Fear, an All Hallows Eve true story

Last night it was All Hallows Eve, and the time when lots of people take their best zombie and vampire outfits out of the wardrobe to enjoy scaring folk. But I believe monsters do not need a costume to scare. I will share today a Halloween story, changing a little bit my usual mood here, but to share something that may resonate with the experience of more than one who may read this.

 

A long time ago, when I first came to Second Life, I used to socialize a lot more than I do nowadays. Although I am very shy and I find it very difficult to interact with people, at least with more than one at a time, as it usually happens with introverts, I do like people and I immediately trust everybody. Not long after I became a regular in the game, I met someone who would change my life forever.

 

She was the most intelligent person I ever met. I got mesmerized at her knowledge of the World, of science, of humanities, of culture, technology and even the occult. She had travelled half the World and would discuss with me about geopolitics, history, macroeconomy, music, medicine, philosophy, astronomy... There was no field of knowledge that she didn't master.

 

Almost every night and for a very long time, I would meet her and it became my most absolute joy, always looking forward to the time we'd be together. I learned so much! She encouraged me to meditate and opened my mind to many things; she pushed me to get outside my intellectual comfort zone, to explore knowledge beyond my training and specialization, taught me to get free of prejudice and tried to open a path of enlightenment for me.

 

I don't think I fell in love with her. I have known real love later in my life and it isn't what I felt for that woman at all. But her knowledge, her larger-than-life personality, her confidence and, why not saying it, her naughtiness as well, were extremely sexy for me at that moment in my life, and she definitely seduced me. She knew absolutely everything about me, and I thought I knew a lot about her.

 

She was kind to me as well, showing interest in me and making me feel special. This lasted until everything changed. When I felt most comfortable with her, when I verbalized my admiration for her, developed a genuine and strong fascination and affection for her, when I made plans with her and she had become indispensable in my life, then she showed her real face.

 

She started playing with my emotions in a way that I had never experienced or imagined it was possible. Among other things, she would show sudden changes of mood without any obvious trigger or justification that I could recognize, going from the usual behaviour that I knew and learned to love to a vicious anger. She would scorn me, insult me, bully me, accuse me of things I never did or said, making me feel really confused and sad.

 

This emotional strain would continue for weeks or months and I would do every effort to show affection and try to understand what was happening, giving my best, trying to talk about how I felt and what could be done to smooth her behaviour. I thought I was in control, but in fact, little by little, my confidence was being eroded, my self-esteem destroyed, and my nerves broken.

 

I was being bullied with sadism and I was totally blind to what she was doing to me, or more precisely, I knew what she was doing, but I was trying to rationalize it and even take a share of blame, trying to change the things that apparently annoyed her. I thought that the woman who fascinated me with her knowledge of the World, who had treated me nice, who was my friend, needed my help to be the person I had first met.

 

Over time, and repeatedly, she would remove me from contacts, block me, or disappear from SL for long periods of time, usually as a result of a stupid thing. For example, I remember once saying something like "enjoy your dinner of mackerel with dill sauce" (she was supposedly Swedish), as a joke. That was enough for a huge rant about me being stupid, having a narrow mind, unable to think outside of stereotypes, to finally block me without giving me a chance to explain, and disappearing for several months.

 

But she would suddenly return one day. I would find a friendly message from her, a smile and a casual "how are you?", and then she would be nice and I would welcome her back in my life with genuine happiness and willing to forget the past. And then the cycle would repeat again. But every time I would be more broken, more lost, more undermined, less human, more in her control. I was genuinely scared to speak my mind freely when we were together, and had to think twice or three times before saying anything, because I feared her reactions. Yet I felt attracted to her like a magnet.

 

To this nightmare, which lasted some five long years, you have to add something that is not rare in Second Life, but that I only figured out when everything was over and I was able to finally open my eyes and put the pieces together. It was precisely one mistake she made that made me realize, what broke the spell, what opened my eyes and gave me the strength for zero contact and start recovering my freedom.

 

She had been using at least five or six alts with me, possibly more (with time I counted over twelve in her control). Several but not all of them had supposed links with her (roommates, real life buddies, buddies' girlfriends, ...), and without me knowing, she had been using all these characters to manipulate me and my emotions in extremely Machiavellian and elaborate ways, including pretending that she was in life-threatening situations and others that touched the right emotions in me to end up smashing them violently.

 

These events happened many years ago, starting in 2008, long enough to have forgotten most details, most anecdotes. But what I did not forget was the fear and the pain of being abused without any justification, and also the impotence and anxiety of being completely unable to understand the person I admired so much, and this scarred me forever. These wounds are not in my mind or my memory; these wounds are in my soul, too deep to ever heal. And I also feared what she could do to me or my loved ones, because she knew everything she needed to hurt me, had she wanted to.

 

Last night, All Hallows Eve, out of boredom, I visited one of the old places I used to hang out in Second Life. A historic SL musical venue, where many rock and blues lovers meet every day to enjoy the music and the company. It was ages since I had been there. I rezzed in the sim and entered the bar. When I stepped in and checked the crowd, I suddenly saw her name standing out among all the tags hovering in the place. Subsequently, I had time to recognize two additional names in the place: two of her old alts.

 

I am not exaggerating the slightest, my heart stopped in real panic, I got frozen in my real life chair, as if I had stumbled upon a rattler, after all these years, after not a single atom of admiration or of expectation or interest exist in my heart for this person anymore, after any feeling for that person, good or bad, had been washed away by time. Yet, all of a sudden I felt all of the anxiety and incomprehension and sorrow and fear of those years falling over me again. I felt sheer terror.

 

I have had my new avatar for less than 1.5 years, after successively deleting any previous accounts over the years. There is no way she could have known I was there, but I was terrorized by simply being in the same virtual place as she was. I reacted after what seemed an eternity teleporting to another place and, after a short time, feeling my heart racing and real physiological and psychological anguish, I shut down SL. This monster is out there, has been out there all the time, and I am sure she was terrorizing somebody at that very same moment I saw her yesterday.

 

Monsters do not have to sport fangs, blood stains or hockey masks. Monsters only need a clever, sadistic mind and an absolute lack of empathy for others... especially if you trust and tend to empathize. If you ever crossed paths with a narcissist or a psychopath, even in a "harmless" virtual world, you know very well what I am talking about.

 

If you never lived an experience like this, my story may sound stupid, also because I only explained the context, without indulging in the details. But you must believe me, if you get trapped in the cobweb of a monster, what they do to you is everything but stupid. They come as nice, really charming and nice, but their schemes are very dark. And if you are naïve like myself, if you believe in the goodness of people, it is the perfect recipe for disaster.

 

After these events and for a long time, I have been suspicious of people, also in my real life, or at least I forced myself not to open up immediately to people who approached me, even if they were very nice... especially if they were very nice. My Second Life changed too until someone gave me reasons to enjoy it again and exploit its most creative side. But the truth is we cannot fight our true nature, and fortunately, most people are not sick in their minds. Most people have genuinely good intentions and are genuinely kind at heart, and I met a bunch in SL (or your Flickr version) too. I will continue trusting and will give my best always, because I can, because you deserve it.

 

The mystic night of Samhain is over. The souls returned to the Purgatory to cleanse their sins. Please, be safe.

 

 

If you see demons everywhere, you will end up becoming one.

Done