Stalker

“You’re going to get kidnapped one of these days” a statement my friend always tells me because of how willing I am to talk to strangers. I blame it on COVID right now because I am so excited when someone approaches me to talk to me. However, this over friendly nature I have probably stems from being trapped in a boarding school during my high school years and then breaking free and moving straight to college on another continent. 

What I am about to tell you probably sounds fake but like most stories about my life it’s as real as you can get. I had a stalker my freshmen year. Let’s call him creep, I met creep in one of the student unions in my school. He approached me and said he wanted to ask me a couple questions. He was older so I thought it would be research questions. I go to his table after collecting my food from the den. He asked basic questions then moved on to tell me he moved from Tanzania and how its been hard for him to make friends. Coming from Ghana, I could relate to his predicament, so I decided to give him my number. That was the first mistake. He later on texted me that he’d saved my name as “UofA one and only I see in my life”. My friends still tease me with the name, but it’s a good reminder to not trust easily. During that week he was everywhere I went, it got so bad that I didn’t leave my dorm and had to use grub hub to order food even though the restaurants were a 5 minute walk away from me. 

I described creep to my roommate so she would be on the lookout for me. Fast forward 2 weeks later she sees someone lying on the street in the middle of the night right outside our dorm and decides to check up on the person. You probably guessed right it was creep. She told me how he asked about me and to pass the message that he had been seeing me around and that I was gaining weight and had become fat. During those 2 weeks I thought he had gotten the message and had decided to leave me alone, but he had been watching me. I won’t lie I had gained weight, the freshmen 15 hit me hard. Which is why I knew he had been watching me. 

I didn’t realize the severity of the situation till I found out from his friends that he told them we were dating and that he had pictures of us together. Considering how I was avoiding him the only thing I could think of was that he was taking pictures of me as I walking around school and photoshopped himself in addition. 

After realizing how psycho he was my room mate decided to intervene and threatened him with a restraining order. He didn’t get the message the first time and fired back with how he would voodoo me into loving him and that I would never find someone else because I was his. I’ve never been cursed and I was not planning on it so we had to be firm and tell him we would get his visa revoked if he didn’t stop. That finally got to him and I was finally free from looking over my shoulder and hiding in my dorm. The situation has definitely affected my approach towards strangers. I am always second guessing whether the people I meet would flip like creep did but I can't live my life in a bubble of questions and doubts. Till next time!