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To Tell Or Not To Tell?

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sKePTiKal:
The spirit of adventure is setting in, Tupps! Deliberately seeking out a change of scenery, personalities, making room for "new" everything... the energy of potential... tends to lift our spirits, even when the inevitable "life stuff" continues to happen - the chores, the setting up new accounts for utilities, etc.

Time to have some FUN, eh?

Twoapenny:

--- Quote from: sKePTiKal on January 17, 2016, 08:05:29 AM ---The spirit of adventure is setting in, Tupps! Deliberately seeking out a change of scenery, personalities, making room for "new" everything... the energy of potential... tends to lift our spirits, even when the inevitable "life stuff" continues to happen - the chores, the setting up new accounts for utilities, etc.

Time to have some FUN, eh?

--- End quote ---

Oh Skep, I agree with you so completely, I'm decorating today which I find mind numbingly dull, but I keep imagining myself in a little flat five minutes from the sea, going out to a cafe and chit chatting to new people; what I do now is scan wherever I'm going before I enter because there are so many people I try and avoid around here that I feel a bit like a fugitive trying to avoid being spotted!  The tedious stuff just doesn't seem so tedious when it's in between fun, exciting, uplifting stuff, does it, cooking dinner after a lovely day out somewhere is far less of a chore than cooking dinner after a day spent doing housework and clearing out cupboards.  I really want to go out for food tonight as it's been such a boring day but it's soooooo cold here at the moment that I don't want to leave the house.  Here's to moving forward and moving on :) xx

JustKathy:
Hi Tupp!

I haven't been here in a while, and just popped in today to see what everyone was up to. Your post really grabbed me because I pulled a vanishing act myself five years ago. I didn't tell a single person where I was going. My husband accepted a relocation out of state, and we simply took off and returned to Los Angeles after five years in Arizona. The only people who knew about it were friends and co-workers who did not know my parents.

Now for the bad news. They found me within three months. As soon as co-father called the old house and found the phone had been disconnected, they immediately assumed we had move. Even though a disconnected phone number is no indication of a move, I was a "vindictive monster," and had surely taken off just to anger N-mother. I was already NC with her, but she knew where I lived and was still keeping tabs on me and hounding me with the help of my Co-Father. There was no way she was going to let me disappear.

The way they found me still makes my blood boil. I assumed they paid one of those online tracking services, but I did an extensive search on my own name and found nothing. We turned our previous home into a rental rather than selling it, so there were no records of any sale or move. It took several months before the lightbulb went off. Something so simple, it was right in front of my face.

Years earlier my Co-Father had given me a gift subscription to Los Angeles Magazine .... something he got a discount on from work. He bought subscriptions for everyone in the family. At some point, I had called the magazine and had it placed in my name as I didn't want him paying for it any longer, then paid for the renewals myself. When I moved, I sent them a change of address, but since I was now back in L.A., didn't want the magazine any longer so let the subscription lapse without renewal. But the magazine kept coming. It didn't strike me as odd at the time since magazines will often send complimentary issues to suck you back in, but then I looked at the address label and saw it had a new renewal date on it that was a full year out. I called the magazine and asked why it had been renewed, and they told me it had been paid for as a gift, and gave me co-Father's name as the gift giver. Sneaky bastard called the magazine and told them he wanted to buy me a gift subscription, and they handed him my address in exchange for the $12 cost of a subscription. I was livid. I screamed until I was blue in the face .... told the CS rep that they had released my private address against my will and to cancel immediately, which they did. Two months later, the magazine started coming again. I called back, and sure enough, he had phoned in yet another renewal. This time I told them they had released my address to a dangerous stalker and that I would be suing them. A supervisor came on the line and told me they would make a notation to not accept any more gift subscriptions in my name. I'm still mortified by this. In the digital age, magazines and newspapers have become so desperate for subscriptions that they will give out your address to anyone willing to give them money.

So, BIG lesson learned. Don't give forwarding addresses to any entity that isn't absolutely necessary. If you have any magazine subscriptions, cancel them before you go. I'm still in shock that they were able to get my address that way. What if it really had been a stalker with intent to harm me? Horrifying!

Kathy

Twoapenny:

--- Quote from: JustKathy on January 19, 2016, 06:36:36 PM ---Hi Tupp!

I haven't been here in a while, and just popped in today to see what everyone was up to. Your post really grabbed me because I pulled a vanishing act myself five years ago. I didn't tell a single person where I was going. My husband accepted a relocation out of state, and we simply took off and returned to Los Angeles after five years in Arizona. The only people who knew about it were friends and co-workers who did not know my parents.

Now for the bad news. They found me within three months. As soon as co-father called the old house and found the phone had been disconnected, they immediately assumed we had move. Even though a disconnected phone number is no indication of a move, I was a "vindictive monster," and had surely taken off just to anger N-mother. I was already NC with her, but she knew where I lived and was still keeping tabs on me and hounding me with the help of my Co-Father. There was no way she was going to let me disappear.

The way they found me still makes my blood boil. I assumed they paid one of those online tracking services, but I did an extensive search on my own name and found nothing. We turned our previous home into a rental rather than selling it, so there were no records of any sale or move. It took several months before the lightbulb went off. Something so simple, it was right in front of my face.

Years earlier my Co-Father had given me a gift subscription to Los Angeles Magazine .... something he got a discount on from work. He bought subscriptions for everyone in the family. At some point, I had called the magazine and had it placed in my name as I didn't want him paying for it any longer, then paid for the renewals myself. When I moved, I sent them a change of address, but since I was now back in L.A., didn't want the magazine any longer so let the subscription lapse without renewal. But the magazine kept coming. It didn't strike me as odd at the time since magazines will often send complimentary issues to suck you back in, but then I looked at the address label and saw it had a new renewal date on it that was a full year out. I called the magazine and asked why it had been renewed, and they told me it had been paid for as a gift, and gave me co-Father's name as the gift giver. Sneaky bastard called the magazine and told them he wanted to buy me a gift subscription, and they handed him my address in exchange for the $12 cost of a subscription. I was livid. I screamed until I was blue in the face .... told the CS rep that they had released my private address against my will and to cancel immediately, which they did. Two months later, the magazine started coming again. I called back, and sure enough, he had phoned in yet another renewal. This time I told them they had released my address to a dangerous stalker and that I would be suing them. A supervisor came on the line and told me they would make a notation to not accept any more gift subscriptions in my name. I'm still mortified by this. In the digital age, magazines and newspapers have become so desperate for subscriptions that they will give out your address to anyone willing to give them money.

So, BIG lesson learned. Don't give forwarding addresses to any entity that isn't absolutely necessary. If you have any magazine subscriptions, cancel them before you go. I'm still in shock that they were able to get my address that way. What if it really had been a stalker with intent to harm me? Horrifying!

Kathy

--- End quote ---

Hi Kathy!  It's so good to see you and I remember when you were talking about making your big escape.  I'm so glad you got away and so sorry they found you again and yes, I could have written that story myself, my mum has done things like that numerous times.  Because she's my mum, she knows my personal information, obviously, so there have been occasions where she's just phoned up and pretended to be me.  It is scary how easy it is to do this sort of thing.  Like you, I don't intend on telling anyone at all where we're going (in fact I've already started laying the cover story with my hairdresser, who I probably won't see again now before we leave, so I told her I'm waiting to hear on a job offer abroad and even made that vague).  I don't really have an online presence so I don't think that will be an issue.  No subscriptions or anything like that, there are some places that I will need to give a change of address to but I will write to them at the same time explaining that they mustn't give the address out over the phone under any circumstances as we're avoiding a domestic abuse situation.  I have found over the years that you have to use 'buzz words' for people to understand it's serious (as you found out by describing them as stalkers) so I always describe it now as domestic abuse and disability hate crime and that seems to make things stick in their heads.

Despite all of that, I know that it's quite likely she'll just phone the police and tell them I've gone on the run with my son, that no-one knows where we are and that they're worried for his safety (she's done this before).  I've got all the info of what she's done written up so if they turn up on the doorstep I can just hand them that and hopefully that will be the end of it.  But I think there's only so much you can do, isn't there, and I made the decision not to keep letting them dictate my decisions and affect the way I live my life.

It's so good to see you back and I hope you'll be able to post more and fill us in on your adventures!  Hopefully things have been good for you and even though they know where you are they haven't been bothering you too much.  It still makes me feel so sad that people can hurt each other so badly and call it love, there is something wrong with the wiring somewhere along the line, I think! :) xx

Hopalong:
Kathy,
It's great to hear from you. And remembering how hunted and haunted you felt is still very vivid to me. I hope they've receded into your rear-view mirror by now. Are you doing well? Is life feeling saner and freer or are they still pursuing?

Tupp, I think Kathy's story makes me want to repeat a suggestion. I totally understood why you feel uneasy around authorities. But wouldn't it be good to have anything your mother tries (in terms of false reports that could result in your being officially searched for) defused instantly? To know you left that assertive self-protection in your wake?

If talking to cops is anxiety producing, I wonder if you could write up a very simple statement like I was dreaming up, have it NOTARIZED (say, at a bank or something)...and simply walk in on your way out of town and hand-deliver it to the desk sergeant. You wouldn't have to stay around and answer questions or anything like that. (And whoever notarized your document for you could, if necessary, affirm that you were not irrational, had no pistol in your ribs, etc.)

Just a thought and perhaps not a useful one. I am probably fixating on this only because I have been "bullied by proxy" (via Nbrother) too...and think it's always good to step up and be on your own side. Authorities exist to protect YOU too. After all the sleazy and completely false slandering accusations my brother made about me (about my mother, but similar in some ways to what you went through about your care of your son)... the court, the judge, the attorneys wound up proving to me that when it comes to harrassment and abuse, sometimes people in the system actually do like to stop bullies.

love
Hops

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