I'd like to share with you my experience, but aside from that I am also curious what your experience is, if any: have you ever been stalked? Did (s)he cease? Has it ever come up to violence? How did you cope with it?
Most likely I am still being stalked by an ex of mine. I broke up with him more than 10 years ago, after I began to suspect that he's either developing a mental disorder or he's taking drugs (he had hallucinations, an erratic behavior at times, he assaulted me, became aggressive etc.).
I remember how scared I was, thinking that he will come up at my place and harm me or my parents, but I decided that my safety should come first so I put an end to our relationship.
Luckily we did not live in the same city at that point, so aside from plenty of e-mails and text messages I got from him, I was able to cut him off completely from my life. Or so I thought.
Fast forward, I moved to another city and got enrolled at two Universities. The admission data was made public online, since it was way before GDPR. I then had an assignment for one of my courses - it involved publishing a project online, which contained our entire name and our e-mail address provided by our Uni. A short while after, guess who pops up in my e-mails. It was him, with a mushy text saying that he'd like to rekindle our relationship. I blocked him and minded my own business.
A year after, I thought I spotted him in the city, but I wasn't sure. I googled his name and to my surprise I found out that he enrolled at one of the two Universities I also enrolled at. I'm assuming he did not know that meanwhile I quit studying there. This was particularly strange because he came to that specific Uni all the way from the other side of the country, even if the first and second biggest Uni campuses in the country were right near his hometown.
I then began spotting him more and more often. Things got somehow worse during my last relationship, when I began noticing him coming to the same bars and pubs my then-boyfriend and I went to. He always stared at me and made things super uncomfortable, but he never came up to me/ us.
The last time I saw him was over two years ago, when I noticed him in the same tram my then-boyfriend and I used to take home from work. He got off at the same station as we did and then he followed us home. I was dead scared. My then-boyfriend (I'm calling him that so I won't have to name both of them ”ex”) is super tall and I knew he was able to fight very well, and still, I felt the need of running and hiding - I was THAT scared of my ex turned to stalker.
I am not active on social media and I like to keep my life private, but last year I had to get a Facebook account for something business related. Among the first persons to like my photos was him - I froze when I saw him popping up once more. I blocked him again.
During the last months, before the lockdown, I moved to another place and was somehow forced (due to some health issues) to spend more time indoors, so I haven't seen him anywhere.
Fast forward once again until last week when I receive a weird phone call. I am volunteering for a help-line. People in need must dial a specific number and then they are redirected to whoever is available. A list of all the volunteers was published on that institution's website; the list contained our names (I signed up using only my Middle and my Last name) and our phone numbers, in case someone from that institution needs to contact us.
However, a woman called me directly and asked for help. It was the only call I got on my number since I started as a volunteer. She addressed me by my First name - which I found odd because I didn't use it when signing up. Her accent was weird and her voice sounded familiar. It then struck me today - I think it was his mother's voice.
That's what prompted me to write this myTake. I wanted to write all these things to get a weight off my shoulders.
As you can see, my stalker is someone I once knew. After he turned into a stalker, he was never physically violent, but his mere presence scares me.
Most of the times I do not think about it, mostly because I couldn't care less about him, yet whenever I see him all the past trauma comes back. All these encounters and texts could be called „circumstantial evidence”, since he didn't actually do anything else. But whenever I saw him, creepily staring at me and following me around, I knew what his eyes meant...
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