10 years of breaking free
So in the past 10 years I've had three male stalkers. Total of 3+ years of my adult life being stalked.
But one situation was incredibly damaging. The son of an older mentor who was close with me turned into a lot of drama in his family, and my family, and a lot of crossfire. This was 10 years ago. He could never ask me out or talk to me. All in person encounters were train wrecks, but I tried to make it work. I was under a lot of pressure to try to impress his father. However, then he was controlling. Interfered in my job search at the start of the recession. Spread gossip about me. Isolated me from friends and family. Told my family I was crazy. I had to go to a battered women's shelter to find someone who didn't think I was crazy to understand what was going on.
He has then continued to follow me obsessively. This summer he entered my apartment while I was out by climbing onto the balcony and through the open windows. He has tried to prevent me from dating other people or moving on.
This was too much, and I feel I have made steps to rebuild my life, gain independence, and break free from the effects of him constantly trying to get into my head. I've experienced loss, betrayal, disappointment. It's been very hard for me to accept that this whole thing just derailed so much of my life. The emotional scars, the damaged family relationships.
Now I am on the mend, but it just takes time to heal. I am building the life I want, but it's overwhelming sometimes the amount I have to juggle. I want to have a healthy relationship and someone to share my life with now.
Someone may have come along recently, but it's bringing up a lot of triggers, because she is a public figure. Dating her would mean a lot of publicity and pressure, and I'm having a panic attack about it. I need to spend time with her and figure out dating and relationship questions before being confronted with all of that pressure again. I feel like too much pressure on top of the things I juggle in my life would make me crack from the anxiety.
@energeticFarm4649
I'm glad ou decided to share your story with us. I'm sorry that you had to experiance this. Have you taked with this possible new person about your experiance and told her that her being in the public eye makes you anxious? I think it is always good for peope to understand where you're coming from. How are things with your family now?
@UntilThen
so far, she hasn't approached me openly or directly. I wrote her a letter just generally saying I am really private and public pressure creates trauma/ pressure for me, but she has only mentioned it vaguely, and hasn't made really personal contact with me. How do you discuss something with someone who you don't experience any direct personal contact with?
@UntilThen
My mother was hyper critical and bitchy for years. I wasn't allowed to talk about it, because according to my parents it didn't happen. So it was years before I found friends who would let me cry it out and actually tell them how it made me feel. After that, my mother would make dart comments referring to how I fucked up that opportunity with that guy.
Then she was diagnosed as being terminally ill. For years I felt like I needed to prove to her I was right. I wanted my relationship with her to be whole. I still wanted things to work out, that I could have the relationship and she could be in my life in a healthy way. I never got any of those things. She died. It took me being there to visit her every day when she was immobile and alone for her to realize what an amazing daughter I was. How F@#$d up is that? So yeah, my mother was a bitch until she was miserable and dying and then I was an amazing daughter, but never a day before that. So I can't really even say I'm 100% glad she's gone. But I'm pissed as h311 that I never got that.
But honestly, she was toxic and sabotaging my relationship with my dad (and brother, who is a psycho a$$) who has always been close to me. So she's not around to sabotage the support I get from my dad, and I just can't be disappointed in my little brother who is such a wash out. He's totally insane. He tells my dad he's going to call the police when I brought a tulip back from my trip to Holland and went to drop it off at his house, and his wife isn't any better. She was the adult child who called him when I did that. So I have realized I need to shift my thinking to be more like an only child as the only way not to be furious at him for not being there, and for being emotionally manipulative to my mother when she was dying. So I guess he takes after her for being such a piece of work.
So I left, and now dad is a big part of my support team, and he's basically all I have l left.