3 Stalkers, 1 Lesson: What I Learned About Protecting Myself From Obsession.
The silence kills them all.
First year of the university, I was living with my brother. He is the extroverted one with all the friends. I was the introvert with my nose in the books. As a young woman with her first taste of freedom — not that I raised my nose from books but I felt as invisible as every other young person.
And then the calls started.
Day after day, this number was calling my phone. My very old Motorola model phone did not have any fancy options like, “block” or “do not disturb”. I didn’t even know they existed.
My only option was to endure over 3 months of some man’s disguised voice calling me, saying my name over and again, and trying to have conversations with me. It was worse because he seemed to know me so well. He knew I lived with my brother. Knew my department. Knew my route to school. Many times, he knew the clothes I wore that day and he will text me a commentary on how I looked in them. To say this was maddening, creepy, and frustrating, was an understatement.
I had panic attacks and my poor brother, will console me and try to figure out who was doing that.
On my birthday a month later, I came home from school, and standing by the door was my brother’s close friend. We usually sat around in the evenings to shoot the breeze. I was surprised he had remembered my birthday and had a cake for me.
But first, he had something to tell me.
He was the one who had been calling me.
At first, I did not understand what he was saying. Then right there, he called my line. It was the same. I nearly choked on my breath. I ran toward the gate. I couldn’t bear it.
My brother found me. We were both stumped because he had used a different number and always disguised his voice so even my brother couldn’t have caught him out. To my brother’s credit, I never saw that friend again.
My brother was so disappointed because, sadly, this was not my first stint with a stalker. The first time was a lot worse and… still ongoing at this point.
His real name (because fuck that dude) is Sunday (Sunny). We went to the same university. We graduated together.
Sunday as far as I knew was just a quiet, cheerful guy and all we had between us was “hello”, and “hi”. From my perspective, he was a loner and seemed serious about his studies.
After graduation, I went home and that was when Sunday unleashed the ultimate hell on my mental health. He started nice enough — “Hello Okwy”. How was this or hope you are doing alright or what is happening? At first, I thought okay…? Maybe he was bored? Maybe he was just polite? Maybe I was exciting to talk to?
I was in for something more terrifying.
Whenever I was far from my phone or unable to respond to Sunday, I got a barrage of questions in texts. Then his texts became accusatory.
“You did not want to date me in the university because I am not from your state”
Dear Reader: Sunday never asked me out in the university. Even if he did, I did not owe him a relationship.
But Sunday was living in an alternate truth universe and would not be deterred. He would carry on talking about our love and how I was to be submissive to him and very appreciative of his attentions.
At this point, I realized that this was no longer idle conversations. He was serious about this our ‘relationship’ while I was never in a relationship with him.
I decided to never pick up Sunday’s calls again. That apparently, was the wrong move. Day after day, hour after hour, and every other minute, I was inundated with calls or messages. When he realized I wasn’t picking anymore, he resorted to ‘flashing’. (Flash a phone in Nigeria is slang for when someone gives you a ring or 2 — short enough to get your attention but not long enough for you to pick up the call).
It was hell and I was burning.
All day, all night. I had to miss calls. Keep my phone away from me, and suffered panic attacks. I would call, cry and beg this human being to leave me alone. He would begin his rhetoric of our relationship all over again. It got so serious that my brother called him to back off — no dice. My mother spoke with him — no dice. I was his. I think at this point, it was a game to him, and without any way of physically reaching out and knocking off some teeth from his mouth, there was nothing any of us could do about it. And he knew it.
I called the network provider to ask for help. The man at the end of the line was amused. He was so amused that a girl called to find a way to block a number from calling her. He asked me questions like:
- Are you that beautiful?
- Isn’t this something you should like?
- Are you sure you are serious about blocking a guy that loves you so much?
- Women… women… women
It was embarrassing getting through that call. I felt like a drama llama and if his mission was to call me out on my theatrics, he succeeded. He did say one thing though — they couldn’t help but newer phone models had options that could solve my problem.
Well, I took the happy message to my father. He did not share my enthusiasm. He did not have any money to help me upgrade my phone.
Dear Reader, to get ahead of that question: Nigeria is not like the US where there are you know: jobs, phone insurance, and jobs or you know, jobs.
I changed my number.
I had never wanted to change my number. I felt this would haunt me forever. How could I change my number because of one human being? The number was nice and easy to recall.
But I had peace.
In all, Sunday stalked me for 3 years.
My peace lasted for almost a year until one day, I checked my old line. Saw so many messages. One stood out — he was getting married to a ‘Sandra’ (real name again because, fuck Sunday!). She was the daughter of a Professor. They could not be happier. Then another, she was pregnant with their daughter.
I goofed.
I had no airtime on my old line and in a rash move I will always regret, I sent him a message on my new line:
If you and your wife drove off a cliff, it will be a happy day for me.
Dear Reader, I know. I know.
But, I will continue with the stalking side of things because now, Sunday had my new line. And he made sure to tell me how much my silence had broken him and blah blah blah.
I ignored him. But I wasn’t about to change my line again. After failing to get under my skin in this new era, he made one more move — he found a page I had set up on Facebook for sharing my thoughts and sent me a long message detailing my crimes against him.
According to my mother,
At that moment, I did something I would go on to do on the next stalker, I unblocked him on my personal Facebook where everyone was. I detailed all that he did to me over the years. Then I blocked him again.
The reaction from our former classmates was swift. For the most part, they called him out for having a wife and child(ren?) and still terrorizing me. I also got maddening messages from people who said I was wrong for doing him ‘like that’. It was ‘love’ and ‘Why can’t women appreciate good men anymore?’ I blocked those ‘friends’ too.
My third stalker was a minor. My younger sister’s classmate found my number in their yearbook. I had visited my sister at school and apparently, he had ‘fallen’ in love.
I knew he was a stalker and was my sister’s classmate AFTER the fact but, I was not going to take one more stalker. I quickly put up his number on Facebook and asked people to ‘call me’. My sister also saw the number and the short of the long story was, she told me he was her classmate.
I think he changed HIS line because I never got another call from that number again.
These days, life is easier with the option to cancel, block or report unwanted numbers but, one book helped me understand a fatal error I made with my stalkers:
Gavin de Becker’s “The Gift Of Fear”
“Silence!”: Ignore the stalker. They will fade away- usually:
If you tell someone ten times that you don’t want to talk to him, you are talking to them — nine more times than you wanted to. “Gavin de Becker”
I do not think that if I had kept steady on not talking to Sunday or my brother’s former friend, that they would have persisted for as long as they did. They persisted because every anger, I expressed to them, was in fact, communication with them.
The same way I do not understand people who have sex with animals is the same way I do not understand people who stalk others. Perversion? Bullies? Power-play? Validation? I am sure much research has covered these questions so I will not dwell further on them.
Dear Reader, let me be clear: I do not think any of these stalkers stalked me because of my extraordinary otherworldly beauty. According to Research:
About 1 in 6 women and 1 in 17 men have experienced stalking in their lifetimes. Stalking starts early. Nearly 54% of female victims and 41% of male victims experienced stalking before the age of 25.
What I expected though was that my stalkers take the hint — to get it…to know they were not wanted, and to go away but, they were not me. As de Becker pointed out:
Believing that others will react as we would is the single most dangerous myth of intervention.
Finally, if you are dealing with a stalker, do these 2 things after you have warned them the FIRST time:
- Stop talking — to them! They are masters at crafting messages to elicit a response, usually emotional. Stop giving in to their pressure. That is their pleasure.
- Post their damn number, their email, their profile — whichever way they are using to confront you. Shame them! Call them out. They will slink away.
Have a stalker experience? Please share.
Thank you for reading. Buy me coffee?
