The Stalker, in a Nutshell (WARNING: ENORMOUS NUTSHELL)

So I'm writing this July 6, but I'm not going to post it until that day has rolled off the front page. This isn't front page stuff. I just need a place to refer people who ask about it. It seems likely that this person will be following me around the internet forever, picking fights. So I will have one place I can link to if asked.

I want to be clear about this person: as far as I can tell, she's a normal person. With everybody but me, she seems to be a normal person. People seem to think she's pretty charming and reasonable. I thought so myself originally. And you know what, after all that's said and done, that's what I'd rather believe about her. I'd rather believe that she is a more-or-less decent individual, with flaws and vulnerabilities like we all have, who believes what she says about grace and human goodness and Jesus and all - and that for whatever reason, she got onto this incredibly weird track with me and she can't let it go, but that it doesn't touch any other part of her except how she feels about me. That's my take on her, and I hope that it's truly the case. I wish her well in life. I do wish she'd leave me alone, but we can't have it all.

OK. So. The timeline.

Some of the dates are exact based on e-mails, others are fudged in on a guess. Note that I've never bothered to delete anybody's e-mails. I can't be really bothered to spend hours going through neatening up stuff when Hotmail has a seemingly infinite capacity. Look. I don't advise anyone to read this, unless you have some reason to. If she's contacted you spreading her side about me, well at least maybe you'll see this and have something to counterbalance that.

So, here's a rough timeline of a pretty rough time:

May '07. An online friend of hers first commented on my blog. Became a regular commenter, linked to my blog from hers. We were friendly.

8/20/08 [ the person in question ] first commented on my blog. Sometime after that, I first commented on hers. My comments on her blog mostly dealt with abstruse theological points, and many of them were about as goofy as the theology you see on here. But we were quite friendly, the atmosphere was friendly.

Dec '08 she first e-mailed me. The first 2 e-mails were kind of just tentative. In the third e-mail 12/23/08 she said a lot of things that in retrospect should have been tipoffs. She thought I was a cryptic puzzle, she thought I was playing a game. She speculated that a woman from Santa Cruz who had posted on a friend of hers' blog might secretly be me. She saw that (the mutual friend) and I were friends, but felt like she wasn't able to connect with me. Now - I have no idea why she felt that way, I'm the same way with pretty much everybody. I haven't got different modes. I responded back to her pretty much putting her mind at ease on all points, or I thought. She had said in her e-mail that she worried I might be somebody laying back pretending to be somebody else online, and having a laugh over her stupidity somehow. I said that as far as I can tell, the person who does THAT is the stupid person - so why care? Later I realized her whole idea of me was based on the firm fact that I was absolutely playing some game. Nothing I said could ever change that fixed idea.

Most of what we talked about during the short period we e-mailed in a friendly fashion was what you might call philosophy: issues of self, identity, grief and obligation, as well as friendship. We also talked a lot of Christian theology. Much of our conversation was what I'd call arguing. I'm tremendously hard-headed and will not generally give up on a point until either the other person sees my point, or at least until I can see theirs. I don't like leaving a disagreement with no understanding. Exacerbating things was the fact that I generally talk pretty widescreen on the major common universal issues, whereas she tended to want to take anything I said as a criticism of her, if it were at all possible to do so, and as an irrelevancy if it were not. During all this time, her endless refrain was that I was not being upfront with her over who I am (while she was always "JUST ME!"). Now, it's true I don't generally put my name out online - this a personal preference, but to her it was some kind of cryptic obsession, a desire for me to be seen as a puzzle. At one point she claimed to have "figured out" who I was, I was like "wow, thanks for respecting my wishes,"...but it turned out she thought I was some completely random teacher named Joe in Santa Cruz. I just wanted a small comfort level between me and the internet. She wanted to "solve the puzzle of Joe" - treated it as a game. In fact I would not be exaggerating to say that she treated everything as a game, in all of her dealings with me. She constantly spoke of how forthright she was, and how she didn't "know the rules," but everything she did was to beat me at this game she was convinced I was playing.

I prefer to be private online, not just because of psychos, it's also because I am by nature kind of private in real life. Much of this blog is utter nonsense. None of it particularly means anything or has a point - of course I do include my own views in some posts, but I also include an awful lot of grade-A asinine. I don't necessarily want to be out there without a pen name, on some of this stuff. But when I'm talking to somebody or corresponding (or even in comments), I am only who I am. I don't pretend to be someone else. So it was pretty insulting to have this weird insistence from her that she is endlessly being confounded by me, that all I am is some kind of cryptic, self-built wall to keep her out. All the while I was in fact sharing what I really believed, on many issues quite near to my heart. I was honest, I bared the truth as I knew it, and said what I really felt the best way I could possibly put it. I generally do. She incessantly tried to "figure me out" while talking nonstop about what a game it was.

I don't know why this struck me as harmless. In retrospect I'm cringing at my stupidity. At the time, I had no experience with a person like this.

Anyway. This was the "good" portion of our correspondence. It ended within less than 90 days. In March '09 she "got real" on me. She claimed numerous poems I'd written were about her (they were not), she said I was directing my blog posts at her. I was not, although I should mention that any time I make what I consider a good point in conversation, in an e-mail, in a comment someplace or a post someplace, or even a memo at work, I am liable to jot it down for possible later expansion upon (whether as a blog post, a song, or something else). Now that would be what I said only - simply my unadorned point, shorn of the original conversational context. My blog, to a large extent, anthologizes such random points as I may make in life. Especially if something touches off a thought process, I like to work that out to its conclusion. But it turned out that with her, if I posted something that digressed from a point I had made earlier, she saw any snippet or reference or similarly-themed post as me alluding to her about "our conversation." And things I posted that had no relevance to anything we'd talked about would be brought in as well, as evidence I was trying to manipulate and/or seduce her.

Some of the above I learned about in more detail later. At first all I had was the allegation: that I was using my blog to seduce her and that poetry I'd written (years earlier mind you, but only just posted on my poetry blog) was in her view, most definitely about her. I told her the hell off, as I considered that she was likely some kind of insane at that point, whether temporary or otherwise. She became upset and told me things about her troubles (she was married, possibly still is) that made me reconsider and think: OK, maybe she's just having a hard time, give her a break. I even stupidly shared some of my own woes in that regard (she has time and again used the few things I shared with her as savagely as possible, in her cracks and remarks). I reiterated very clearly I had no designs on her.

After I told her as clearly and thoroughly as possible and flatly denied the accusations she was making, she eventually apologized and finally recanted what she'd said about me being obsessed with her, and directing my blog at her. Again and again she said she loved me, and apologized for that. She apologized for misinterpreting and she said she believed me that it had been misinterpreting. I said ok I forgave her - but I was pretty shaken up and I had to warn her that if she kept telling me I don't mean what I say I mean, then forget it I didn't want to talk to her anymore. At some point she began begging me to call her on the phone. She felt we could get it all straightened out and be "friends again" if I'd just call her once. She gave me her phone number. I thought at the time, maybe it was possible she'd believe from my voice what she couldn't seem to get from my words: that I was on the level. I called her, and I said as clear as possible that I had no ulterior motive and wasn't trying to play her or seduce her. She said she believed me. We talked a long while about the same sort of stuff we'd discussed before: God, obligations, truth. In e-mails, we had discussed my songs considerably, and I played her one. Before, during, and after the call I made it clear that the whole point of the phone call was to clear the air and not progress to some next level where we're calling each other on the phone. Practically the first thing I did when I called her was to tell her my name. I stupidly thought this would help, because it seemed to be a trust issue with her. I wanted her to believe I was on the level.

She said at the time that she was clear on everything, and apologized for all the "reading into" my words and motives. Anyway. She pretty much immediately relapsed into the same kind of accusations. I told her off again, then she apologized and recanted again, wanted another phone call, I refused. We e-mailed a bit more, then she relapsed again, and finally around May I told her to quit e-mailing me. She flatly refused. At some point I tried reporting her to her e-mail providers. I stopped approving her comments submitted to my blog. She sent several e-mails claiming after all that she had come to her senses, that she absolutely did not believe any more I was "playing" her, that she realized it was a misunderstanding and she apologized for all of the misunderstandings, and that she considered me a dear friend. I told her I was not able to be comfortable interacting with her anymore. I told her if she was my friend, then to please honor my wish to be left alone. I'd already begun to be afraid of her, but the craziest wrinkle had yet to develop:

During the period between May and August, she became convinced that I was secretly reading her blog (I was not) and "mirroring" her posts with allusions or symbolic responses on mine. The examples she cited are so tenous I can't even take them seriously (I went into the main ones in some detail in the comments here in response to her). During this period she continued to e-mail me, and submit comments that were extremely scary to me, very unwelcome statements including sexual remarks and statements of faith in our future. She believed that while on the surface of it, I was telling her to please leave me alone, she felt that I was in fact secretly communicating with her through this tenuous, symbolic means (coded messages in my blog posts). Now I didn't know this at the time - I didn't piece together what she was going on about until she laid it out as the next big accusation, at the end of July. At that point I didn't know what to do. She was constructing this fantasy in complete disregard of everything I told her was true. I went to her blog after what had been by then a long absence, and saw posts there claiming me as some kind of buddy or inspiration to her - during all this going on! It was bad enough that I was being made subject to this private harassment campaign, but I was dog-goned if I was going to have my name on her blog lending legitimacy to this picture she was desperate to paint. I couldn't do anything about her posts, of course, but using Google I identified every one of my comments on her blog that I could find, and deleted them. I'm sure I missed a few. Even Google can't cache everything.

3 days later I got a spate of signup e-mails from adultfinder and bootycall and a bunch of sex sites, plus a one from a site called Truth In Deception with the following cheerful login info:

Username: dogimo
Password: psychopath

I elected not to activate any of these accounts, but the thought was nice.

From August to December we alternated between periods of me successfully ignoring her, punctuated by periods of me rising to some bait (usually either something particularly atrocious, or else a cry for help from her, claiming that she'd finally seen I was telling the truth, and could we please put it behind us) and us engaging in a flurry of angry e-mails that boiled down to the same thing: me telling her to please leave me alone, her gloating that the fact that I even replied at all (even to tell her not to contact me EVER AGAIN at all, by phone, computer, mail or visit) meant that I insatiably craved contact with her. "Our conversation," she called it. Her manner was frequently exultant. She said she loved it when we were fighting. To her, everything I'd done - first in terms of talking to her in the first place, and then later in terms of trying to talk her out of her delusion - the very lengths to which I went were used against me. She said "nobody would" do what I had done, or go as far as I did - putting so much effort into trying to convince someone they were wrong - "nobody would" go to such lengths without an ulterior motive.

Finally in January she called my house, which was one of the things the cops said I could call them about. I called the cops, they were extremely helpful and kind. The officer said he called her house with a warning. I have had no phone calls or e-mails since.

She still follows me around the internet withersoever she can. She's created accounts at the 3 public message boards where I'm a member. Two of these boards have a good 'Ignore' function and I have put it to use. I do my best not to engage her - I've finally realized that even me setting her straight on her bullshit (which alas I have a weakness for in general, for anyone's bullshit) is going to be used by her to support her claim that I can't get enough interaction. More of "our conversation," - a conversation of which less than 90 days had been amicable/consensual.

One the third forum, she went on the attack against me pretty viciously, saying I was only there to internet-predate (is that the verb form of predator?) unwary females. Luckily everyone pretty much knew me there; the word "bullshit" was liberally applied to her claims, several folks sounded a public call for any and all "unwary females" who'd felt the grope of my slimy tentacles to come forward, and she was basically driven off by a mob bearing pitchforks - but an open-minded mob, who asked her to "prove it," who would have been perfectly willing to hear her back up her baseless claims if she could have. Look, at this point I can't understand how she still thinks I'm anything but what I am, up-front. How can she still believe it? She used to claim all my evil designs were directed at her. She turned away from that stance after I kept wanting nothing to do with her - she changed her accusation from me trying to seduce her to me trying to "fuck with her." Who is fucking with who here, seriously? Now she claims my blog (and whatever else I do) is a trap to lure in not her per se, but the unwary in general, the unwary "like her" (delusionally hyperwary, more like). She claimed that my attentions (as a blog commenter) have caused people she knew of to give up blogging in despair. I don't know who or what she can possibly be talking about. I don't know how she can believe herself at this point. I don't think she does believe herself. At this point, it has to be simply an attempt to get back at me for not being obsessed with her. Just whatever she can say or do to slander, hurt or upset me.

Anyway. I've put this whole huge thing together as a 1-stop shot on the topic. I've done my best to not go around mucking with her life, but this is obviously going to keep going on and on, and she's going to keep pursuing me and calling herself the victim, and she's going to keep telling people I'm this predator (a rather bizarre sort of predator: one who flees from his prey, one whose prey pursues him all over the freaking place). Whatever. All I can do is deal.

That's about where things stand.

So anyway. If there are any unwary females out there reading this, watch out: slimy tentacle alert.