Despite the fact that I am a lazy cow now and will avoid walking if I can drive, at school I was a little fitter and would walk everywhere. I was slightly more toned then, who am I kidding, a lot more toned than I am now and everything was in almost the right place. Walking to and from school 10 years ago was still quite a pleasant thing to do, but ended up not helping my case for combating my fear of the dark. I had a stalker. It went on for over a year with daily torment and absolute torture wondering where he will be or what he will try and do to me. I didn’t have a mobile back then - our school was so strict you couldn’t wear a coat without it going through 6 approval processes for it’s colour and length, a mobile phone would have been damn right outrageous and certainly a case for suspension.
I remember the first day this man ‘struck’. He stopped me on my way home with his shitty mountain bike by blocking my path trying to grab me. I just about managed to nip past carrying my heavy bag of text books as my locker was full of crap and also holding an A3 Art folder which made manoeuvring awkward to say the least. I got past and I ran home as quickly as I could, only to realise he was still following. 12 d-tours later and 30 minutes late home, I finally got in the door to an angry mother thinking I had been bonking behind the bike sheds and a father fuming at the fact he had been looking around for me rather than pissing about on that God damn computer. When I was finally able to cry and snivel the words of what had just happened my dad grabbed a crow bar and off he went. The fear of God was officially planted in me and once again my life would take a slightly different slant.
Every day following this incident for the next year would feel like an eternity. Walking home from school became a mammoth task of rubber necking the roadsides, gingerly walking up to corners and avoiding shadows and unlit areas. Mum had friends meet me on the way, dad would leave work early to follow me home in his car in the hope he can catch the stalker red handed to ‘show him what happens to anyone who dares touch a hair on his daughters head’. Mum had to tell the school what was happening so they could stagger the times I left to avoid the stalker catching onto a routine. It was the most nightmarish hell I have ever been through.
More incidents happened over the stalking period until one day I left school at lunch – it wasn’t truancy on this occasion, at least I don’t think it was, but I saw the ‘I’m so hard, thinks I’m so sexy’ stalker with his 2, yep 2 young children walking towards me to get to the shop!!! I was absolutely gob smacked, not only that he could be so cruel as to make another human being feel so low and intimidated, but that he had the nerve to do it under the nose of 2 innocent children at home. Well this was my one opportunity to have the upper hand whilst he was powerless to do or say anything. He hung his head low, avoided my eye contact and looked thoroughly caught out. I said my silent obscenities and burnt holes in his head. I consider myself to have had a very lucky escape actually, it could have got much worse. He never came back.
I could never have really estimated the impact that awful year would have on me. To this day I hate going anywhere alone, I refuse to be alone in the dark and I most certainly will not walk anywhere alone in the dark. My relationship with men was not quite as carefree and crazy as it used to be. Rather than chasing the risky, crazy bad boys I loved, I began seeking the quiet ones, those that would be more sensitive, in touch with their feminine side (though not too much, had a bad experience with that one!) and who would love me, dote on me, be sensitive and cater for my every need. Been pretty lucky in this one too!
