So it’s coming up on two years since I last wrote a post. 2016 was a busy year for me. I was really diving into school and learning about my passion for being a hairstylist and honestly just didn’t have much time to write. 2017 on the other hand has been one of the worst years of my life. I have had a lot of people close to me saying “you should post about everything that’s happening, share your experience”, but the idea of people knowing what’s been going on has made me sick to my stomach for over ten months now. People that know me well will tell you that, yes I am an open book, but I’m not very open about things that I’m emotional about. I have always been more of the “act like you're fine, pull yourself together and you will get through this you don’t need anyone else’s help”, kind of person. I know that’s not the best way to deal with things, but hey I’m twenty-one years old, there is no changing me now.
If any of you saw the news or went on Facebook after Easter of this year, then you probably know what has been going on with me. Or at least you THINK you know all the details because you watched a video. Even though my name and I myself were not in the video, it wasn’t hard to find out that I was the girl they were talking about. Those of you that don’t know, well it's kind of a long story. December 1st of last year my life changed when a boy who I was not friends with showed up at my front door at 12:30 at night. Soon after, what I thought was a harmless crush turned into my worst nightmare. After the first few incidents of showing up, dropping off flowers and notes and trying to contact me through other people to get my attention, my family and I decided it was best to file a restraining order. I genuinely thought it would fix it, I thought, “ok now he gets it right?” No. Honestly, I should have known when he took to the stand saying that I wanted this, that I wanted him to stalk me, and every tweet I made was me trying to talk to him. Again, the boy who I was not friends with in any shape or form. Five days after the restraining order was issued he showed up at my house while everyone was asleep. It was Christmas Eve. Christmas morning my family woke, opened presents and were as happy as could be. We walked to the front room to open the stockings and my dad saw something on our porch. He opened the door and there it was. A shrine, with scripture opened to the story of Mary Magdalene. I lost it. I didn’t know what to do or how to feel. The worst part was having to see my little brother’s face, he didn’t understand why someone was doing this, why someone wanted to make me feel so scared. My family’s Christmas was ruined and all I could think was that it was all my fault. If this wasn’t happening to me they wouldn’t have to go through it. It shouldn’t be their problem. What they don’t tell you when you file a restraining order is that if the person breaks it, yes they get arrested, but daddy can just follow them right up there and bail them out. Then the best part is that the judge will continue to allow continuances on the case until there is “psychical harm” done. Imagine that. No, seriously, I want you to imagine sitting in a courtroom, terrified because the person who scares you the most is sitting five feet away from you, and the “system” that is supposed to protect us had basically just told you that until this person hurts you, which is the thing you fear the most, then there is nothing they will do. All they can do is arrest him, then allow bail and then say there will eventually be a trial. All of the cops in my town were on my side and wanted him off the streets but the court system was protecting him. The beginning of January was when they first told me they were postponing the trial. At that point I decided to leave charlotte and go elsewhere. It wasn’t long before he was at my front door in Charlotte. Luckily nobody in my family was home, and my security system caught him on camera. I get notifications to my phone when someone is at my door. I remember it being 4 am and I was woken up by the constant buzzing of my phone saying, “Someone is at your door”. I clicked on it right in time to see my stalker screaming into my camera. He had been there for hours just pacing, talking to himself. I contacted the police but they got there a few minutes after he left. Then he was gone and was not found for a few days. Now I’m going to have you use your imagination again. I want you to imagine thinking you escaped it, thinking you got away then waking up to a monster screaming at your home camera and then having no idea where he went, but having a gut feeling he was coming for you. That’s how I felt for days until I got the call saying they found him. So what did I do? I picked up and I kept running. I did that for a good bit honestly. I think I thought that if I kept running it wouldn’t be anyone else’s problem. I knew how scared my family was, my little brother was scared to even play outside. I hated that I brought this fear and I thought that if I moved then my problem would go with me. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case, they still thought about it everyday, they were still scared and now I was just far away from them with no support system. A lot of things happened since January but after the event on Easter, which I will not talk about, I got to my breaking point. That’s when we decided to go on the news. After months of not talking about it with too many people and trying to pretend it wasn’t happening, I was done. Nothing was being done about it. Even when things escalated and escalated the judge still set the court hearing for 6-10 months out. So we took it into our own hands. When my parents approached me about going to the news I was extremely skeptical, I truly did not want my business out there yet because I was just starting to process it myself, but we found a middle ground where they agreed to keep my name out of it. People started sharing the video and started to talk and it wasn’t to far after that people began messaging me, saying how sorry they were. Which was nice at first, but then I realized that most of the people messaging me were doing it because they wanted more details about what was happening. People I hadn’t talked to in years messaging me asking “how did this all start”, “did you lead him on”, “why is he doing this to you”. All it did was make me angry, I barely wanted to talk about it with the people closest to me, why in the world would I want to talk about it with someone I don’t even know? All of a sudden every time I ran into a person I went to highschool with it was either “I’m sorry I got to ask, was that video about you?” or “oh my god did you see that stalker video? That guy went to our high school” leaving me with a long awkward pause where I had to decide if I was going to say that was me or just act like I didn’t know anything about it. What people really don’t understand is that most of the questions they ask me are extremely offensive. The worst by far being “ are you sure you didn’t lead him on?” I think the reason I find this question so upsetting is because first of all: NO, I did not lead him on at all and I know that for a fact because we weren’t even friends but second of all what if I did? Would I deserve all of this then? Would I have deserved to have my life ruined if I did lead the guy on? Because I know if I met someone and this all was happening to them, even if they dated the person, I would still consider everything that he did NOT OK. The second most offensive question would have to be “what does it feel like to have a stalker”. Honestly what kind of question is that? How about I ask you about the most traumatic experience in your life and ask you what it felt like. Also that is just not a question you ask someone that you aren’t close with. I mostly hate it when people ask me that in super public settings, there is a time and a place and running into me at a bar and asking me a question where the answer will most likely make me cry, just doesn’t seem like the right place. I can tell you what it feels like though. It doesn’t feel good, that’s for sure. You know that feeling when you get in your car at night and you're alone, and you're scared to looking the rear view mirror because you have watched one too many horror movies and you're like 70% certain someone is in your back seat, even though there most likely isn’t? I feel like that every second of the day, and I have a reason to because there is a really high chance there is someone in my car and I know exactly who that person would be. It's like having that pit in your stomach that something is going to go terribly wrong but you don’t know when or what it is. I’ve had that pit since December 1st. It feels like being embarrassed to talk about it, feeling ashamed of what’s happened. When you met someone cute but you don’t want to tell them because you know as soon as you do all of a sudden you have too much “baggage” and they run away as fast as they can, so now you just learn to not get attached to people. It feels like being out in public with your friends and thinking you see him so you go to the bathroom so your friends don’t see you have a complete melt down, because you're embarrassed that you get panic attacks and you want people to think that you're strong. It feels like your heart racing and your eyes filling with tears everytime the doorbell rings and nobody is expecting someone. It's looking at your family and just trying to keep it together because you know if they see you break down they will lose it to. It’s funny because you would never know that i felt all that if you met me. I think I’ve gotten way too good at pretending like I’m ok. Honestly, I’m not sure if that’s a problem or not. As weird as this might sound, I’m proud of myself for writing all this down. Yes, there is still a lot more to say but I really feel like this was a step in the right direction for me. http://www.fox46charlotte.com/news/249613413-video
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