When I was in college, a guy started showing up at all the same places I was. Eventually, I asked him if he was following me around. He sort of shrugged. But he never asked me out, never made any advances, never appeared threatening. Never emailed me or called or showed up at my apartment. I figured if he actually was following me around, then he was sort of a harmless guy who might have liked me but didn't really know how he actually felt or what he was doing. But it didn't really affect me, so I'd call that sort of a benign stalking.
When I was in college, a guy also started showing up at all the same places I was. He did ask me out, and in my naivety, I accepted a date with him. Quickly discovered that was the end of the line for me, but it wasn't for him. He was... everywhere. Waiting for me after every class, sitting a table over at the Student Union. Watching from beside the windows in the library.
It was when he started riding the same bus on the same line with me that I went to campus police.
Told them how long it'd been going on for. Also told them I was only 16 years old, and while he'd never threatened me, I felt very unsafe. I already had and have
another stalking situation, so a second one was more than I could handle.
They told me he wasn't a student.
He just hung out on campus. He was 32.
And when I left the campus police office, his best friend was leaning against the open door to the police office, where he'd heard every word I said.
I can't even describe how I felt when I saw him there.
Fortunately, the campus police did their job, booted the stalker off campus, and I never saw him again.
If only it were so simple with the other situation.
But as benign as this one was, as Heza's was, there's really no such thing as a good stalker.
Getting into their minds... that's the creepiest thing. Like this article showed, the stalker tends to genuinely think they're doing the right thing by their victim. Maybe because they "love" the victim, or know what's right for them, or want to save/protect them.
My ongoing stalker situation is about saving me from myself, from my "evil ways", from society and a world that has corrupted me and turned me against said stalkers. And then there's the pure "revenge for escaping them in the first place" part.
As I told them last time they came for me, over
their dead body would I go back with them.
I was armed.
This guy's British/Scottish victim isn't.
Sometimes, when I read something that like, beyond the normal reaction of wanting to bitch slap / pistol whip the stalker, I want to ask him if he's ever thought about the danger he's putting
himself in. Some of us aren't victims.
And some of us have families we'll do anything to protect.
~ Anna, who'll be spending her afternoon at the women's shelter, giving a statement to allow her & family to register to vote confidentially. Only confidential voters in our half of the state, and each time, it takes 6 hours to register. Thanks, stalkers.
