Har Har! It’s been a while~! Well on to the not-so-good-stuff~
Three days passed since I gave my crush the note with my number on it. There was no response. I was a little sad, but I wasn’t planning on dwelling on it. ‘Maybe she was not a lesbian after all, maybe my gaydar just plain ol’ sucks’ I told myself, though I knew that wasn’t true.
Then I got a missed call.
It was late at night, I was about to turn off my laptop and go to sleep when my mobile rang for a second and then stopped. Somehow I knew it was her, so rather than just ignore it, I sent a little message to the number, a straightforward ‘who is it?’
‘It’s me, the girl form the bus’ came the reply.
We messaged each other all day the next day, talked on the phone for ages, swapped email accounts, and chatted after work all night. I learned that she did not remember what I looked like, but she did remember our conversation on the bus, among other things. We made plans to meet on the only day she was off. The first night we chatted, it was great. The second night, I began feeling uneasy. She was demanding to meet my family (?!), and all explanations of how that that just could not happen as I’m not out to them and doubt that I’ll ever be, and that we were yet to meet and maybe we weren’t going to click fell on deaf ears. I ignored the rotten feeling in the pit of my stomach though, and reasoned to myself that maybe she was just overly excited, and anyway she would not be able to meet my family if I did not take her to them, so who cares?
The third night, the night before our meeting, was when she really brought the crazy. The odd bad feeling lurking in my guts turned into blaring sirens when this stranger whom I had never even met yet, and whom did not even remember what I looked like, started talking about us getting married and going back to her country.
Wtf.
At the beginning I thought she was joking. Ha, ha, I replied. But she was dead serious. In disbelief, I typed away, asking if she was serious, telling her she must be joking, reasoning with her, trying to appeal to the power of fracking logic!
‘What do you mean marriage? We haven’t even met yet! Maybe we won’t like each other, maybe I’ll turn out to be an axe murderer, why the frack would I leave my home to go to the country of a total stranger?! You did not even remember how I looked like, what the hell is wrong with you????!!!!’
It was futile. It seemed as if I had given my number to a raging blob of insanity. In shock, I made an excuse, logged off and went to bed. It was a very troubled sleep, and when the morning came, the first thing I did was text this person, informing her that I was not going to make it for our meet up, and that I did not want to communicate with her anymore. In direct terms, I ended this relationship before it started. Such was the power of the lunacy she threw my way.
That was not the end of it, however.
For about two months, I was bombarded with calls, texts messages and emails that pleaded, cajoled, whined, and even threatened, wanting to know what went wrong, why wasn’t I answering my phone, why not talk it out, I am in love with you(!), I can’t live without you (!), I will kill myself if you don’t pick up (!!), I will find you and kill you if you don’t answer back (!!!), we were perfect together, answer me you bitch, pick up the phone you whore, how dare you ignore me, and so on and so forth, etc, etc, etc.
How did I withstand this assault? By ignoring it. One of what I thought was my worst habits with no redeeming qualities is the ability to shut off and live in a state of robotic denial. I put my phone on silence, and went on with my daily routine. Woke up, went to work, came back home, slept. I already had a company phone that my family could reach me at when I did not answer my personal number. And I never did answer my personal phone for the whole time. I only ever accessed it to read the messages (this after the first couple of days I also stopped doing) and to delete the ten million records of her calls and messages, and I did likewise for my email.
The power of completely ignoring someone has always paid off for me. I’ve lost plenty of opportunities to make friends when I’d fall into the trap of this frightening skill. This time, it actually worked to my benefit. I can honestly say I did not feel the slightest bit of stress after the initial two or three days- once I stopped reading anything this mad stalker sent me. She knew virtually nothing about me. Well, only my name, number and email account, but still! There was/is no way she’d find me, or recognize my face in a crowd, and so I let it go. When the calls and messages came to a stop, I could go back to using my phone, and to me, it was as if this sorry episode never happened.
Moral of the story?
Who knows? I don’t want to say ‘don’t ever approach anyone ever in your life’ but I honestly can’t. For every psycho there will be a potential soul mate or something. I guess one should just be careful, weigh the pros and cons, and make an informed decision. Whatever ‘an informed decision’ means.
What I do know is that I will never approach someone again without taking my safety into account, and will offer friendship first, become acquainted with that person, see if we get along and ‘click’ before taking it any further. And honestly, I won’t be giving my number to any stranger on the bus anymore, no matter how strong my crush on her is.
