Triangulating For Control
The Spoiled Bully was the princess of triangulation. She really knew how to maneuver the people around her. She strategized the movement of people like a professional chess player. Whatever she wanted from people, she tended to get. She was extremely attractive with a charismatic and outgoing personality to match. Her gifts and talents as a songstress and musician placed her front and center on a elevated platform. As much as she would pretend to be modest and unaccepting of applause because she did not want to upstage God, she basked in the recognition of praise and adoration.
Once I got to know The Spoiled Bully, I saw beyond the façade she presented, and I believed that I got to know the real person, but once it was apparent to her that I had gotten just a little too close, she shut me out and placed me within her cyclic phase of devaluation and discard. My first initiation into her stone cold and glassy eyed matrix was during a birthday party held in her honor. She devalued me in such a way that her intentional silent treatment, gaslighting, and stonewalling knocked a scab off of my heart that left me feeling mortally wounded. Although I never understood her reasoning for mistreating me, I now know that this was all a part of her devaluation of me for her own sadistic reasons.
It took me a while to warm back up to The Spoiled Bully after her birthday party. I avoided her as much as possible when I had to encounter her at church. Although I spoke to her in my normal way of greeting her, I dared myself not to go beyond a formal greeting. I moved on with my life and became busy with work. I slowly pulled myself away from engaging with her, and I distanced myself from her at church.
My other friends, who had originally thought the world of The Spoiled Bully and believed that my friendship with her was a good thing, were stunned when I began pulling away from her. In their own well-meaning way, they gaslighted me into reconsidering that there had to have been a misunderstanding on my part regarding the mistreatment I incurred during the party. In their view, perhaps my eyes had deceived me even though I was more than well-acquainted with this type of behavior from my past.
However, I later doubted myself and reasoned that maybe there was something wrong with me. I questioned whether I had a right to be offended by The Spoiled Bully’s behavior and summed it all up to her crossing the threshold of a milestone age of turning 30. Plus, I was cautioned to forgive and let go because we were all Christians, and the Christian thing to do was to allow love to cover a multitude of sins. So that is what I did in this case.
Eventually, The Spoiled Bully worked her way back to me, and I allowed her back in. Yet, I took note of how her flying monkeys had begun to circle around me more than they ever had before. They frequently attempted to make nice with me all while smiling brightly, but I always detected that they were not as genuine as they made themselves seem. Prior to the birthday party, I did not even know that they even existed in such a big way within The Spoiled Bully’ life. It was as if they had been hidden, and if they were not hidden, then I was blind.
While The Spoiled Bully and I had been building a friendship in the early stages of love bombing, the flying monkeys were nowhere around us. Looking back, they were standing on the sidelines brooding while awaiting The Spoil Bully’s bidding. They looked upon me with disdain, and I could often tell when they were around me smiling that their smiles were fake. In fact, any time I entered their presence, it was always apparent to me that they were annoyed with me coming around them. Their attitudes were such that I frequently enquired of The Spoil Bully whether they even liked me.
Essentially, the flying monkeys became The Spoil Bully’s tools and leverages in triangulating me for further humiliation. I would come to realize they did not desire my friendship at all even though they would pretend such for public view. I knew they were not my real friends. I discerned at some point that they were simply completing an agenda for The Spoiled Bully, and they were her loyal servants. They put on Christian masks feigning love for me when they did not truly love for me at all.
Basically, I came to realize a little too late that I was in the house of God among a lot of enemies. The core group that encircled The Spoiled Bully were a few of those enemies, but I was so blind to it in the beginning. They played their fake friend cards well against me. As far as triangulation goes, The Spoiled Bully used three flying monkeys as a part of her tactics against me. If she sensed the flying monkeys becoming close to me because they actually did like me, she put a stop to it immediately.
Mainly, she would trash talk me behind my back to them and spread lies and rumors about me to them and to others. Sometimes she would even make sarcastic and snide remarks to them while in my presence as if to question me for some fault that I needed to correct before them. She would even jokingly claim that I had talked about them to her to get my reaction. Of course, I had not said anything about them to her at all. How stupid would that have been for me to talk to them about her when they had all known each other a long time before I even became a part of that church?
Nevertheless, The Spoiled Bully would use her three flying monkeys as a group to taunt me, make innuendos, and make me question my sanity through gaslighting. Despite my desire not to hang out in group settings because of my introversion and social anxiety, The Spoiled Bully would frequently set things up to make our time together become a group gathering. Oftentimes, she would enlist the help of a seemingly “prophetic” male narcissistic character from the praise and worship team to speak doom and gloom to me using bible verses. In this way, The Spoiled Bully could micromanage me back under her control.
The Spoiled Bully would also use each flying monkey individually at different times to triangulate each of us into competition, but I was always unwilling and resistant to participate in the shenanigans. Naturally, I have never had a desire to compete against others. I like to have fun. Although The Spoiled Bully claimed she wanted to have fun too, she truly wanted me in competition with the flying monkeys for her attention. Usually, I never took the bait although I could sense what was going on with her plans.
Needless to say, The Spoiled Bully orchestrated a variety of smear campaigns against me but focused the campaigns on always being started by someone else. This way, her hands were always clean. Instead of me actually being made to be the villain in her story so that my hands were always dirty, I was made out to be the spiritual weirdo – the kooky one. There was nothing worse in this particular church than being called a spiritual flake. People always questioned the validity of a weirdo’s beliefs, faith, and walk with God just because a weirdo was seen as different than everyone else.
The Spoiled Bully’s plans for triangulation were foiled the majority of the time because I never played according to her plans for me. I am an introvert, and being true to who I am, I refused to hang around the church for social gatherings unless they were considered mandatory. Even if there was some mandatory meeting, I was always the first one to disappear. I always sat near the closest exit to make a fast getaway.
Nothing was worse for me than being stuck in a group and not being able to freely getaway. It is hard enough to keep my energy contained around a group of people. The longer I am around a group of people, the faster my energy drains out of me. Naturally, I would be gone before The Spoiled Bully or her flying monkeys had a chance to come after me.
Because The Spoiled Bully could not get to me fast enough, she would attempt to get her flying monkeys to to invite me to sit with them ahead of any meetings, but I always refused every single time. Like them, I preferred being a creature of habit – sitting with the people who were more likeminded as myself. Those likeminded people were my true friends, and the more I sat with them, the less isolated I felt and the more I could discern the games The Spoiled Bully played against me.
Besides, I was supposed to be in church with the main purpose of worshiping God and hearing the word of God preached, but I also sought healing of my emotional wounds and becoming a better person. Unfortunately, I had to fight with all my might to get my healing, but instead of getting healed, I encountered more and more emotional pain and heartbreak (and not only because of the actions of The Spoiled Bully). This particular church contained a lot of beasts who were out for blood, and they fought against people they perceived as different with a mob-like mentality. They all ruled from different sectors within the church, and one of those rulers was The Spoiled Bully.
Continue for the next post.
My Voice Unchained 