Stalker.
There I was, standing with my bike outside of a small strip of decades-old businesses, across the street from a brick church on Central Avenue. It was a little chilly out, and had been raining on and off, but the exertion of riding my bike ten miles as fast as I could from Schenectady to Albany, compounded by the heightened anxiety that fueled me through it, had warmed my body to an almost comfortable temperature. Rush hour traffic zoomed by me as I glared through them toward the parking lot of the church, focused intently on Tara's car. I had been tracing her movements all day, from one surprising location to another, pedaling until the burning in my calves went numb as I acted like I was a detective trying to urgently solve a dire mystery. As I stood there, I hoped no one could see me even though I was right out in the open, like a squirrel thinking being still made them suddenly invisible. I put my hood up as if it'd make any difference on my conspicuousness--if anything, it probably just made me look even creepier and more suspicious. I didn't know what I wanted to gain from this secret mission. Maybe I thought there was comfort to be found in seeing her, even if it was from a distance. Maybe I needed to see her exit this church with my own eyes to believe she was doing what she was doing. Maybe I hoped she'd see me and suddenly want to speak again. Maybe I was terrified of what actually letting go of her would mean for my life.
It had been over a week since she had blocked my number and all of my social media accounts. I knew I was genuinely worried about her in a very real, loving way. I wanted to understand her, what she was going through, and why. On top of that, I knew I felt entitled to an explanation, no matter what modern relationship politics said to justify stonewalling and ghosting a loved one. By this point, I knew exactly what Tara was doing there, and it only left me even more befuddled, another shocker to keep me up every night with questions I wasn't allowed to ask. Nothing she had been doing made any sense to me. Much of it conflicted with everything I knew about her. I watched her walk out to her car. I got what I wanted, but it of course didn't give me what I needed, and I still had no idea what that even was. She drove off back in the direction of home and I resumed riding toward the Whole Foods up the road so I could get something to drink and stave off getting any more dehydrated than I already was. Not long after, I'd see her drive by me in the same direction like she'd turned around. Did she notice me? Was she going to do something else totally out of character back in Albany? I knew I'd make sure to find out later.
For the first time in my life, I was telling lies to everyone I knew. I had to, so as to keep what I was doing separate from my reality. If the sum of my life was made up of words, whether spoken or written in graphic and brutally honest detail like everything else had always wound up, ensuring it remained isolated to my head almost made it seem like it were just my imagination. If no one else ever knew, did it even really happen? Did a murder really happen if no one ever confessed and they never found a body? I resolved to never tell anyone what I'd been doing for as long as I lived.
This became hard as my reckless behavior was beginning to impact my life. By the time I grabbed a seat at Whole Foods up the street from that church, I realized my phone was gone. I searched the same pockets over and over again, but it was nowhere to be found. I began to panic. As a homeless kid, it was probably the most important, and valuable, thing I owned. I needed it for just about everything, including but especially if I were to continue making sure Tara was okay. There was absolutely no way I'd be able to afford a new one, that was for sure. I'd spend over two hours retracing my tire tracks and meticulously combing the sidewalks and gutters of the mile or so between where I remembered checking it last and the Whole Foods. It was during this embarrassing search that Tara passed by me in her car. Later, some girl would scream something at me from a car, but the music in my headphones that I was almost always wearing prevented me from hearing what she said. After that, another car honked at me and waved. Someone else drove by and threw a stuffed beanbag head at me. It felt like everyone somehow knew what I had been doing and I was getting what I deserved. I felt so fucking stupid.
How did I get to where I was under that overpass, riding through dust, car exhaust, shards of glass, and pigeon droppings on the sidewalk, as the person I desperately wanted to be with drove by me like I was nothing more than a piece of litter on the shoulder of the road? How did I become what just about anyone would consider a "stalker"? How did I justify doing something so disturbingly invasive to someone who once trusted and confided in me her every fear and trauma? I can't remember what I was thinking, honestly. I no longer felt like a full person, let alone in control of myself. As dramatic as it sounded, I could still only think of myself during brief moments of clarity as legitimately crazy--it had finally happened, I thought: I'd snapped and literally gone crazy, driven only by raw emotions that apparently overpowered everything from my rationality to my ethics. Logically, perhaps I rationalized it all with my very reasonable amount of concern for my physically, mentally, chronically ill ex who was acting out in bizarre, unexpected ways. Maybe I felt heroic and romantic, thinking she'd thank me for never giving up on her one day because my watchful eye allowed me to swoop in and save the day when it all inevitably came to a head. I'm sure I distinguished myself from all the other unstable stalker ex-boyfriends by resting assured she'd always know as well as I did that I'd never put my hands on her or physically harm her in any way. I wasn't one of the scary or dangerous stalkers, after all, I'd tell myself. I'm sure I felt this behavior was fair because of how mean, deceptive, and reckless she had been with my heart over the last two months, like her abuse vindicated my own. I know I consciously believed that nothing I was doing was even real as long as no one ever found out I'd done any of it; that as long as I never spoke it out loud, it would never become the truth. I guess I at least must have felt the shame and guilt that I should have, somewhere in there.
Once I eventually gave up looking for the phone, I was sure someone had found it and picked it up. The chances of them trying to return it were slim to none, as far as I was concerned, even with a shitty iPhone like mine. I worried about all of the accounts I was logged into on it. I got out my laptop, hoping to use the sliver of battery power left to activate the Find My Phone feature. My power adapter was broken and a new one wouldn't be coming until the next day, but time was of the essence. The computer said something about being unable to use the service because I was out of data and without a wifi connection, and shortly after died. When I got back to the squat, I deceptively told Andy I had dropped my phone while riding my bike back from Schenectady. He could tell I was really freaking out and offered to help in any way he could. Now using his laptop, I jumped through all the frustrating authentication hoops and was able to access Find My Phone. It said it was in Watervliet, a half hour away. He was able to talk his ex-girlfriend into letting us borrow her car, but we had to walk there first to get it. We drove to where the pin was dropped on the map, going off of just the cross-streets. We couldn't use a laptop while outside, and his phone was both out of data and unable to connect to any nearby wifi, so we at first tried to go door-to-door. No luck. We found a nearby McDonald's and used their wifi to try and sound the alarm on the phone in hopes of being able to hear it, but it wouldn't work because my phone didn't have any data left for the month. These were what people called "first world problems", I thought to myself, but being homeless and poor, every resource counted ten times more than it did for a normal person. It stung that we had borrowed a car from a rich girl who got it for free from her sister and lived in a house for free thanks to her parents.
Soon, it reached a point where I had to accept defeat and Andy had to return the car. I started trying to internally accept that my phone was gone forever. My life was over, after all, so what did I need a phone for anymore, anyway? Thankfully, later that night, Andy would get a call from my brother. A man who owned a small vacuum cleaner repair store had found it on the ground and when he got home from work went through my contacts and called the first person to share my last name. I was so relieved, so grateful, and hadn't learned my lesson at all.
By April, I had a daily routine of obsessively checking Tara's social media to see if she'd RSVP'd to any events on Facebook, who was liking her posts, if she had been liking anyone's pictures on Instagram, anything. The internet made lurking others so easy, but because I knew the one or two passwords she used for everything, I logged into all of her accounts. There were moments when I could even watch her exchange Facebook messages in real time. I'd gone into her Gmail and to her Google settings and activated all the history options so I could track what she had been searching, what she had been watching on YouTube, and what destinations she had been inputting on Google Maps. I watched her phone activity and followed every online footprint that I could. She would eventually text me to ask if I was doing it, since she'd get notifications that an unfamiliar device was logging into her accounts, and because I once had to change her password just to get into an account. When she confronted me about it, I lied. She was all I thought about. I was totally and utterly obsessed with her. Anything I was ever able to glean from the private things I saw felt like a clue, but it all just got me more lost. I knew the only way I'd get any real idea of what was actually going on with her was if I were somehow able to access her actual phone. Whatever was going on behind the scenes was likely revealed in her text history, but there was no way for me to get to that. I'd spent hours online reading countless threads on how someone could theoretically remotely hack into someone else's phone from another device, but just about all the results ended with trying to sell me a scam product.
The night before her birthday, I texted her to ask if I could come pick up the pigeon mug she'd gotten me for Christmas. It meant a lot to me and I really wanted to have it. I also wanted an excuse to see her up-close, of course. The events that transpired from that were very strange. She asked if I had to get it that night, and I told her no; that I was only asking then because I would be nearby later. Before she could even respond, I went off and started sending sappy, fraught texts.
"I really want to try to be friends again."
"Life without you in it in some way fucking sucks."
"Am I ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for you? Do you ever miss me? Be honest."
She responded, "Nothing I'm feeling at this moment makes any sort of sense and I'm in some ego dystopia whirlwind so I don't know if answering that question is how I feel or not."
I asked her what that term meant and she said, "It's when your logical brain knows something but it makes no difference in emotional response."
I kept pressing.
"It's complicated," she told me.
I said anything I could think of to reassure her that it was safe to be open and honest with me.
"I don't think I'm mentally with it enough to have this conversation right now," she eventually forfeited.
Everything she had just said only teased my already worsening paranoia. At that point, part of me believed she was saying this shit intentionally, to fuck with my head.
I apologized and told her I was so worried about her because of how weird she'd been acting.
"What do you think caused all these recent problems?" I asked.
"My dad," she answered.
It both did and did not make sense to me. Suddenly, she started sending me texts full of frantic typos.
"Are you ducking outside"
"RE you hoursis"
"If of my gosye"
"My house"
I honestly was not.
"There's someone outside."
"Wir h a flashlight"
A surge of fear struck me and I started speeding toward her house even after she told me she didn't want me to drive by and check. If there were ever a moment when I could be permitted to go against her wishes, it was then, I felt. She said it was definitely a person, at the end of the driveway with a flashlight. I was pulled up out front and didn't see anyone, but before I shut my headlights off she exclaimed, "THAT. THAT LIGHT."
But it was me.
She told me I could come in real quick and grab the mug. She gave me an inch and I tried to take a mile. Her appearance was so frail and gaunt, her face colorless with vacant, dilated eyes. To my surprise, she was very inviting and led me into the kitchen to sit down at the table. My heart was racing, but I had to hide it so as not to further stress her out. She said she hadn't slept in four days and couldn't keep food down. It was the most emaciated I'd ever seen her. I don't even remember what we talked about, but I do remember how long it had taken before she started talking to me like someone she actually recognized. According to her, the light she saw was probably her schizophrenic neighbor who was off his meds and sometimes wandered onto other people's properties. At some point toward the end of our unusual reunion, I asked if I could have a hug. Her face contorted into a grimace that looked somewhere between offended and frightened. It was one of the weirdest things I'd ever seen a person do. Her demeanor changed completely and she told me I had to leave. It was like she remembered she was supposed to hate me or something. I apologized if I had said or done anything wrong. When I'd ask her outright the next day, "So last night before I left, did I do something wrong, or was that just another wave of the feelings you're going through lately?" she'd only respond with, "Who knows?"
The next day, her birthday, I'd keep in contact with her while paying attention to her Google Maps searches. At some point, I have no idea when, I premeditated a decision to do one of the most disgusting things I'd ever done: I was going to break into her house and look for clues as to what was going on. While she was out with a friend getting food, I was driving in the snow to her house with a pair of pliers, a flathead screwdriver, and a flashdrive in my hoodie pocket. I didn't want her immediate neighbors to see my car in her driveway while she was gone, so I parked half a mile up the road by a brick utility shed and walked. From outside my own body, I watched someone who was now a stranger to me do something totally deranged, incredibly illegal, but most of all just so inexcusably disrespectful to Tara. None of it felt real, and as long as I didn't get caught and never told a soul, it never would be.
The tools were for removing a section of the thick welded chicken wire secured around every window. They were there for paranoid reasons that I was now justifying, to protect from intruders like me. I carefully removed enough screws that I could then bend a large section of the wire, making room enough for me to open the bathroom window that I had unlocked from the inside the night before. Did this plan come to me while pissing the night before? I felt possessed. I hopped in forward-facing and lowered myself to the floor while the three cats gathered around, confused about what I was doing. Part of me felt so ashamed that they'd caught me.
Once inside, I didn't even really know what sort of clues I could find. One thing I did know was that I wanted to get into her laptop and drag whatever seemed important to a flashdrive. Once I did that, I went looking for the Clone-A-Willy vibrator we'd made together. Part of me wondered if she was still using it. On one hand, I would have felt further used if she did; on the other, I hoped she did because it would mean in some weird way that she missed me, or at least my dick. I never found it, not even in the bedside table drawer where it should have been, so I pictured her throwing it away and convinced myself it was because she was being fucked by someone new and didn't need it anymore. I exited through the front door and locked it behind me, then went and tried to bend everything to its original position before screwing it back into the wooden window frame. There was a trembling in my heart that I could not identify the emotional source of. In the end, there was absolutely nothing of value that I got out of my top secret mission to Tara's house. Even if she'd never know what I did, I decided for her that I had irreparably destroyed her trust.
A top-notch veggie skillet at Denny's by myself. I tried reading Bukowski and three short stories in decided I hated the guy.
I could pinpoint the exact moment my relationship with Tara had fully broken me; the precise instance that my brain finally cracked and a total psychological break occurred. It was only a couple days later, on April 10th. The day before, her and I had at least been texting here and there, though I was always the one initiating it all. I was easing into the idea of just being friends eventually, though I was still obsessed with figuring out and understanding what happened to our relationship and what was going on with her since she ended it. She had the nerve to ask me the name of an Indian place we'd eaten at together so she could go there with this older dude she was spending a lot of time with.
From there, she engaged me in short, frivolous texts about stupid stuff like Breaking Bad, vegan cheese, and dumpster diving. I confidently said her and I should go dumpster some food for the animals and she responded, "The fuzz is running low on food, so we should go soon."
I was pleasantly surprised by it, and got excited at even the suggestion, like a dog who overheard the word "walk". I went out dumpster-diving by myself that night and dropped off a bunch of raw meat, eggs, and kibble for the cats and ferrets on her doorstep with a note. She texted me a thank-you the next morning.
It would be the last day I was a fully operating person for a while. She mentioned having to go to a "group" later that evening. She'd vaguely mentioned considering "groups" before, but absolutely refused to explain what kind of group it was or what the focus would be. As erratic as her behavior and choices had been, I still trusted I knew enough about her to figure out what it could be, but I just couldn't for the life of me come up with a theory for this one. I was determined to find out by any means necessary, but first tried prying for an answer directly from her. She reacted in a very hostile way when I did, especially when I asked outright if it was somehow Alcoholics Anonymous.
"It's something else anonymous," she hinted.
It was another moment where I really believed she was fucking with me, giving me just enough information to keep me clinging on like a dying moth on the grill of a semi-truck. Even telling me that much after insisting it was none of my business made it seem like part of her wanted me to figure it all out. Then again, maybe that was just all in my unreliable head.
"I'm trying to think of other Anonymouses, but neither sex addiction nor narcotics seem applicable. I hope you open up to me about it one day," I said.
"Or you could, you know, do what I've been asking you to do for over a week and respect my privacy and stop asking about it," she shot back angrily.
Her patience was clearly wearing thin and I needed to do whatever I could to not lose her attention.
"You're right, I'm sorry. Like I said, I'm just really worried and want so badly to know what's going on with you. It comes from nowhere else but a place of concern. You're so important to me. I won't ask about it again. Thank you for being patient with me. I'm an asshole," I fawned, before changing the subject to something I knew I was allowed to openly wonder about, like her physical health and a recent doctor's appointment.
Little did she know, I was a mile up the road from her, just sitting in my car in a Stewart's parking lot like a psycho, cutting myself with a rusty boxcutter and intermittently crying. I was planning on waiting for her to leave for this mysterious group of hers, figuring I'd follow her to it once she put the address into Google Maps for directions.
"I don't want you to think I'm being secretive with you. This isn't because I don't trust you or something," she texted.
So I asked, "Then was is it?"
"I'm treading really lightly, because I'm just recognizing some things about myself, and it's really important that I have a complete understanding of what is going on before I involve others, because it can sometimes make things worse. I will tell you what's going on in time, but I just need to make sure I'm doing things the right way. I just wanted to clear that up."
I was sure this was a genuine attempt to reassure and comfort me, but all it did was worry me more because all the cryptic wording she was using sounded so ominous.
"I realized I was being unclear and it's not because of you," she added.
I told her that was a relief, and thanked her for telling me, though I added I was no less worried.
"Honestly, you should be less worried. This is rock bottom, but I'm coming up already."
She went on and on, sending more texts saying things just like that. With each one, I only became more anxious to finally find out what it was all about. I hoped the answer would also offer insight into why the fuck our relationship ended in the first place. From there, I convinced myself I could then at least get some closure, or perhaps better evaluate whether there was any hope of repair.
I said to her, "I'll do whatever you need me to do. I can't stop worrying, though. I've seen you go through these identity crises before, and I hope what you're currently recognizing is right and not just you being too hard on and/or overanalyzing yourself. I've seen you drive yourself crazy before doing that."
She left and I followed not too far behind.
When I looked up the address she'd put into Google Maps using my access to her Gmail account, it was to a church. Going to the church's website, I saw that they offered their space to various groups. On that particular night, there would be two of them meeting: Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, and Overeaters Anonymous. I did not know what the hell to do with this information, because both of those options were equally as irrelevant to the Tara I thought I knew--she only ever had a problem with under-eating, and in fact was having trouble eating at all due to her health issues, and she had never been someone overtly sexual or promiscuous for as long as I'd known her.
I drove to the location, feeling entirely crazed. I almost got into a car accident twice and kept driving after the gas light came on. I crept slowly into the parking lot and traced the perimeter. Her car was parked in the back, on the left end of the complex. I peered in through the windows from my car and could see her taking a seat. I pulled in at the opposite end of the building and at first just sat there in disbelief, wracking my brain trying to figure out what this all meant, regardless of which group she was in. An older woman came out and, without thinking for even a second beforehand, I got out and innocently told her I was there for a group and didn't know which building it was in. It scared me how natural lying was becoming for me. That's when she told me: the place Tara was at was Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous.
My brain dispersed into a hundred different theories, connecting any and all dots that may or may not have even been related or even real. There was obviously so much I didn't know, so any theory seemed plausible at that point. Had she been fucking a ton of guys since our breakup and thought she was addicted to sex? Was she in love with someone else after having been in love with me and believed it to be the effect of a mere addiction to love itself? Was I really just a disease, like the way she'd discarded me always made me feel? I left and drove to Bombers to loiter and sit with my thoughts, reading up on SLAA and BPD, the latter of which I at that point was certain she had.
What would become our last conversation over text was so confusing. I texted her about how beautiful the moon was, and how unseasonably warm the night weather had been, trying to act casual even though I'd just stumbled on this mind-boggling secret of hers. I asked her how her group went and she said it was great and thanked me for asking. I followed it by asking if she wanted to go somewhere nice and enjoy the temperature under the moon.
"I don't really think I'm ready to hang out," she replied.
"Ready?" I asked.
"I don't think it's good for either of our mental healths to be seeing each other right now."
All I could say in response was, "Oh..." before sarcastically adding, "We sure do seem to be doing great apart," alluding not only to how bad I'd obviously been doing, but also to her recently sharing with me how often she cried and how she used going out to local shows at bars as a way to escape her thoughts and force herself to act normal.
"I told you, what I'm going through has nothing to do with you," she said.
I asked her, then, why I was the only person she wasn't allowed to see. She told me I wasn't, but I knew that wasn't true, and she wouldn't answer when I asked who else was banned from her.
I had just finished writing a long, wildly inappropriate, sexually charged text I was going to send before she told me she wasn't ready to hang out again. It was basically a proposal to use me as a booty call, with graphic descriptions of things I knew she liked me doing to her, all way too personal for me to include here in full. Truthfully, I was being horribly conniving and manipulative: I hoped I could lure her back into at least a physical arrangement because I would have rather been used by her than not be with her at all, and now knowing she was potentially some sort of sex addict maybe she had less control over herself than it seemed and I could get her to fall off the wagon. I followed it with apologies if it made her angry because I instantly felt guilty and stupid for having sent it.
"I'm not angry," she said.
"I'm gonna have to take a break from this for a bit. I'm sorry."
I swear my heart stopped.
"From this?" I asked.
"Please be patient with me, but I'm going to have to cut off contact for a bit. I'm sorry."
I felt like I forgot how to breathe.
I asked her, "So you want me to leave you alone?" which was something I asked every now and then and that she not once ever answered one way or the other, a technicality I'd used as an invitation to continue contacting her no matter how resistant and disinterested she responded. I also believed it to be intentional on her part so she could still have me chasing her, on reserve for when she'd need me next. Once again, she didn't answer it.
"Before you go, can I ask something important?" I asked.
I wanted to ask her if she felt that I was just an addiction she thought she had, and if so if she ever really loved me.
"No I really can't now. I'll be in touch in the future."
And then my number was blocked. In that moment, both of my hands instantaneously began to tingle from the wrists to the tips of my fingers like they had fallen asleep. It was such a strange sensation. I could physically feel my brain short-circuiting.
I had been hurt by the person I loved for the last fucking time. After three straight months of having my head mercilessly toyed with, being kept a secret and being told not to post anything broadcasting we were even still talking so "people wouldn't bother her about it", being made to feel so guilty for every time I had an outburst and shared how much it was all hurting me, having my feelings continuously invalidated, mockingly being told, "Oh, you're such a victim, go write about it online!", doing literally everything she asked me to without question in hopes of keeping her around; after repeatedly being ignored, let in and then pushed out, loved and then hated, fucked and then ignored, and never getting any clear answers, if any answers at all, to my questions about what she was thinking, feeling, wanting, or going through... I lost it. It was quite literally maddening and I felt like I was owed answers, closure, and the respect and compassion of at least being told what the fuck just happened and why. This was my best friend and the love of my life--how could I just let her cut me off without having any idea why, especially after a week of her vaguely telling me about all of these horrible things she was going through that she had been keeping from everybody else? I was not only selfishly terrified of being without her, I was sincerely worried about her.
So I did what my manic mind felt was the only thing I could: I drove to her house and rang her doorbell to demand answers. She ignored it, so I knocked. Her bedroom light was on, so I tapped on the screen and tried speaking to her through it.
"Please talk to me! If you care about me at all, give me one minute and tell me what's going on!"
It turned into me alternating between the window and the door, more knocking and eventually pathetic pleas for five straight minutes. She had blocked my number, so I called her using *67. When she answered, she told me I was "harassing" her. I told her she was destroying me, but she only responded, "I don't care, I'm calling the cops!"
I couldn't believe she'd even bluff talking to the cops, but it was enough to scare me away. I sped off toward my brother's house, driving 95 in a 55 with an arm covered in superficial cuts, running through red lights and contemplating crashing the car to kill myself. I called Tia and loudly sobbed to her at the top of my lungs with one hand on the steering wheel. Somehow, she was a compassionate and loyal enough friend to stay on the phone with me. I pulled up outside my brother's house, grabbed the metal long-arm stapler from the back seat, and smashed out all the side windows. I wanted to destroy something, anything, but the car also symbolized just how pitiful I'd been acting over a woman who didn't even care about me. I went to sit on the train tracks and wait for the next one to kill me. Tia remained on the phone with me. In retrospect, it was so selfish and cruel of me to put her in that position, but she stuck around despite how difficult it must have been to prepare for quite possibly hearing her best friend be obliterated by an oncoming train. My brother had heard the smashing of windshields and came out to investigate when he noticed me sitting on the tracks. He begged for me to get off, but I just stayed put, crying, ready for what I knew would be an instant and painless death based on all the train suicides I'd watched online. Eventually, after threatening it several times, he made the very difficult decision to call 911, which he knew would, by default, require police involvement, in hopes of persuading me to get off the tracks. I sat and listened to him talk to the operator before giving in and getting up. I didn't want to be forcibly locked up in a hospital. He immediately hung up, and when five cop cars showed up not long after, he refused to let them into his house where I was hiding.
He and I got into a really emotional, loud screaming match with each other. We cried together. He was freaking out at the prospect of me killing myself, and I was angry with him for getting in the way of it. He looked so worried and exasperated. He'd always hated Tara. I thought back to his warnings when she and I had started seeing each other again. Tia reached out to Tara that night, and was told she was "scared" of me. For some reason, she also lied to her about the conversation that led to everything that night, as well as claiming I was banging on her windows and trying to break in. She claimed she never called the cops, but that the neighbors across the street did after I'd left. Intellectually, I knew I had fucked up so severely. I was well aware that under no circumstance should I have gone to her house like that that night. I acted indignant about her saying she was scared of me, but I was behaving in a decidedly scary way that she'd never seen or experienced from me before. If nothing else, I was triggering her and the past traumas I was privy to and now completely disregarding with my every attempt to contact her.
The next day, I woke up feeling emotionally hungover. My brother was outside, sweeping up my mess. I pulled a piece of glass from my foot that I not once noticed I'd been walking on the entire night before. I drove downtown, sitting on a pile of broken glass, and scrapped the car for $213. I needed to get rid of this mistake I'd made for a girl, and I needed to remove my primary means of sustaining the behavior of this unhinged stalker that I'd become. I walked straight to the Chinatown bus stop and got on a bus to Philly, determined to give in to Sam's persistent pursuit of me. I was an even wider open wound than I ever had been.
I pulled this out of my foot.
The view of the train tracks from my brother's house.
Goodbye, and fuck you, first car.
Was she sorry? Did she really intend on ever talking to me again after that night? What did I do wrong, and why exactly did she decide she needed to cut off contact with me that night? If it was the obscene text, why hadn't she ever told me that our sex life was over and that she didn't want me to say those things to her anymore? If what she was going through had nothing to do with me, why did she think it was bad for her mental health to see me? She communicated absolutely nothing to me, opened up and revealed just enough to worry me, before pulling away and being taciturn about what was going on in her head, and would blatantly ignore me whenever I'd explicitly ask her if she wanted me to leave her alone or stop asking her certain things. What the fuck happened that night?
While in Philadelphia, I saw one of our favorite bands, Why?, and felt strange singing along as they crooned over acoustics, "Stalker's my whole style, and if I get caught, I'll deny, deny, deny..." I continued monitoring her online activity from my phone. It got to a point where Tara could no longer even pretend to believe it wasn't me, and her friend Molly texted me to again threaten me with police action. I asked Molly about an anti-depressant I knew she was taking, seeking advice about it.
"You're a cis white male in America. You'll be fine."
She was a pretty disgusting person. I wrote Tara a very long letter saying and asking everything I'd been wanting to say and ask. Then I decided to not send it. Instead, I wrote a shorter one, just apologizing, admitting and acknowledging what I had done was wrong, and stating what I at that point realized thanks to some stern talking-to from Sam: that, while the kind, decent, compassionate, fair thing to do was be open and honest with me and at least give me closure so I could begin to move on, she ultimately didn't owe me anything at all. I was not entitled to what I felt I deserved. She was obligated only to herself and should have been doing whatever was best for her, even if it was incidentally at my expense. She deserved the bare minimum courtesies of peace of mind, feeling safe in her own home, respect, and privacy. What she put me through was cruel, unfair, and borderline abusive at times, and it had a very intense effect on my mental state, but none of that was her responsibility. I assured her in the letter that I understood this and that she would not hear from me again until she was ready. It was hard to write, but I loved her and was ready to start showing it by taking myself and my desires out of the equation. A few days later, she got it in the mail, and I'd find out when I got a call from a cop. He said Tara was at the station, and that the letter provoked it. She told the cop I had been following her, which was true, though I would go on to vehemently lie about it, and even used me dropping off the food for the animals as evidence of my stalking. The letter was considered just more harassment. Thankfully, as disgusting as it was that she spoke to the police at all, she had still not tried to press charges or anything. The cop addressed me as "dude" and sternly told me the definitive, unambiguous things Tara never had the guts to. I was basically broken up with again, this time by a fucking cop. It was humiliating. He urged me to not contact her again, to which I asked him, "Did you read the letter? I literally told her I wouldn't be!"
This was the first time in my entire life that I was telling lies. I didn't like having secrets. It stressed me out. I'd always felt more compelled to share things the more embarrassed or guilty I felt about them. After all, once released into the world, I no longer would have to worry about people "finding out". I also always thought it was important to hold yourself accountable for your actions, and with "call-out culture" growing in popularity, this was regularly being attempted publicly through social media by others, oftentimes those not even directly involved with any of the parties. I knew I'd never be able to be completely open about some of the things I'd done, but I figured I'd try to take care of it myself and wrote a post on Facebook calling myself out for being a stalker. I very intimately understood why I did the things I'd done, but I did not think they were okay. I admitted to logging into her social media accounts and emails. I closed it, "Anyway, I want everyone to know that I did these shitty things and to hold me accountable. I'm ashamed and worried about myself and full of regret. Please don't mistake my addition of context as an excuse--it's only an attempt at an explanation. I'm probably going to disappear for a while after this."
I still downplayed the extent to which I had been stalking her, and I'd continue to stalk her after posting it. My logic that keeping it secret would keep it from being real was then replaced by the determination that what I'd already done was so irredeemable that I may as well just keep succumbing to any and all urges. I had ceased to be the person I was before we broke up and I had no idea how to return to him.
When I got back from Philadelphia, I knew from her Facebook that she'd likely be at a show that was happening right around the corner from the squat. I talked Andy into going to it with me, bullshitting that I needed to get out of the house and try to be a person who does things again instead of being so preoccupied with Tara. He worried that Tara would be at it, but I assured him she wouldn't be. Sure enough, I saw her there, as planned. For the first time ever, I got to experience what it would be like to see her, not talk to her, for her to pretend like we never even knew each other. It was one of the worst moments of my entire life. As I hung in the back of the bar at a table and pretended to watch the bands while only staring at Tara, I saw her talking to a girl I didn't know, pointing in my direction. I assumed this girl was hearing about how creepy I'd been acting.
I went into a coffeehouse to loiter for a little while and avoid the bitter cold of the squat. I sat at a table, looked up, and an art piece by Tara was literally staring down at me. A mutual acquaintance would recognize me outside while taking a smoke break and boastfully ask me, "Did you see Tara's art in there? Isn't it great?!"
I sighed, hung my head, and said, "Yeah... I'm her biggest fan."
