It's a longy....
At the beginning of this year I moved to Tasmania (Australia) to go back to University to study. Tassie is about 3500kms south of the hometown in which I grew up. Anyway...a few weeks ago at one of my lectures I bumped into a guy I used to know in the org from my hometown (haven't lived there for 7years). This wasn't just any guy, he's a very odd ball guy (to put it lightly) that gave me some grief when I was 17y/o. I met him on a convention bus trip to Darwin in 1997, he was mates with a good friend of my in the cong at the time. So, after we met and I was exceptionally polite to him, as most good naive jw-girls are, he became a bit obsessed with me (I really don't know why) and wrote to me for a few months after that, and the letters got a bit scary towards the end. So, I was at my dads for a few months from Oct-Jan (just gone) and I found a shoebox with all my old letters in it. I went through it with a friend for a good laugh, completely having forgotten about those letters, not realising I had even kept them. W e went through them reading them in chronological order, and by the time we got to the end of them it all came back to me how bizarre this guy was, and how he had frightened me by his words at the time. And this is all from a guy that I barely knew, and had met just a few times. So, here's this guy sharing the same lecture theatre with me all these years later, all these thousands of kilometres away from where we had met! It takes far more than an obsessive guy to frighten me these days! I chatted to him briefly, and it became evident in the first few minutes that he hadn't changed one scrap. Still a very vague, very oddball guy. His first line to me was "The last thing I heard about you, you were engaged to some brother, and were getting married". I know that sounds innocent enough, but he said it in the most accusing and intimidating manner . He told me he was studying Japanese language amongst other things, and has a finance' who has just returned to Japan. He told me that he was planning to move there, as he won't have to pay any rent, and will be able to live off her family. This is a guy who hasn't worked a day in his life, despite so many in the cong who tried to give him jobs, of which he rejected saying he was too busy. He has since left the org also. M y heart automatically went out to this poor young Japanese girl, and it did of course cross my mind as to whether this girld had the same plans of marriage that he had. I thought perhaps she had returned to Japan to escape him, and the plans were all just in his mind...sorry this story is getting long winded. Anyway, I was talking with one of my Korean housemates last night (I live with a few international students from uni), we were talking about the sweet girl downstairs who seems to be getting taken for a ride by her looser boyfriend, who does nothing to contribute to the household expenses, doesn't work, and she supports him while she's studying full-time. The conversation digressed on with Hye'Jin talking about this good Japanese girlfriend of hers who has moved back to Japan who was seeing an Australian guy when she was here, they were all living together. She told me this guy would get drunk and take it out on this poor sweet girl, who seemed to be blindly in love with him no matter what he did. Hye'Jin is one of the kindest people I know, and I have never heard a bad word out of her mouth against anybody, she did however begin to go on about how much she hated this man, and how lazy he was, and how stupid he was. I was pretty shocked to hear this from her. A couple of weeks before this conversation I had told her about this guy Brad that I had known all those years ago, who I had run into on that day in the lecture theatre. I told her the story about his Japanese finance' who had returned to Japan, she asked his name and I told her it was Brad, it must have crossed her mind that it could have been the same guy that was engaged to her poor abused friend, but for some reason she didn't think it was the same guy. So, last night I asked her the name of the guy she was describing, and she said it was Brad. To which I must have become completely pale, and Hye'Jin knew automatically what she must have been thinking those few weeks before, that we both knew this same guy and he was now wreaking havoc on her friend.
I talked to dad shortly after I ran into this guy again a few weeks ago, and dad in his usual dadish way told me to stay away from him, that he was no good. He didn't elaborate and I didn't ask. Dad knows of his recent behaviours better than I, as they were in the same congregation for a number of years after I left.
I asked Hye'Jin to contact her friend to check if this girl had the same plans in mind with respects to this guy, and if she showed and signs of doubt that she share with her what I have told her.
It's difficult to describe this guys character, but he's not the sort of person you want to mess with. He's incredibly possessive and abusive, he's most definitely got a few screws loose. I'm trying to empathise with this guy, because I know that he doesn't come from the most desirable of backgrounds, but my heart really goes out to this poor young Japanese girl. Pardon me for making such a generalisation, but most young Japanese girls I have met seem quite subservient by nature, so it does not surprise me that he is able to manipulate this young thing. I realise there's very little I can do, if anything, but I feel sick to the stomach about all this, and feel a sense of responsibility towards the situation.
It's people like Brad, that make me regrettably feel that there are some people in this world who can't be helped, and we might be better off without.
Froglett xx