The Relationship Phobe: Stalking Standards Have Seriously Dropped

We’ve all seen it happen. A fashion label goes from being the exclusive choice of the super wealthy and celebrity crowd to being the thing that no-one wants to be seen in because absolutely everyone is wearing it.

Well it’s not fashion labels it’s been happening with. This diluting of something that only previously was something you’d see in relation to celebrities is happening elsewhere too. In the world of stalkers. Yes that’s right no longer do you have to be rich and famous and in Hello magazine every week to get a stalker, now anyone who is well nobody can get one. And that includes the self confessed most boring person on the planet that is me.

Seriously I’m not joking about this. Quite how people don’t die of boredom by just being around me I don’t know. I mean I need to have at least four months between big nights out to build myself up to it, and even going out for simple (non-alcoholic) drinks with friends is so infrequent that I, without exception, will find the new bar that I went in the last time I was out has now shut down and opened up as something (which will ALWAYS takes me a little while to …. well except concerning the bar that changed into strip club, there was something about that change that was a little more obvious). And it’s not just my lack of going out that makes me boring. I also have no exciting hobbies to speak off, am seen as the resident geek (always a VERY bad sign) amongst my friends, and within two days was asked for two different people how to set up their monitor and printer who then told me the exact model number obviously assuming I was so damn dull that I must sit around absorbing the instruction manual of all 2,000,000,000 different monitors and printers on the planet .

So we’re in no doubt about it. I am boring. There is nothing vaguely interesting enough about me to make me worth stalking, but somehow I still have managed to experience not once but twice, and I know the thought of having someone in your life who have the sole objection of what they can to get your attention might sound flattering, believe me it is far from it. What it is is a sure fire way to giving yourself not only serious stress, but neck ache as you spend all your time peering round corners and hiding to ensure said stalker is nowhere to be seen (and then if you’re me ending up walking straight into them)…

…well that is if you actually know what they look like, something that I rather unfairly didn’t with my first experience of being stalked back in the good old days of not doing very much studying hard at university. Spending a lot of time in the university library with friends, because it had expensive posh iMacs that none of us could afford, a number of us signed up to a Facebook style site (yes sadly I am that old that Facebook didn’t exist when I was at university) so we could talk online to each other (god knows why because if we weren’t sitting next to each other in the library then we were sitting next to each other in one of our kitchens or in a bar…). Anyway it’s all seeming pretty fun being on this site, that is until I go back home for the Summer. Using it to keep up to date with all the latest gossip of the people I’m not sitting next to anymore, I open it one day to find a message from someone who I know I’ve never met in my life. So okay that happens a lot these days on Facebook right? People just want to up their friend numbers so ask anyone connected to anyone to be their friend. Well yes, but this wasn’t that type of message.

This message was from a woman who started off not only telling me that she liked the look of me (it must have been a very photoshopped photograph), but then went on to tell me she worked in the local strip club (which I had at that point never have been in…) and that she’d seen me in town that morning then proceeded to list wherever not one place that I’d been in, but EVERY place before then suggesting we meet up.

So I responded with no, you freaky, scary person I think not (well actually that’s a lie I didn’t respond at all I was just trying to look a little bit cool there..)

And I thought it hard worked, but not answering her wasn’t enough. A week later I had another email where she went on and one about everything she’d done since the last time she’d written and AGAIN told me about another occasion that she’d seen me and what exactly I’d been doing. Cue me spending the rest of my time off avoiding my own town like the plague and ending up looking like the most suspicious person in the world as I edged along walls and round corners every time I did need to venture in.

But of course the invisible stalker is only one form of stalker. You can’t really tick the stalker box without having a proper physical, visible stalker, and of course being the one who will always gets picked to do the horrible task out of 750,000 other possible people, I can tick that post too.

And it all began by me being seen as something that I’m usually not. Nice and understanding. Getting caught talking to the friend of a friend of a friend on a very rare night out, I have to admit that after she’d droned on about the woman she’d just split up with for half an hour, without stopping for breath, I’d stopped listening and was actually just throwing in random “that must have been very hard for you” every now and then, and was soon trying, mainly unsuccessfully, to get the attention of someone to save me. Eventually rescued after what seemed like days, I have to say I was starting to feel a little bad by the end of the evening for being so obviously disinterested in what she was saying, but was to discover my acting skills were a whole lot better than I thought when she came over when everyone was leaving to say how much she appreciated me taking the time to listen to her.

Going off feeling a less nasty person I was still thinking I may have been a little on the mean side, but hey ho droning woman wasn’t really in our social group so it wasn’t as though I was likely to see her again.

Oh very very bless me. The next day I woke up to 5 missed calls and 5 answerphone messages from a number I didn’t recognise. Now the first thing I did was panic a little because getting me to give your my phone number is harder than getting blood from a stone so it had to be a friend or member of my family, and for five calls they’d have to have either had a baby (unlikely as no one was pregnant or someone had died). So now having gone rather pale and frankly a little wobbly I phone up my answer phone to see who it is that has died. Well no one has. It’s droning woman who starts off semi-casual with a it was nice talking to you in the first message to by the last babbling on about the really strong connection we (don’t) have and how we should meet on Tuesday for drinks.

Well first things first, no we won’t be meeting for any drinks, and secondly how the frig did this woman get my number?! Well, actually that was soon answered when another friend, who’d frankly got a little drunk the night before and gone off with someone that she was surely regretting now, phoned me to tell me first how she was regretting going off with the person she’d gone off with the night before, but secondly to ask me why the frig I’d given my number to droning woman.

Yes that’s right, my now not so trusted friend had been delightful enough to hand out my number. So hw did droning pyschotic woman manage it? Well basically what you do is take a drunk person, tell them that their friend has given them their number but now you’ve lost it. They will then say I’m not happy doing that as The Relationship Phobe doesn’t give her number out, to which droning woman will say oh no I know that look I can prove it to you it starts “07″ to which drunk friend will then realise it does and hand it out. What however drunk friend fails to remember in her drunken state is EVERY mobile number in the UK starts with “07″. Believe she is however well versed in the fact it does now!!!!

But enough about one brained celled friends and back to droning lady. Totally ignoring these five answer phone messages I assume the message will be got. I’m not interested, and I am definitely not meeting her on Tuesday. Monday comes and the woman begins calling me constantly. And I start cancelling calls constantly. In the space of 40 minutes away from my phone I have 30 missed calls, and god knows how many answer phone messages that start off telling me not to worry I’m obviously busy, but to call her later, to getting more irate and dishonest and end up with her telling me her ex (who I’ve now discovered is actually someone I know who went out with her twice and so frankly isn’t even an ex) went round attacked her the previous night (unlikely since I knew exactly where said person was the night before and it wasn’t anywhere near her!) in an obvious attempt to get my attention.

And then we hit the big 100 (I probably had more calls on my phone that day in the whole of it’s life). She obviously isn’t getting the message so there’s nothing for it I’ll have to talk to her. So I do. I answer it, and my usual calm and composed self is nowhere to be seen. This woman obviously doesn’t get the message by being nice so, with steam coming out of my ears, I tell her no, I don’t want to see her the next day. No, I don’t think we have anything in common, and no, I do not appreciate the multiple phone calls and to not phone me again. And then I hang up, And the phone calls stopped.

For a day.

Then text messages start up. That she understands that I’m not ready for a relationship, that I want to take things slow and she’s prepared to wait.

Wait that is until I go to the gym, which I’ve forgotten I mentioned I go to in the mornings on our first meeting (warning people stalkers will remember every little detail you tell them…) Guess who turns up. Her. She appears on the treadmill next to me, she works out on the weight machines next to me. Wherever I am, there she is and as much as I will her to go away with my dagger eyes and silence she won’t leave my side (Okay let’s be honest I was actually closing my eyes and saying “F**K OFF!” very loudly in my head). And it keeps on happening. The calls, the texts, the “what a coincidence” gym meetings and we’re seriously into split personalityworld now. Gym is all trying to be seen near me, and all “we’re the best of friends”, whilst calls and text messages are all “why are you being so cruel blah blah blah”.

By now it feels like it’s been going on for a year though it’s actually only been seven days… which coincidentally was when my gym membership was up. So do I deal with it properly? Get people involved to shut mad woman up in a cupboard? Well no I took the wimps way out. I left my gym, changed my phone number and saw stalker magically disappear from my life! Well kind of. I do still see her sometimes across a street and find myself tripping over myself to dive out of her sight line, but seriously at least I have my phone back and can work out in peace!

And so the moral of this tale? If you don’t want a stalker then I recommend never going out, don’t talk to anyone you don’t know and don’t ever ever ever go online. Apart from that basically do as you wish!

Photo credit: Riebart