My Stories: My Stalker
I grew up in the 80s & 90s. A time when we as kids were allowed a lot more freedom. A time when many of us were told just to be home when the street lights came on. A time without cell phones for our parents to track us on. A time where people were trusted. I don’t know if the world is really more unsafe now or we just have access to so much information that we can see how many people unsafe are really out there. Either way, it was a different time with different rules and I know that I am lucky to have escaped what could have been true hell based on all that we see on the news…
I lived only a few blocks from my elementary school. My mom would typically walk my brother and I there in the mornings when we were young and for a time we went to afterschool, but there was a point in which I walked home and was by myself until my mom came home. A lot of the kids I went to school with had similar situations or at least lived close to the school like I did. Most days we would meet at the park after we dropped off our book bags and play until dinner. We had little to no supervision from 2:30-5:30 most days.
It was either the tail end of my 3rd grade year or first part of my 4th, my memory isn’t great there, but I do know it was before I moved my brother and I out of my moms house to live with my dad as that was the end of 4th. My brother and I spent every other weekend with my dad and it was one of his weekends. When I got home Sunday afternoon my mom and her boyfriend (My Abuser) wanted to talk to me by myself on the porch with my dad. I found out then that the night before around midnight a phone call came in. My mom’s boyfriend had picked up the phone and a man asked to speak to me. My mom’s boyfriend said that I was not there and asked who was calling. They said it was a friend of mines dad and my mom’s boyfriend asked which friend and why he was calling me instead of the friend. Then click, the man hung up…
The next day the police came to my house. I had told my mom, dad and my mom’s boyfriend the day before that I had no idea who had called me. That I had given my phone number to my friend Lindsey the day before in the Meadowbrook hotel parking lot (a shortcut on my way home from school) as her parents met her there to avoid the pick-up line at school. The only thing I could figure is that she dropped the phone number because she had never called me as she promised. I had noticed a man sitting in a white van, what I call a painters van, each day after school the last few weeks. The police questioned me for a while about what he looked like and my routine, they questioned my mom’s boyfriend about the phone call too. Finally they decided that they would escort me to and from school to see if the man in the van showed.
I never saw the van after that. The man never showed back up. Maybe he saw the police. Maybe he got scared off when my mom’s boyfriend answered the phone. Maybe he decided I wasn’t his mark after all. Whatever the reason, I am thankful that he was never more than the man in the white van watching me walk through the parking lot.
Core Beliefs Established
Strangers are not safe.
I am not safe walking alone.
“There's always some reason
To feel not good enough
And it's hard at the end of the day
I need some distraction
Oh a beautiful release
Memories seep from my veins
Let me be empty
Oh and weightless and maybe
I'll find some peace tonight”
‘Angel’ by Sarah McLalchlan
