Secrets, Lies, and Abuse: thoughts from late 2015

I am posting this text from late 2015 now, in light of what Halifax - in the form of Katherine Salsman, Hope Swinimer, and Christine and Derek Graham - did to me and Brindi for over five years, topped by their blatant lies about adoption last week. They have essentially stolen my dog and neglected her health for five years. She looks ragged and worn and yet they told media she's been living in the Graham's home all this time - and allowed to play with other dogs! Clearly untrue, especially since they swore to the court in 2012 that she was kept away from dogs and locked up in the kennel!

For what it's worth this is how I felt a lot of the time, as I struggled to keep going so I could keep Brindi alive:

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Victims of abuse .... often hide their abuse from others.
Abusers often count on this as well. It's an age-old mechanism: the more they intimidate their victims, the less likelihood their misdeeds will be discovered.

I just realized I may be doing this unconsciously to some degree. And I suspect it may be a mistake. Why hide it? Maybe because I don't think of myself as a victim of abuse. It's not like there's support groups out there for victims of municipalities - and admittedly, this goes pretty far beyond bureaucratic bullying.

But maybe also that despite evidence surrounding me, I don't like to think of myself as a victim. Who really does?

Brindi no longer considered dangerous? GIVE HER BACK!

Please pinch me!!! Or don't, just hit me over the head with something, just knock me out forever and ever.

My anger is a mask for deep, deep sorrow and despair. My anger is my shield from the image of my poor, poor beauty.  Grinding and stomping the last bits of my shattered to the ground, it seems like all local media outlets, silent for five years, suddenly jumped aboard the "Let's blame Francesca" wagon.

Yet most of the day, it looked to me as though HRM was done for - the more they tried to show they had really done a great thing for Brindi by locking her up for 7 years and by now adopting her to a "good home" (never to be named or pictured), the worse it looked. For a fraction of a second, I may have even started thinking things just might turn my way. 

After all, the more that HRM talks about adoption, the more it looks totally in the wrong. And I was and am in the right. But. I didn't count on the fairy tale factor. The spin-dry cycle. The great fictional talents of this municipality and its stewards.

HRM is turning the screw yet again, telling a tale of how they have rehabilitated my good dog, and now (just in time for HRM to land a dismissal order using similarly shameless fictions), now, thanks to them, she is "no longer considered dangerous." So there's a whole new script: Brindi, in the wonderful care of HRM, has been transformed - not into a chronically ill senior with a dull coat and glassy eyes, but into a - gosh! - "good dog."

And the CBC headline? "Brindi the dog to be adopted after lengthy court battle." The insinuation? BIZARRELY: that the lengthy court battle part is MY FAULT!!! Nothing at all to do with HRM's seven years of mindless determination to refuse all reasonable alternatives to KILLING MY DOG!