It's really tough to figure out when someone is stalking you. All morning, my friend and I have been on the phone. Talking about good stuff like her french onion soup recipe that turned out great, some boys we remember from back when we were girls. New jeans she got for $2 at the Goodwill that make her legs look super long. And then she gets a text from an ex. Another text from this ex.
The two of them broke it off months ago - in fact, he was the one who broke things off before he realized she was an excellent catch. She's moved on as people do. And he just won't let it go. At first it was just sending her texts every day, stupid poems about how much he missed her and telling her to 'touch the ocean and feel my heart beating beside you.' Which just goes to show he wasn't much of a loss. Sidenote : I never liked this dude. First of all, he was too old for her. He said he was 50 years old but I'd like a gander at that birth certificate. He looked like the guy in the painting in Ghostbusters 2, Viggo,the one who wants to take over the world. Also he was a bad guy in Die Hard. But I digress.
He wasn't just physically too old, but emotionally. While also managing to be simultaneously too immature for her. He could never keep a job, was a terrible father to his grown-up kids.
I remember once he told me 'If my kids don't side with me in the divorce (Oh, he also wasn't divorced yet) I'll be like a ghost, I'll be gone. I'm using these kids in the divorce to get what I want.' Which is perfect, since that's exactly what all the experts recommend, right?
Anyhow, he was texting her all the time and we all said Ignore it. It's no big deal. But then he started calling her sisters. In fact, once he even parked outside her sister's apartment overnight, chain smoking and watching the door. That was creepy. My friend called him to say Get a hold of yourself and his response? 'Hi Baby, how are you. I miss you...' Jesus.
Then he started calling her very pregnant sister at her office, pumping her for information and upsetting her. The texts kept coming, except this time her new fiancee started getting them on his cell too. She threatened to call the police. The texts kept coming. We thought I should maybe go over there with a baseball bat and rough him up a little, but figured he would just love the attention. So she just kept ignoring him. Ignore, ignore, ignore...
Until today. Because c'mon, enough is enough. I told her to call the police. She hesitated. It's just texts, what are they really going to do? Does she want him getting in trouble with the law over something so small? Except is it that small? Is it? She said to me 'Do I really need to call the cops because someone is texting me too much?' and isn't that just so convenient for him, the way we can minimize it. Our problem is, we laugh everything off. When he was stalking her sister, we laughed about it. When he called her boyfriend, we laughed. On account of how ridiculous he looked. We laughed like we did in high school. Except it isn't high school. We have families now, she has a daughter and a fiancee and a new life she's trying to build in another province. She's trying to open the next door and walk on through but he has this firm grip on her wrist, keeping her between the two doors and she can't get away. She's having nightmares, panic attacks. She's never free of him. And it's not that funny. It's scary.
I wish I could be there when the police go to his door - and by the way for any of you going through the same thing, ten minutes of phone calls to the police and there you have it. You've got official back up. I hope they scare the shit out of him. I hope he slinks back to his parents' house with his tail between his legs and never calls her again. So we don't have to talk about him anymore.
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