#TalkingStalking: I Was Harassed So Much That I Left My Country

#TalkingStalking | I was harassed since I was 15. After suffering for many years, I decided to leave the country.

I was harassed by my stalker. To the extent that I had to leave the country. 

(Photo: The Quint)

I was about 16 or 15. I was an avid reader, good at my studies and extra curricular activity; had a lot of friends; popular with teachers. There was a guy in my class who also happened to be my good friend. He always had a crush on me which I never responded to. After two years at that school I changed to a different school and started getting calls from my common friends saying how that guy was so in love with me and how I should reciprocate. I declined again.

Five years later I had started my career with one of the best hotels in the country through college placements. One day, I suddenly got a call from a lady who was the sister of the said guy. She was hysterical and screaming at me saying the guy had overdosed on drugs and was only calling for me.

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I lived in Mumbai at the time and I found that he was in Haryana. She accused me to have led him on for all these years and was the cause of this condition. I was scared and confused, and confided to my family about this, who also ended up blaming me. My family felt I had probably led him on, given that I had many male friends.

After a few months, on my birthday, the doorbell rang. The same guy stood there in a drug-induced state. He barged into my house and, in the presence of my parents, started professing his love and blaming me on how I had ruined his life. Somehow, my parents managed to drive him out of the house and he left with an accusing look in his eyes.

Meanwhile, I was working at the hotel, doing night shifts and many odd hours. I was scared of travelling alone and one day when I came out of the hotel after my shift, there he was standing in a corner of the empty street. I was shocked and ran back into the hotel. I stayed there until the morning till I could find someone to travel with.

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This continued for several days. He would follow me on the train and constantly message me and call me, threatening suicide if I didn’t accept his love. This went on for days until the time my entire family was scared of stepping out as they would find him under my building in a drunken state.

Creating a brawl and screaming obscenities, we went to the police station that day to register a complaint. The officers there simply dismissed me and my parents saying that he was a young boy and ‘these things happen’. Also, since I worked at a hotel they straightaway labelled me promiscuous and said that my parents should have ‘taken care of me when they could’.

This went on for more than 3 months. I was in severe depression and lived in constant fear.

Finally, I saved myself by running away. I changed my job, my phone number, my country, and myself too.

My mother still receives threatening messages.

In all of this, I realised that no matter how modern the society gets, at the end of the day, nobody ever questions the guy or his upbringing or even his psychotic behaviour. It was all my fault.

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