I finally escaped my stalker ex after 5 years.
“Stalking is not a normal behavior, they show a person with a lack of boundaries, a shaky grasp on reality and sociopathic tendencies”
I was free.
Today was it: 3/5/2023, Friday afternoon.
I had been stalked for nearly 5 years from a ex boyfriend — I had deleted my previous Medium account after finding out he had liked just about every single article I had wrote and had commented as well. Every time I had blocked his account, he had always created new one.
I call it the Hydra effect — You decapitate one head, and another grows back in its place.
I feared for my life in some instances. Whatever social media account I had used, he would always find me. He was desperate for my attention but went about it in all the wrong ways.
I was 19 years old when I had first met him and he was going on 20, the relationship started off as somewhat innocent but over the years became toxic and abusive. It was a fast relationship, and I was his first everything. One year ago, in therapy, I had learned that fast romances always turn toxic and abusive.
Of course, it was bound to be that way. I technically went on one date with him and on the second date, he had asked for commitment. Given, I had liked him and said yes. This should have been my very first warning, but I was naive, and I did not know better.
There were very clear red flags but me being a naive 19-year-old, I did not know better. Perhaps, I had known the whole time but chose to ignore them.
I was not perfect and there are things that were done that I regret to this day. I became very angry and resentful towards him in the relationship — He would say one thing and yet do the opposite, I felt like I was being used. He had invented excuse after excuse, and I had felt like I was becoming his caregiver.
We came from different backgrounds; he grew up in the poverty line and grew up in trailer parks while I lived a middle-class life. His biological father was an abusive drunk who abandoned him, and his mom married twice or more. He was also sexually abused as a child but never received help.
It became clear to me…
He chose toxic love to escape his own issues.
I always wanted to leave but I never did out of fear of what he would do to me or himself. I had heard he had a history of mental illnesses such as suicide attempts and alcoholism. As far as I knew, histories of alcoholism and addiction ran deep in his family. Every time I had tried, he had sent me nasty, aggressive texts and wrote statuses about me on his Facebook. I feared of what he was capable of doing.
I stayed in a relationship out of fear.
One morning, I realized I wasting my life with him. Nothing was going to change; the relationship fell flat and stagnant. I ended the relationship for good in the summer of 2018 and to say he did not take it well would be an extreme understatement.
He called me from 3 different numbers, texted me again and again and had even showed up to my work without my consent, I was so terrified that I could not leave the kitchen for an hour. Luckily, after that, I never saw him and I never intend to.
What my mistake was I would reach out to him, apologizing for my part in the relationship but what he would do is take it as an act of me coming back to him. This would go on for a year or so.
Flash forward in present day, he had convinced third parties to harass me, and this would go on for 6 months or so. Every month, I would get a text from an unknown number telling me to kill myself and a bunch of other deranged things.
A stalker is someone who is jealous, obsessive and almost narcissistic and they do not understand the word ‘no’.
I changed my number twice because of him, I always feared one day he would go nuts and become violent. I never went to the police because what he was doing was mostly online and it was never enough to be taken seriously. I was afraid of him and what he would do, I felt that all that anger and sadness he had inside of him had evolved into rage.
To be completely honest, I’m glad he never came to my apartment or did anything in person. Then again, had he actually come to my apartment, he would face some very serious legal consequences. In a realistic perspective, it was just done online.
A stalker is someone desperate for their target’s attention and they lack boundaries, they are really miserable people who don’t have anything better to do.
Common motivations for stalking are delusional beliefs in romantic destiny, a strong desire to rekindle a past intimate relationship, a sadistic urge to torment the victim, a psychotic overidentification with the victim and the desire to replace him/her.
If we’re being completely honest, I feel sorry for him. I really do.
I created my new account today and I don’t think he will ever find me ever again. To be honest, I feel sorry for him… It’s almost sad when a person can never ever move on from a past relationship that ended nearly half a decade ago. I don’t wish him any harm at all, and I hope he gets the help he needs.
