Do I Have a Target on My Back? (approx. 15-16 min. read)

You ever feel like there’s a target on your back, because I do. I feel like the moment I try to do something outside of my comfort zone, something goes awry.

Last week I went shopping, not for groceries or necessities, it was entirely for fun and I was going with a friend that I’d met at my DBT group; someone that understood mental illness.

For those of you that are following me, you know that this was huge for me because it had been over a decade since I went shopping for the fun of it. I was so excited that I barely slept the night before and it wasn’t until I got up the next morning that I realized that it was because I was so excited. Being excited about going out was such a foreign feeling, that I really had to analyze what I was feeling.

Little did I know that I was going to have one of the biggest triggers I’d had in ages.

My friend whom I’d met quite recently arrived at my place around 8:30 because we’d decided it would be easier if I drove because of Laddie; my service dog. We hugged each other when she got to my place and then we got in my car to drive the half hour into town getting to the mall just as the stores were opening.

I wanted to stop at the jewellery store that was located in the mall because I wanted to surprise my husband, Gary with a new wedding band for Christmas. The store was part of the chain we had bought most of our jewellery from, including his original ring. He lost it quite a few years back when he was doing some work for one of my family members and they wouldn’t let him go back and look for it, but that’s another story entirely.

Anyway, the jewellery store wasn’t open yet, so we decided to do the rest of our shopping first. We walked around the mall, talking and getting better acquainted as we went in and out of the stores in the mall. It seemed like we had the same interests because we were both interested in the same stores and we purchased some pretty awesome stuff before heading back to the jewellery store.

When we got to the jewellery store, the clerk, who I later found out was the manager, looked at me then at Laddie and made hand and facial gestures like she wanted to touch him, but shook her head no before I could even respond, so she knew he was a service dog and that he was working. I thought her gestures were quite exaggerated, but she was in sales and I figured she was trying to get on the right side of a sale.

I was able to pick out the same one quite easily. The clerk motioned for me to follow her to the check out area, which I did, where she scanned the ring and gave me the total amount that I owed, including tax. As I put my bank card into the bank machine to pay for the purchase, she told me she was going to go and clean the ring and went over to another counter behind me.

I verified the purchase price on the bank machine, punched in my password and when the machine started making the boink, boink sound for me to remove my card, I did. Less than two seconds after I had pulled out my bank card, the clerk was back in front of her computer and I noticed that the screen was blank, but I just figured that it had gone to sleep.

The manager turned to me and asked me if the transaction went through and I said yes. She turned away from me, fiddled with her computer some more and then asked me again if it had gone through. I repeated yes and told her once again that it had gone through and that it had actually “boinked” at me when it was done, but she didn’t seem to hear me; in fact, she seemed quite distracted.

After about five minutes, she turned back around to face me and told me that the payment hadn’t gone through, I was gob-smacked because I knew that it did and I immediately pulled out my cell phone so that I could go online to prove it to her. I signed into my online banking, pulled up my account and there it was – ******’s $380.53, so I showed it to her.

She dismissed me and said something about the payment being “orphaned” on her end and told me that I would have to put it through again. I shook my head in disbelief, showed her my phone again and reiterated that it had gone through and I had proof. She dismissed me with her hand and said no, you don’t understand, it didn’t go through on our end. I told her that it had to have gone through, otherwise it wouldn’t be showing on my account, but all she did was tell me that I had to put through the payment again.

I looked at her as if she had two heads and told her there was no way I was going to put it through again, when it was clear that it had already been taken out of my account. She said that I either paid for it again, or the ring wasn’t mine.

I was starting to question myself, as most people with mental illness do and I turned to the friend that was with me; showed her my phone so she could see that it had been taken out of my account and asked her what she thought? She looked at my phone, got this really disgusted look on her face and agreed with me, so I turned back to the clerk and repeated that I wasn’t going to put it through again. I was really starting to get angry about the situation and told the clerk that I wasn’t leaving the store until she either gave me the ring I purchased or refunded my money.

I really was starting to panic …I didn’t know what was happening and I had only known the friend I was with for a couple of months and this was the first time we had been shopping together. I didn’t want her to see me have a panic attack …I was worried how she was going to take it; whether she would think I was a bad person, or worse that this “situation” would end our friendship?

The clerk started saying something and it brought me back to reality. She said that what I was requesting wasn’t store policy, and that’s when I said it was a ridiculous policy, that I wanted to speak to the manager and that’s when she admitted that she was the manager. I was taken back because if she was the manager, why was she treating me this way? All I could say was that I wasn’t going anywhere until I got what was owed to me.

She excused herself and said she was going to call her head office to see what they could do, but at the same time gave me a number to call …I should have known she wasn’t calling her head office, because why would she have asked me to call her head office at the same time, but sometimes I don’t think in the moment, and being an honest person myself, I didn’t expect her to lie to me, so I took the number from her.

I turned my back to the manager and looked down at Laddie because he’d sensed my fear and was sitting on one of my feet looking up at me. I told him for the millionth time since I got him two years back, that he was such a good dog and asked him if I had an X across my back; like a target, before I called the number the manager had given me. He was my sounding board when I was being triggered and I was being triggered.

Truthfully, I was incredibly anxious at this point, and the pores of my skin had started to open, and I started to sweat... My heart was beating a million miles an hour. I had never been in trouble with anyone other than my parents, and I’m close to sixty, so I was starting to lose my shit.

I looked over at my new friend, smiled as best as I could and said I was sorry. She asked me what for and I said, “We’re supposed to be Christmas shopping.” She smiled back at me and said we are,” and turned her phone towards me so I could see the screen and then she laughed; she was on Amazon’s website, in the toy section. I’m sure she was trying to ease the tension and I was grateful she was with me and I wasn’t alone, and I laughed with her. It was a really nervous laugh, but when I get upset, I laugh – go figure!

The phone rang as the connection went through and it brought me back to reality, but I was immediately put on hold. I turned back around to the manager to see if she had any news for me and that was when I saw that there was a security guard on the other side of the counter. My heart skipped a beat and before I could turn back to my friend to ask her if she thought the security guard was there for me; he came up behind me and he startled me; I’m hypervigilant especially when I’m triggered.

I smiled at him and said something like thank god, did you know that they just stole money from me, but he retaliated with you need to leave the store. Once again, I was taken back because I really thought I was in the right, and here I was being told to leave the store by a security figure. I didn’t know what to think and asked my friend to pinch me because I truly felt that I had to be dreaming. I hadn’t been out shopping for fun in decades and here I was being treated like I was a criminal and a degenerate and I was being dismissed.

It was a nightmare come true because injustice is one of my biggest triggers, and here the injustice was being directed at me, again.

The security guard held out his pad and pencil and asked me to spell my name out for him and all I could do was glare at him. I was trying to figure out if this was some sort of joke. They stole my money and the staff were treating me like I was a criminal in front of at least ten people; including my new friend.

I think I glared at the guard for about a minute. I really wanted to hate him, but time was all messed up, everything was messed up and then he said, “you aren’t going to give me your name?” I continued to stare back at him while trying to figure out what I should do. As I mentioned, I’ve never been in trouble before and the store I was being asked to leave stole money from me. I was trying to figure out in my head if they could charge me. I was trying to think about situations I’d ever heard about that were similiar and whether the police would actually come and take me away in handcuffs. Fuck! I couldn’t believe this was happening to me and I tried to think but my brain was in fight or flight, and not much good to me at the time.

The next thing I knew, was the security guard turned to my friend and asked if she was related to me and when she said no, he asked for her name. I snapped out of it long enough to tell her not to give him her name. I mumbled that this had nothing to do with her and then went back inside my head so I could try to figure out what I should do.

The guard was frustrated with the whole situation, you could see it on his face, and he turned back to me and said, you have five minutes to leave the store or I’m going to call the police. I just stared at him as he went on to say that they would charge me for trespassing, but I was lost in my head and all I could think was WTF? I didn’t do anything wrong. I picked out and paid for a wedding band that I wanted to give to my husband, and I was being threatened with the risk of going to jail.

All I could think about was that there were so many people staring at me and my service dog. I just wanted to crawl under a rock. My post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) wreaks havoc with my brain a lot of the time, and this was definitely no exception. I wondered briefly what everyone was thinking and thought to myself that they would never forget me, that they would always look at me and point and say, that’s the woman that was thrown out of ******’s by security. It was then that I overheard the security guard say that he was going to call the police.

In that moment, I was a little girl again, being scolded by my abusers. I had not done anything wrong, but here I was being centered out and punished and I couldn’t figure out why.

I was still standing there trying to figure out what the heck was going on when the security guard told me he was calling the cops and started to dial as he turned and walked away from me. I was so angry and frustrated, but I had a feeling that if I stayed it wouldn’t work out well for me.

I was trying with all of my strength to hold myself together and get out of the store without having a fit of rage. Rage is a symptom of PTSD and they were pushing me to my utmost limit. I ended up saying fuck you to the guard before I stormed out of the store. I was balling my eyes out in frustration at being humiliated, even though, I didn’t do ANYTHING wrong.

As I walked away, I told the patrons in the store to beware that the jewellery store might rip them off like they had done to me. I walked out of the building, while holding my cell phone in my hand because I was still on hold with their head office.

I was a blubbering mess and I couldn’t figure out what to do. I didn’t understand what had just happened and felt like I was in shock. When I got back to my car, the store’s head office told me that the best they could do was put the money back into my account by the end of the day, but in my head, they had already stolen from me and I was furious. At the time I wrote this blog, my account was still in a deficit of $380.53 and I had absolutely no proof that I hadn’t received the ring, other than my friend being there.

When I got home, I called the police and they repeated to me what the security guard said. They would have charged me, and if need be, I would have been handcuffed and hauled out of the store.

My first question is where is the justice in what happened to me?

Doesn’t it matter to anyone that the store stole money from me, and refused to reimburse me?

What about the fact that they treated me like a criminal?! ME?

Honestly, I have no idea how to get back to where I was in my healing because my head is swimming with the injustice of it all. I did absolutely nothing wrong and here I sit with almost $400.00 stolen from me and nobody gives a rat’s ass. I’m a good person yet it feels like I have a target on my back and no matter what I do, injustice seems to be lurking around the corner. Right now I just want to stay in bed and hide from the world as my head and my heart are on full to overloading and I don’t have the strength, especially at this time of year to fight back.

Stay safe and stay strong. Thanks for following.