've talked about. "There was a mix-up at the power company," or "I've been having money trouble for so long but I had too much pride to tell anyone, and now I'm in a mess!" (*cue crocodile tears*).

It happened several times when I knew him and that I know of since. And sadly, that isn't where it ends. Like targets and homes, pets were another thing subject to his whims, but that's again, another story for another time. I guess the moral of this story would be, again, if you've gotten THAT close to someone and yet, something of this nature is being kept from you...there's probably a good reason why.

In the Beginning

I wish I'd saved every text I sent, every IM chat, and taped every conversation I had with friends in the days following my beginning to find out what Clark was. I wish that, because while so much of me wants to be able to pretend he never existed, I also don't want to forget all of the things that have happened, either. It's kind of one of those "stranger than fiction" things that has just been so enormous and unbelievable that I feel if I've lived through it, I should at least remember every bit of it (as twisted as that may seem). Over these months, we've talked about so many memories and analyzed so many behaviors, and I want to have a record of it. Part of me thinks if I have that record, maybe I can stop thinking about it so much in an effort to remember it, because I'll have it down if I should ever feel the need to peruse it again. Thus, this blog. I'll still do posts on certain topics relating to sociopaths, but I'm also going to start telling the events as I remember them, just because I want them down.

Which brings me to my first real interactions with Clark. One of them involved plans we were supposed to have one night, yet the day of, I couldn't get ahold of him via cell phone. I kept texting and texting, starting to get nervous. Breaking off our afternoon plans was one thing, but we were supposed to be attending a big event that night, but I had no idea what time we were meeting, etc. I'm someone who lives by planner, so this was a problem.

Finally, a mutual aquaintance sent me a text saying Clark had texted him and wanted him to tell me he was in the emergency room being treated for chest pains. DING DING! WARNING BELL! If he could text our mutual aquaintance, why couldn't he text me? (By the way, that whole "have someone tell someone else something" thing is a whole different part of his pathology, but that's another story for another time). Oh well. I shook the thought away. I just hoped he was okay.

An hour or so later, he called me. He assured me he was fine to go to the event that night. When I saw him later that day, he didn't seem sick at all. He was perfectly fine. He did tell me that meant we couldn't stay at his apartment that night (he lived out of town)- we would go and stay at his parents' home, because "they had the medicine he needed there."

I would later find out more about why we really couldn't stay at his apartment. Again, another story for another time.

But this day was my first experience with his very large lies to cover for when he blew me off or blew anyone off. This was my first experience with the pity ploy, too, I think. Oh, no, it wasn't. That would've been the few days prior when he blew off something because his dad was having "triple bypass surgery." Cut to the night a few days later when we stayed at his parents' after the event. He told me (pre-damage control) on our way to their house to "not mention his Dad's surgery if he was home, because he was really sensitive about it. In fact, you'd never know he had surgery at all. He's recovered so fast."

Yep, you'd never know he had surgery, because he didn't. If only I'd see through that right then and there, I'd have saved myself a lot of heartache. Unfortunately, I bought it hook, line, and sinker.

The Magical, Expanding Timeline!

Another thing I should've noticed about Clark right off the bat was that the timeline of his stories just didn't fit. He was of course an "expert" in his field,and he'd been renowned in said field. He'd had all sorts of awesome jobs, positions that neither made sense given his qualifications nor given his age. Since high school, he'd been on broadway (only later, when I compared notes with others who had been "friends" with him, I found out which show he claimed he'd done changed several times.), been a model, starred in stage shows at a theme park (I do believe he worked there, but I think the lie was in the role he "gave" himself in these stories), studied abroad in France for a semester (and was fluent in French), been on a trip to Afghanistan ( I later found out it was Iraq in some peoples' versions). Technically, from what I know, he only left town for about two years, and it seems almost impossible that all of these things could have happened in that time. Not to mention, Google is an incredible tool, and let's just say there is no record of him anywhere near any of these things.

Of course, I can't check the records of the France story, but I will say this...after I started to find out his lies, I recalled an incident where we met up with a friend of mine who was fluent in French. I raved to her about how Clark was, too...they could talk to each other! I remember her talking to him and the look of panic on his face. He just stared at her, his face turning red. I now attribute that to exactly what it was: he didn't understand a word she was saying, because he wasn't fluent in French at all.

This is one thing that still bugs me in regards to his snowing people to this day, because he uses these "professional acting credits" on his resume to land jobs and the respect of people around him, which is one reason so many people are quick to drink in his flattery. After all, who doesn't want to hear a professional actor tell them how great they are in an amateur theatre?

I wonder sometimes how I was dumb enough to believe it, too. After all, if he was a professional actor, why the heck was he busy doing community theatre productions? Why were there no playbills or pictures from his time in New York as a model or on the road on his tour?

But he was also very good at lending crediblity to his stories in such a way that you never heard the attesting to from someone else, but you believed it came from someone else just the same. Example: he once told me how some of his students (whom I knew) had "looked up his pictures online," and how embarrassing that was. I never saw them, I never asked the students about them. But someone, just that little tidbit was enough that it made you believe it. It's a phenomenon I can't exactly explain. It was as if he was able to have someone else corroborate his story when in actuality, it was just him lying to corroborate it using their names. Some of the tactics are so simple it's hard to believe they work!

I guess it goes back to the whole thing about how, if you're close to someone, you don't have a reason to doubt them. After all, 96% of the population aren't sociopaths. Unfortunately, I'd befriended one of the 4% that is.

Wishing There Wasn't a Mask

Most people can hardly comprehend how devastating it can be to lose your best friend. Trust me: it's even more devastating when that "best friend" is a sociopath.

In the months following my abandonment by my sociopath and my subsequent discovery that he was never who I thought he was, I fell into a deeper depression than I have ever felt in my life. Most friends couldn't understand it and even became frustrated with me. All I ever wanted to do was talk about him, analyze his behaviors, cry and grieve over losing the person I thought I'd known. Many of them couldn't understand why I couldn't just snap out of it. It was sad, sure. But he was just a friend. Friends came and went all the time, right? My behavior was over the top.

What those friends couldn't understand though, was that while yes, we were "just friends," we weren't "just friends"...one of us was a sociopath, and the other was the sociopath's target. In plain English, what this means is that while I was his friend aka target, he was actively doing everything I needed him to do in order for me to be emotionally bonded to him so he could use me and abuse me without me ever asking questions. He, like all Sociopaths, read people. They assess their targets, They learn their targets deepest desires, fears, needs. And then whatever the most desperate need of their target's heart is, they FILL that need. During this manipulation phase, they say everything you need to hear. They flatter you and build you up, make you feel so good about yourself you might as well be flying. They are there anytime you need them, because they "love" you.

Then, one day, that is gone, and you find out that person who loved you didn't. You learn that person you loved wasn't even real. You find out these real feelings you had remain real while for them, they've moved on to the next, not even giving you a second thought. Suddenly, someone who was a part of every single day of your life is simply gone. He used to be the first person I'd call if I had a bad day or the first person I'd call if I had good news. Now, I could no longer pick up the phone and reach him, because he wasn't on the other end. I saw him almost every day. We'd have lunch, see movies, just talk. Without warning, he was gone.

There's nothing in my life that wasn't touched by him. My guest room I hardly want to go into because he slept there a lot of nights. I remember him in the kitchen cooking for me the day I had surgery. A lot of my favorite movies I don't want to watch because I have good memories of watching them with him. He was such an integral part of my everyday life, like family. Then there was a hole in my life, and no matter how betrayed I felt by him or how angry I was, I still felt so empty...so lonely.

It was like someone had died, only they hadn't, because they'd never even been real in the first place. The Clark I knew was a Clark wearing a mask, a mask that made him what I needed him to be in order for him to con me. And knowing he never really existed hurts most of all. Sometimes I have trouble remembering that the Clark I knew, loved and the Clark that is an unfeeling, selfish sociopath are the same person. I still think about the Clark I knew, and I miss him. I miss things we did together, times we shared, the laughs. Then, that yields to me just being pissed off, because I remember how he used to talk to me, and I get so angry thinking how could he do this to me, after everything? But then I remember, it's because he never really was.

And it hurts. It hurts because there is this gaping hole in my life that I grieve as though someone had died. Only I wish I didn't grieve him, because he doesn't deserve to be grieved. But I do, because I knew this wonderful feeling of someone who was aware of me and what I needed, who always thought to check on me or be there. And now he's not there, because he never was. I hate that I still feel empty and still feel loss when he doesn't have to feel this hole I feel.

I guess what I'm saying is, I wish he had been real. The person I knew and trusted, the person I thought was my best friend in the world...I wish he had been real.

So Many Crazies, So Little Time

There are a lot of things that should've clued me in that something with Clark wasn't right. Then again, there were a lot of things; I just ignored them. How could I not? After all, if there was one thing he was good at, it was showing me, his target, everything I needed to see to believe that he was a great person and that anyone who said one word against him must just not know him very well.

Looking back, though, there were so many signs. There were wild claims of things he'd done when there seemed to be no evidence of this past aside from his tales about it. He also had many a serious pity ploy, which many books say is the closest thing to a warning stamp on a Sociopath you'll ever see. However, those things are for later blogs, because today, I want to talk about another sign I should've noticed...

There were way too many "crazy" people in his past as well as way too many people who "hated him for no reason." The second or third time I was alone with him, he confided in me about his "crazy" ex-boyfriend (we'll call him Andy) who was abusive, had once pulled a knife on him after chasing him in his car, and at a separate time, had tried to poison him. And though I never saw him, Andy would occassionally "show up" in town, call Clark, or otherwise harrass Clark, which would cause a massive pity event.

There was another girl I knew, we'll call her Mallory, who moved from town just as I was coming into his life. When I first met her, I had the impression the two of them were very close friends. However, when she moved, I got a very different story. She was "crazy" and "obsessed with him." He would tell me all kinds of stories ranging from how she would watch him sleep (they were roommates) to how she embezzled money from the company they ran together.

There would be several people in town who he would tell me had a vendetta against him for no reason or even worse...they hated him because he "was gay." They would talk badly about him, not support his company and tell others not to support his company because they were "crazy." And there did seem to be an awful lot of people who seemed to dislike him or have grudges against him. But I just couldn't understand it; all I'd ever seen was this sweet, wonderful person who I'd come to think of as my best friend.

Well, when I was discarded, I started to learn more about Clark and what he was, and I began to learn more about sociopathy and targets. I also found out the truth about these "crazy" people. They were me. They weren't crazy; they were past targets who'd found out, just like I had, what Clark was. So, in order to avoid the risk of them exposing him to people who liked Clark, he painted them as crazy. He would tell all of the current people on his radar, particularly his current target, wild (false) stories about his past targets to totally destroy their credibility. For target Andy, it was that he was an attempted murderer. He's not. He's actually a normal guy who was never charged with anything as Clark told me. I know. I've spoken to him. For the girl Mallory, she was a creepily obsessed with him and an embezzler. Those are just two; I have actually talked to several others. Me? I'm apparently an obsessed stalker who talked horribly about a lot of people he associated with.

It's not a bad plan, I guess. People don't want to believe their neighbor or their friend or the teacher could, well, not have a conscience. People want to believe the best of people, even when all the signs say they shouldn't. If someone has a choice of admitting someone they know is a sociopath or thinking someone is just scorned and bitter and "crazy," it's much easier for them to believe the "crazy" version. Not to mention of course, that sociopaths are convincing enough, charismatic enough, can spin enough stories, and tell enough lies to make sure they look like the victim instead of their targets.

So, let this be a lesson to you: one "crazy" = maybe. Two "crazy"= hazy. Three "crazy"= scorsese. As in, you need to run like you're being chased by a guy with a gun in a Martin Scorsese film!

Introductions and Misconceptions

There are a lot of misconceptions about sociopaths. When people hear that word, most of them think of a person like the fictional Hannibal Lecter: a bloodthirsty monster who kills and kills until he's either caught or dies himself. That is the image that sort of used to come to my mind, too.

Now, the image in my head is very different. Today, when I hear the word sociopath, I immediately am flooded with images of charisma, charming manipulation, a chasm of deceit, pain, tears, lies...but not murder. I'm also overwhelmed with images of the face of someone I once considered my best friend in the world.

That's another misconception: that sociopaths who are "con men" only target romantic interests. And while the majority of targets probably are romantic or sexual interests, they are definitely not the only targets. I know, because I was "just a friend" to "my" sociopath. But I can tell you this: I may not have shared marital assets with my sociopath, but he was still a tornado who rampaged my world, leaving only the very shell of a house standing in his wake.

I've learned that even if a sociopath isn't a killer in the literal sense, he actually kills all of the time. He manipulates, sucks life out of his targets, and then leaves them to realize what he was, emotionally, professionally, and/or financially devastated as he moves on to his next unfortunate victim. Sociopaths do not feel remorse; they do not have consciencea, though as you'll read over the next few blog posts, they are very good at mimicking emotions. The know the difference between right and wrong. They simply don't care.

I decided to write this blog, because when I began to learn what my sociopath was--we'll call him Clark--I scoured the net for information. I was like a desert plant guzzling at any droplet I could find. The tough part was, I couldn't find much information by targets, and especially not information from targets who were "just friends." (More on "just friends" later). I wanted others like me who are one day frantically googling "sociopath" hoping to come across something like this to be able to find this and know they aren't the only one.

So, in the coming days, I will tell you some of the things I've learned. I will tell you some of the things I should've recognized sooner so maybe you can recognize them should you ever come across someone like this. Sociopaths aren't all killers. Some of them are flatterers and "fun" people, because they will show you exactly what you need to see to get you "hooked" once you have been targeted. This is the mask they will wear while they lie to you, use you, and play games with you. They can look like your Sunday school teacher or your doctor...and they can look like your best friend.