Stalkers

Two days ago, a woman was murdered by her stalker. She was a University of Washington employee and the murderer shot her in her office, then turned the gun on himself and took his life. Hearing about this story makes me shiver.... The fear this woman must have felt, not only at that moment, but in all the time leading up to the horrible event. One article I read said she had moved several times, changed all of her contact information and even worked from home for over a month just so he wouldn't be able to find her. And, of course, she had a restraining order.

This story conjured up terrible memories of when I was a University of Washington student and had a stalker. It's true. The guy followed me from 1992-1994. Apparently, he saw me on campus and was able to get my name and other information. He eventually broke into my apartment (more than once), stole some of my artwork and more....., and the worst: he was in my fucking apartment when I came home from work one night! Talk about a nightmare coming true. This man called my apartment nonstop, called my parents, called my place of work and also followed me to these places. He was always sneaky, though~ not obvious.

I filed a police report~ it's listed as first degree burglary and stalking. Since then, I've changed my hair, job, car, residence and will never be listed in any phone book ever again.

People that stalk are not sane. This is an understatement, of course. But, to them, they think their actions are justified. My guy undoubtedly thought he was in love with me. What? He knew where I lived, what I looked like and where I went to school. Is that love? Should be obvious.

Crazy people are all around us. When I moved into my new apartment, another tenant ran up to me and introduced himself. He pointed out the colors of my car (red with white) and then showed me that his car is white. He was planning on painting green racing stripes along the side of his car, but now that he saw mine, he thought it might be "fun" to have the inverse pattern as mine. Sure enough, over the weekend Dude put a red stripe on his car. Does that mean he's a stalker? No. Does it mean he's clinically insane and I should move? Difficult to say...., but probably not~ though I'm certainly paying attention.

MySpace is a wonderful arena for stalkings of all kinds. Shortly after I created my profile, men wrote me saying that I seemed like the kind of girl they'd like to get to know and date. They knew this from my profile. What had I written on that profile? Nothing. I had written nothing. And by nothing, I mean that I hadn't written any words..... Yet, they felt they must know enough about me to ask me out. (Never mind the fact that I had made sure NOT to include "Dating" as a reason why I was on MySpace.)

Even now, with blog ramblings, photos and comments that span one full year, the persona I have on MySpace is an online persona~ a little, tiny part of my life that doesn't get too personal. After all these years of being (knock on wood) stalker-free, I am still very guarded about what I chose to share with any onlookers.

All this is to say that I've deleted any blog entries that actually give insight into my real life. This space will be silly musings, more in line with what I used to post on Chris's page: meaningless, light hearted and fun..... A momentary escape from the crazy world we live in.