In this segment is my time before leaving MD and staying with family for a few days. It is the first of the HONYs (to be explained). In general, names have been changed or removed. Information may have been removed or added. Length is around 9 pages.
After quitting my job with …………., while living at the room I was renting at ………….:
I saw a news story very out of place about a cop giving a man advice about how to break up with his girlfriend. It was short and very generic. It said she did not tell him how to do it, and just said it was up to him.
My food that I kept in their fridge began to go bad over the course of days to weeks. I asked [my Landlady] if my chicken taco mix smelled okay, and she said it was fine, although it did smell bad. My cream of chicken and rice smelled awful. My milk went bad a few days after buying it, and I got sick from drinking it. They did not seem to have any problems with their food. [The next time after I got sick from milk and went to use the bathroom, my landlady rushed to get in first, then called me so that I could go in. One possibility was there was a camera, and that they were expecting to film me sick. This was before the shower curtain slipped. -3-10-20]
Two weeks before leaving, I thoroughly cleaned my room. Afterwards, there was one of what looked like [my landlady’]s hairs resting across the back corner of my desk. My room is always locked.
The following is the Humans of New York entries that I saw over a period of months. I had enjoyed reading them for a long time, and at one point they went from a normal variety of experiences to almost all of the posts resonating with themes in my own life. However, they also had hundreds to thousands of comments on them relating to the content. [I didn't check every comment. -2/20/20] I include some speculations about what these posts may refer to or their intention. It seemed like the real author was Brian Andrews.
Humans of New York
Page Liked • March 29 •
“I’d always been very curious as a kid. I remember taking apart electronics and putting them back together, just to see if they’d still work. But I lost all that enthusiasm during my teenage years. My house became very dark, literally and figuratively. The lights were always off. My parents were always fighting. We never spoke to each other, and if we did, it was always in short sentences. All I cared about was getting out. I put the minimal amount of effort into school. I was angry all the time. I went through life without any goals and ended up getting a job that I wasn’t passionate about. But then one day I downloaded a program onto my office computer that gave me control over the entire network. It was my introduction to hacking, and I’ve been addicted to it ever since. I feel inspired every day. I started learning everything I could. I even discovered you can do it legally, so I’m back in school, getting my degree in information security.”
[Some people seem to want me to get into that. -12/7/18]
(Manila, Philippines)
Humans of New York
Page Liked • April 2 •
“Soon after my father passed away, my mother got addicted to gambling. We began falling behind on the rent. I realized what was happening when I found a Casino Filipino membership card in her wallet. I tried confronting her, but she got furious. She told me I had no right to tell her what to do. She began to disappear for days at a time. There was no money for my thesis project at school. I’d borrow food from our relatives just to feed my younger siblings. Then a few months ago our landlord finally kicked us out and we moved into a slum. It was so noisy and dirty. But I did my best to ignore it and focus on my schoolwork. We live in an evacuation center now because the slum burned down. My friends at school have been helping me with clothes and food. And during it all, I’ve kept up my grades. I’m graduating on April 3rd with a degree in Secondary Education. I’m going to become a teacher. I think I've already learned a special skill that teachers have to keep their personal problems out of the classroom.”
[I was planning on going back to college. It seemed like many of these were an encouragement to do well. The tone of them made a 180 once I signed up. It was as if I had got myself committed to something and would now be stuck taking abuse. I cut HONYs off after that. -2/20/20]
(Manila, Philippines)
Humans of New York
Page Liked • April 3 •
“My boyfriend left as soon as I got pregnant. I was terrified to tell my father, but he discovered my pregnancy test hidden in a drawer. He didn’t speak to me for a few days. We’d always been close, so I knew something was up. Finally he asked me if I wanted to tell him something. I began to cry. I thought he was going to kick me out of the house. But he just went to speak with my mom in the other room, and when he came back, he asked what I planned to do. I told him I wanted to keep the baby, and from that moment on he was very supportive. He cooked me all kinds of dishes whenever I had cravings. He gave me words of encouragement. He started saving money in case I needed a cesarean section. But during my seventh month he came down with a fever after wading through floodwater. The next week it turned into a cough. We took him to the hospital, went home to get clothes, but he died by the time we got back. It was so sudden. I had no idea what I was going to do. I got all my strength from my father. It seemed like keeping the baby had been a mistake. It’s been a tough few years. I had to drop out of school and find a job, but my son is doing well. He’s very smart. He comes home from school with stickers and stars. He’s a ‘Mama’s boy.’ It’s been hard, but I’ve proven to myself that I didn’t have to end a life just because I couldn’t face it.”
[This has been a theme that came up a while later. It seemed that if Brian thought I was pro-life, that a child I gave birth to could be used to control me. There is a lot of discussion in his work about abandoned children as well. -2/20/20]
(Manila, Phillipines)
Humans of New York
Page Liked • April 4 •
“I work on cargo ships. I’m usually at sea for nine months at a time, but sometimes it can go past a year. My last trip was 25 months. It’s tough out there. You’re so far from your family. It’s been easier since we got Internet last year. But before that you could only make phone calls when you got to a port. And you’d only get a letter once every two months. My mother died during a recent trip and I couldn’t even go home for the funeral. She was fine when I left, but somewhere off the coast of South Africa, the captain came into the engine room and told me she’d passed away. I was so weak I couldn’t work. The other guys volunteered to take over my shifts. Everyone chipped in some money and gave me a gift. We do that every time someone loses a family member. Your crew mates are all you have out there. All of us are going through the same thing. And if you don’t share your problems, you’ll go crazy.”
[It is common for a target to have various pain points presented to them to see which one they react to. Another possibility would be to get me to miss my mother and confide more to her. -2/20/20]
(Manila, Philippines)
Humans of New York
Page Liked • April 5 •
“I come from a village. My life would have been nothing if I’d stayed home. I’d just wake up, cook for my siblings, and clean the house. I wanted to do more with my life, so I’m working in the city to save for my education. It’s been a lot lonelier than I expected. I’m so far from home. I spend my evenings alone in my room at the boarding house. I have nothing to do but think of my family. I’ve been here a year, but I still haven’t met many people because I work so much. My coworker is my closest friend. She’s like my mother away from home. She reminds me to eat, take my medicine, and get enough sleep. If she sees that I’m sad, she tells me to rest and does the work herself. It’s just nice to feel cared for. I’m not sure if I could make it without her.”
...
(Manila, Philippines)
Humans of New York
Page Liked • April 9 •
“Since there are only two million Assyrians left, there’s a feeling that we might not survive. So we lean on our rituals. We lean on our church. We lean on our language, which nobody else speaks. It's a ‘we’ culture. Everything is about the group. And if you wander too far from the group, you become a threat. Because the group can’t afford to lose anyone else. Your relatives will remind you that you should be proud to be Assyrian. You’ll be reminded that our people were slaughtered. So it’s tough to go your own way. For the last couple months I’ve been traveling alone. My mother is convinced that this is my breakout plan. She’s been so strict on me my entire life. But a couple days ago she sent me a text message that brought me to tears. It said: ‘I know that I said you've seen enough and that you should come back, but if you want to stay longer, and you feel that it's safe, than you should definitely stay. And we'll hear from you when you come back.’”
[Lots of themes of loneliness and dependence on others. -10/13/20]
...
(Sydney, Australia)
Humans of New York
Page Liked • April 11 •
“Both of us are very passionate about the environment. We actually met at the screening of a documentary about ocean pollution. Maybe we’ll get politically involved one day, but right now we’re just trying to live sustainable, happy lives without harming anything. We try to focus on the little victories. Recently we set up a triage hospital to help injured ducks during hunting season. And a few weeks ago we organized a beach clean that picked up half a ton of rubbish. It can be hard to affect change on a global scale, but we try to set an example, and it’s nice to see ripples of change in the people around you. I’ve even got my mom teaching vegan recipes to her friends.”
[Brian Andrews is a vegetarian. He often seems to try to encourage me to become one. -2/20/20]
(Sydney, Australia)
Humans of New York
Page Liked • April 12 •
“He was clean when I met him. He’d drink and use drugs a bit, but only when he partied. But he’s not strong like me. He tried heroin and he liked the feeling. And he couldn’t stop. It’s not that he’s a bad person. He has a soft heart. He smiles a lot. But he has a demon to fight and I already tried my best to help him. I tried to move him from the area. I tried to get him into rehab. I took him to parenting courses and counseling. Things got better for about six weeks. He was acting positive and he was there every day. Even if we got in a fight, he’d stick around and work things out. But then he started disappearing again. He started getting angry and violent. Then he’d come back on drugs and act like everything was fine. And I wasn’t going to allow it. You can’t just do anything you want and come home to my children. I hate being a single mom. It’s lonely. I hate that I’m playing into an Aboriginal stereotype. But ultimately my dedication is to my kids. I haven’t cut him off completely, but now he’s on his own. He’s got to figure it out himself. He can’t visit my kids until he’s 100 percent.”
[I believe what had just happened was that I saw through the attempt to sicken me and film me in the bathroom. I had acted anxious, then I left the house and struck up a conversation with a homeless man. After that my behavior made a substantial shift. All tension left me. This lasted for a while: I think hours. I took no drugs. The reaction was psychological. However, it may have appeared as if I had. This HONY post seems to be a reaction, depicting me as in a romantic relationship. Brian Andrews did not seem to like the idea of me getting hooked on drugs, and did seem to like giving ultimatums during this period. -2/20/20]
(Sydney, Australia)
Humans of New York
Page Liked • April 14 •
“This is the first time I’ve travelled alone. My friend told me that you learn a lot about yourself when you travel alone. But so far, I find it the other way around. I feel like I learn more about myself when I have to relate to other people. Today I walked around Sydney. I saw everything I was supposed to see. I don’t even know why I did it. It just felt like the thing I should be doing. Maybe I’m just not a contemplative person. I generally feel satisfied with my life. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. I don't have to love what I'm doing to be happy. But does that make me ignorant? Should I be searching for something?"
(Sydney, Australia)
Humans of New York
Page Liked • April 16 •
“I moved here from Kenya with my husband. He became very abusive when we arrived. He made sure I didn’t have any friends. If anyone came to visit me, he’d immediately say: ‘I don’t like them.’ I was scared all the time. When my mother came to visit from Africa, she could tell something was going on. A mother can always tell. She saw how he spoke to me. When she left for the airport, she seemed so worried about me. It broke my heart. So the next time he hit me, I called the police. And I’ve never looked back. I have a great new boyfriend now. The kids are happy. I’ve got a job and I’m back in school. Things are really perfect. But I beat myself up a lot. I think: ‘If I’d only left earlier, I’d have been here so long ago.’ But I did leave. I’m here now. And that’s the important thing. Sometimes I need to remember to pat myself on the back.”
[As if Ace was an abusive relationship and a new one is not? -12/7/18][To be clear, I was not in a romantic relationship with Ace. We would have been considered friends and colleagues. -10/13/20]
(Melbourne, Australia)
Humans of New York
“I’m not looking to set the world on fire, but I need something to challenge me. It feels like I’m reaching a critical juncture and I need to make some sort of decision. Up until now I’ve just been floating along. I’ve been at the same job for a long time. I do the same things day in and day out: smoking, drinking, things like that. It’s just so easy to be a consumer. It’s so easy to reach for pleasure and avoid pain, so that you never have to face the future or think about getting old. I don’t have anything elaborate in mind. Maybe just get out more, or move to a new place. Maybe have my son live with me for awhile. I just want to prove that I can set a course and do the things I say I’m going to do. Or if I can’t, I at least want to be honest with myself. So I can stop beating myself up about it.”
(Sydney, Australia)
Humans of New York
“I'm studying abroad right now. I have a bit of a 'boyfriend thing' going on back home. He's a nice guy. We met at a party and twenty minutes later he held my hair while I vomited. Even though I wasn’t very attracted to him, he intrigued me. I’d never met a boy who didn’t just care about sex. I’d only dated football players and gross teenage boys. He was different. He genuinely cares about people. He’d bring me all kinds of presents. One time I had a bad week at school and he brought me a gift package with all my favorite things. It was nice to have that much attention. I did just enough of the girlfriend thing to keep him around. Nothing he did affected me, and everything I did affected him. It was a weird sense of power to be the one with less feelings. I’d always been in the opposite position. Even after we broke up, I still hung out with him and let him give me gifts. He even gave me this journal for my trip.”
[Ace technically was never a football player although he does love it. After reading this, I started copying down this and all the previous ones that I thought were meant for me. What he is describing, having a sense of power by being the one with less feelings, that describes a narcissistic relationship. It is about making people desperate for you, to need you, so you have power over them. -12/7/18][I had been keeping a regular journal while working, but had stopped afterwards. It appears Andrews wanted me to continue writing. -10/13/20]
(Melbourne, Australia)
Humans of New York
“My father had an ulcer that became infected. It was relatively simple to cure but he refused to believe the doctors. Instead he diagnosed himself with some sort of virus. He stopped taking his medicine. He created his own ointments instead. He’s very intelligent so his reasoning could sound very convincing. It was hard to identify when it crossed the line into mental illness. But the infection never healed. He went from surfing and swimming every day to barely being able to walk. He aged twenty years. And still he refused to go to a doctor. He’d isolate himself from anyone who challenged him. When he finally collapsed and was admitted to a hospital, the doctors said he had the lowest red blood cell count they’d ever seen. Only then did he accept that things were out of his control. He’s much healthier now. He’s almost back to normal. He’ll occasionally fall into the old script of defending his actions-- but he manages to catch himself.”
[I mostly stay away from doctors, and don't have medical insurance. I used to take essential oils. -12/7/18][This is the other example of medical insurance being the first thing he seems to want to ask me. My act of copying down the HONYs would have communicated to him that I knew it was him that wrote them. -2/20/20]
(Sydney, Australia)
Humans of New York
“We met two years ago at the office. At the time he’d just gotten out of a really bad breakup. It started with just lunch and coffee. Then we started meeting after work. We hooked up a little-- somewhere between second and third base. I told him that I liked him so if it wasn’t going anywhere then we couldn’t be friends. But that’s exactly what ended up happening. It’s excruciating. It seems like we’re always on the edge of a relationship. We hang out. We go to the beach. I’ll go to his place, cook dinner, watch a movie, and then leave. We get handsy. We might kiss a little. But that’s it. Recently we went on a trip to New Zealand and shared a bed for four days. We spooned every night but nothing else happened. I know I’m complicit, but when I push him on it, he acts confused and says that he has a lot of friendships like this. We kissed a little on my birthday last week. The next day I texted him: ‘I’m not going to pretend this isn’t happening.’ He wrote back: ‘Let me think about it. I’m in meetings.’ And he still hasn’t replied.”
[I am usually careful about being covered up, but one time, a few hours before this, the curtain in the shower slipped. After that I acted very hurt. -12.7/18][My mother posted a passage from Luke on Facebook about not worrying what you will wear. Also …………., the son of the family who lives in an adjacent room was talking it sounded like on a radio program about himself, like he was psychoanalyzing himself. [I used to like to listen to psychological lectures.] He was hyped up and shouting this way for hours. It should not have to be explained how wrong it is for a man who was looking for a girlfriend to then put that girl under "investigation" and then get to see this girl naked, and then ask her for sex when the balance of power is such that this is no different than statutory rape. -2/20/20]
[I responded on Facebook] You are doing the right thing being open with him. Whether friends or more, you don't want to be in a situation where you are hurting each other. You have to be honest in your relationships or they aren't real. Even if you care deeply about someone, sometimes people have differences or are in different situations that get in the way of being close. If that is something that is going to tie you up in life and cause you pain, you need to face that and move on.
[Attempt number 9,000 to say no and that that is absurdly inappropriate, considering the "coercive environment." -12/7/18]
Humans of New York
“I was at a rave when I was sixteen, and my mates said ‘Try this.’ And it made me the opposite of who I normally am. I’d always been really shy, but suddenly I was dancing in the crowd and talking to everyone around me. Everyone else had issues too so it felt like I belonged. Soon I found a source and it became every weekend for the whole weekend. I’d be completely wiped on Monday so I started skipping school. I ended up flunking out. My depression and anxiety got really bad. I was getting in fights. I lashed out at anyone who tried to stop me. When I was seventeen I tried to run away from home but got pulled over. My mom sat me down and said: ‘If you keep going down this road, you’re not a son of mine.’ I’m better now. I just do it once a month. I know what’s at stake. My anxiety is much better now, but I think the stutter might be permanent.”
[12/7/18 - sometimes I would seem content out of the blue. It seemed to me that this person was very concerned I was going to get hooked on drugs, and tried to steer me clear of them.]
I had just moved out of my …………. room and was staying with my family for a few days before moving to …………..
…"
Sunday, April 29th. I'm staying with my parents for two days. I arrived yesterday and greeted the animals. I saw my father first. He still hasn't gotten a job, and things are not looking good. [My father is an experienced software engineer. The job market was booming. It should have been easy for him to find work. -2/20/20]
...
While I was rearranging my things, my mother entered the room to talk. She wanted to know if everything was good between us as I had been quiet and staying away.
…
She asked if I had been traumatized by something back then. …[It seems childhood traumas are considered vulnerabilities or pressure points which are used as rational to harass people. It may be difficult for the average person to wrap their head around the depravity that is status quo in a harassment campaign. A person's mother can be forced to betray her child, and get them to admit to being abused, sexually or physically, or to something that causes them unbearable pain, just so that pain can be used against the child to turn them into a puppet of their tormentors. The heartbreak of both the mother and the child is beyond what most people could imagine. -2/20/20]
...
We talked about the Korean drama she is watching with daddy, where people live under cameras like roommate and a panel of judges tries to determine who likes whom. She started to ask about my life, if I was going to move where the company put me. I just said I had no such plans. She asked me what my plans were for future living situations. Would I want to buy? "I don't plan to rent forever." "Do you like living in a room in someone’s house?" "It's better than some things." "You don't have as much privacy." "It isn't mine." I was vague and changed the subject. I told her I had been listening to a guy named Jordan Peterson. She started asking more questions about my life, and I just said I didn't want to talk about it. Then she went down stairs. We watched some of that Korean drama a bit later, and then started talking about how nice their police are, and this crazy video about a North Korean cop being beaten by an old lady with a purse and sulking away, and how amazing it is that the North and South are ending the war right out of the blue as it appears to us. Then we started talking about Daniel's new job. She didn't remember what the name of the company was, just that he had had a phone interview, and they wanted him to come in and meet everyone. She brought Daniel out, and he told us that the company was called ………….. He said it was two blocks from the White House, and that they are asking him to supervise some junior developers/programmers. ………….. The location is some real estate. [That is around where FBI headquarters is located.] ... He said the guy who called him was named ………….? and that he thought the "interactions would be better." I asked what he meant by that, and he told me that people often felt the need to fake their qualities [Narcistan! Clear narcissistic culture], and the unrealistic requirements they place on themselves can be discouraging, so he felt as a leader, one of the most important things he could do was to cultivate an environment where people could be open with their flaws.
…
Mom called it the "imposter syndrome" and said I should watch Ted talks about it.
…
Today, she came out while I was packing things in the car. She had some conversations she wanted to share with me that she had had with ………….. She thought I might find them interesting. Then she said she had been thinking about what I said yesterday, when I kept asking if there was anything else with ………….. She said she thought she might remember something. Normally, she just puts things behind her and forgets about it, because what good does it do to dwell on the past? She thought there might have been something about a drone or a camera, that he had a camera in my room, or was filming me when I didn't know it. She couldn't remember what she had done about it. She asked me if that had happened.
…
[I was responding to the topic of children being bullied that] someone's level of development or gender doesn't mean that that isn't a person and it is okay for them to be used as a punching bag or trampled. Just like anyone. If I had seen someone treat someone else the way that …………. treated me, I'd say that person is trash, and to the one who was abused, that I am sorry this happened to you, and we should go with better people so we don't have to be so miserable. She said …………. wanted her to talk to …………. about the way he treated …………., and I thought she should. She said she did, but that didn't matter. "Then he's going to hell. That's his choice. You've done what you should do." "But I still hope that he can be redeemed. Isn't there anything that he can do?" [This isn’t the way she normally talks, and was kind of forced.][What she says about asking if there is any way he can be reformed suggests Brian would be concerned that if I knew he had been watching me in my bedroom, I would be angry with him, and would not be interested in him personally. Also, the way she was speaking was not quite natural or like her. It seemed to me like perhaps she had an earpiece and I was in part carrying out that conversation with Brian Andrews. That would mean my stalker was forcing my mother to act as his mouthpiece so he could work on playing me. To think of apologizing or making amends in such a way, it is hard to imagine this person is not a malignant narcissist or psychopath. -2/20/20] "Of course. He can realize that there are things he has done for which he deserves to burn, and... really what we are asking is that he get right with God. He has to learn how to respect another person." I told her when she said that … this is just the way things are, like you should just accept it, "It is not acceptable. I would not tell the victim to accept it." Mom thought things done in the past should be let go. "The past is relevant in so far as it is relevant to the character of the people in the present."
...”
Humans of New York
“I was raised with that Jewish intellectual worship of knowledge. But all my professors in college were small-minded nasty little ***** getting off on their own power, wanting me to parrot them while telling me they didn’t. So I decided I was a nihilist and that I was going to do as many drugs as possible. If the goal is to spend your whole life trying to get rewards to trigger chemicals in your brain, why not go straight for the chemicals? But that didn’t work out very well. It quickly became less of a philosophy, and more of a massive drug addiction.”
[This appears to be an apology. He felt the way to heal the shame I might have felt was to show some of his own, so we are on the same level of ego. -2/20/20]
Some comments from family:
[My mother's comment] This is confusing, and I don't recognize the conversation.
[My comment] About childhood trauma?
[My mother's comment] I did not consider your childhood to be a traumatic one. And I was (as far as I knew) always fair with you.
[My comment] ...
I do not need to name him here, and I only included what was necessary to get my point across. I am aware there is nothing in that short statement that demonstrates that you are an informant, but I think the point I make is an important one for people to understand the nature and depravity of the program.
[My mother's comment] The program...
[My comment] The harassment program.
[My comment] The harassment program meaning the political harassment program that began in 2017 at Porcfest.
[My mother's comment] Ok, I was never part of anything like that, and to my knowledge (which is considerable), none of the family at home were.
[My mother's comment] Ironic that in the place we thought you would find true libertarian freedom, you found emotional tyranny.
[My mother's comment] The flow of this post is a bit confusing because you keep putting stories from Humans of New York in between personal things.
Maybe if you format it with quotes in-set from the other text, it will be more obvious.
[My comment] Unfortunately, people interested in freedom seem to attract undercover police. It's like we threaten their choke hold on the country or something.