What Having a Stalker Is Really Like: A Personal Story

A horror movie that‘s about to begin

Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash

I learned some dark things about myself on those chilling nights, in the dark hallway with my back pressed against a cold wall and my face burning.

It must have been around 3 AM. The walnut tree in front of the house was silent, the street light dim.

Nothing moved. I eventually went to sleep with my head on a fluffy pillow that was hiding a massive carving knife I snatched from the kitchen in a moment of quiet panic.

I had a stalker — and no idea what to do about it

He was a French guy obsessed with my art, and as it would later turn out, with me.

Nicolas (this is his real name) had contacted me a year before, wondering if he could see my paintings live. I was living off my art at the time, selling my abstract paintings on various platforms. One of them was Facebook, where Nicolas had found me, with location and everything, and since he was traveling in the area, he wanted to see my paintings with his own eyes.

I said yes. I saw no problem with it. I had my paintings in this house that I had rented, plastered all over the walls. It was like meeting him in a gallery. He could come see the paintings, maybe buy one, and he wouldn’t know where I actually lived.

Win-win, right? Right. For the time being, absolutely right. As I had hoped, Nicolas bought a painting and he struck me as a wonderful person: kind, soft-spoken, shy to the point of blushing and lowering his eyes when spoken to.

I was impressed and honored that such a sweet man was interested in my art.

The next day he went back to his home somewhere in the suburbs of Paris. We kept in touch with the usual pleasantries, a how are you here, have you painted anything lately? there.

He bought more paintings. I was thrilled. A fan! I had a fan!

A year passed, in which I had spoken to Nicolas around three times and he had bought just as many paintings from me when he suddenly told me he had fallen in love with my city and was planning on moving here.

I thought nothing of it at the time and invited him to come over for a drink when he was in the area. In the meantime, my tenants had left and I had moved into the house with the paintings.

He came over… and that was already the beginning of the end, and a massive red flag.

Everything was different

When he came over, I just knew I opened the door to a completely different person. First of all, he was two hours late, because his watch was still on French time — a strange thing to do for someone as considerate as he was.

I showed him my new paintings, asked him to sit, and offered him a glass of wine.

We talked, and drank; he had taken up photography and showed me a few photos. They were a cacophony of overlaid images, colors, and feelings.

What I imagine a mix of anxiety, schizophrenia, and ADHD would look like.

I had him sit on the couch, and I was on an armchair. The couch was positioned in the middle of the living room, with its back towards a hallway. In the relatively short time he was there, Nicolas fidgeted and stirred so much that he managed to move the sofa that he was sitting on right into the hallway.

He slid from enthusiasm to anger to laughter to impatience to speed talking. There were zero moments where he was a normal human being having a conversation with another.

I felt extremely uncomfortable, but still treated him like a valued customer, which he was, all the while wondering who the hell this guy was and why he ate the sweet gentle Nicolas that I had met a year back.

At one point I just had to ask if he was okay — he seemed very agitated, like a Pepsi that you just shook.

He agreed that he was. He didn’t know what happened to him this past year. He didn’t feel like himself; it was like something had taken over his body and mind. Nicolas confided in me that he’s been to several doctors; none of them found anything, but the last one concluded that he had worms. He agreed, that must be it. He would start his treatment the very next day.

Obviously, he had been to no head doctors, and worms were the least of his problems.

Worms or not (obviously not), I was sure I would never want to see this person again, and certainly not in my home. Something was deeply disturbing about him — and I didn’t want to be in his presence for as long as I had.

Nicolas, however, had other plans. He bought two paintings and asked me if I could keep them for him until he finds a place to stay. I said yes, wishing I hadn’t, knowing I’d have to meet him again to give him the paintings.

When he eventually left, I breathed a long sigh of relief.

Little did I know this was just the beginning

Nicolas called me daily or wrote to me on social media. He was trying to be friends. I was trying to be anything but. I avoided contact as much as I could.

His actions were as chaotic as his photos. He once asked me to bring him the paintings, then changed his mind, then reconsidered. He would write to me randomly, about very specific things or completely random life advice.

He was everything, everywhere, all at once, and he wanted me to be a witness to his madness.

And then, as you can imagine, it escalated. No matter how little I was doing towards him, and how neutral I was being in my actions, he found a way to explode.

I had posted something on Facebook — it was a video of David Goggins, who I had deep admiration for at the time. The man ran a marathon with broken bones in his feet and I am an admirer of grit and determination, even when it comes in a slightly damaged package.

That post somehow triggered him. Nicolas left an angry comment, scolding me that I admire and promote people who use swear words.

Swear words?… Swear words?! What the actual f***!

To tell you the truth, I hadn’t even noticed that Goggins had used swear words in that video, maybe because I use swear words myself; but I did notice that some crazy man that I hardly knew decided he had a say in what I post on my own Facebook.

That was the moment when I decided I was out. I wrote him a DM asking to see him so I could deliver his paintings. We agreed for two days later.

The next day I found a note in my yard. Nicolas had been there. He had come during the night, to deliver a letter he had written for me.

The letter was as weird as he was.

It was some sort of ode to how amazing I am and how well we vibe together. At least I think that’s what it was, because to tell you the truth, it said almost nothing. It contained sentences that didn’t result in meaning, words that said nothing.

He had this small writing, like a child. He also signed it ‘Le Petit Nicolas’ — Little Nicolas. A term that I would come to find means not that he was small, but was supposed to be an endearing modifier, something that would make him look cuter in my eyes.

It didn’t work. It made him look creepy in my eyes. I was furious. And I was disgusted. Le Petit Nicolas? What am I, this guy’s mother, while at the same time he’s berating me for swearing?

I wrote him a bitter message about how inappropriate the gesture was. He was in shock; he was hurt; he was backing down. Or at least that’s what I thought. I was wrong.

The next day, there was another letter that he had thrown over the fence into my yard. This one also contained a little plastic envelope with shiny stars. Plus a letter written in purple ink.

This time, I wasn’t just angry. I was freaked out. I could feel my organs reel inside my torso, against this man that was invading my sacred space while I was sleeping, with his strange love, or whatever it was.

The next day, we met. I gave him the paintings. I left. Nothing was said of the intrusive letters. When I got back home I told him I would call the police if he ever came over again and I blocked him on Facebook.

And then… he wrote to me on Instagram. And Facebook Business. And Etsy. And WhatsApp. And every place where I hadn’t blocked him yet.

He told me I wasn’t facing my own needs, my own wants. I was denying myself. I was running away from love.

I knew he meant love for him, and I also knew I didn’t feel that for a second. All I felt was disgust. Deep, dark, gut-wrenching disgust.

But he was absolutely convinced. He wasn’t the first either. Other men from my past have been convinced I had a thing for them, so I was sure I was doing something to give that impression.

I was too friendly, too close, too unafraid to treat a man like a human being — not a threat to my safety, or a mindless beast who was only interested in one thing from a woman.

To this day, I believe it’s my attitude towards men that draws them to me like moths to a flame, and I’ve accepted it as it is rather than be in constant rejection of them, with my shield always on.

But this… this was too much.

The messages kept coming; my stomach kept turning; my mind was bending into a pretzel.

The deep, dark, disturbing truth

One morning I found some broken flowers in front of my house. I don’t know if he was the author or not, but I started to have problems sleeping. I took the biggest knife from my kitchen and put it under my pillow, constantly fearing I would cut myself during the night.

I would spend hours hiding behind a curtain, staring into the darkness outside, carefully watching every movement in front of my house. I never saw him, but his presence was there, all around, disturbing my peace.

I would strategize endlessly, trying to control the chaos in my brain.

If he did manage to get into the house, how long would it take him to get upstairs to my bedroom? Would I hear him getting up the stairs? If I lock the door to the bedroom, would he be able to push through it?

And the biggest question: would I be able to kill him before he kills me?

Eventually, this became the only question: Would I kill him? Could I kill him? Would I be able to live with myself afterward?

After some dark nights steeped in thoughts, I found that the answer to all these questions was yes. And I no longer feared him, I feared myself. My darkness, my pain, my anger at a man who would trespass my boundaries, both physical and emotional.

Somebody who no matter what I said and how many ways I told him I’m not interested, continued to believe otherwise and was doing his best to convince me of his reality. A man who thought he had ownership over me. A man who seemed like the sweetest kindest person who never hurt a soul, but later on turned into a crazy nightmare, oozed from his own muddled brain.

That’s what having a stalker is really like. Nothing happens until everything does.

It starts like regular life, and suddenly one of the people in it, not even someone close or important, highjacks it and turns it into madness — like an otherwise regular cell sometimes turns into cancer.

Somehow, this very unimportant person manages to deeply derail the course of your life.

I eventually sold that house, although I loved it deeply.

My stalker was the man that made me sell my house after he made me feel unsafe inside it.

My stalker was the man that made me realize I could kill someone.

My stalker was the man who made me swear off men.

Nicolas eventually left my city

A few months ago, as I was cleaning up my Etsy art account, I closed some purchases and two of them were from him. The next day, I received a message: ‘I didn’t leave because I was scared of the police, I left because there was nothing more for me there. I made mistakes because I thought you were a friend, but you made mistakes too, like that time when we were supposed to meet and you went to another place.’

Yeah, that’s the same. Stalking my house and mistaking the meeting place — that’s the same in the mind of a psycho, or whatever he was.

I didn’t answer anything back. Police told me that’s the best thing to do with stalkers — never answer anything back. They’ll use any word from you as fuel for more stalking.

They’ll use your existence as a reason for their existence. That’s what being stalked is like: you carry the burden of someone’s purpose in life. And it makes you as crazy as they are.

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