fear

Mina

I worked for a London company with a lot of older sales guys, some would drink in the lunchtime, they called me a lesbian as I didnt have a boyfriend and one called me a prostitute for no reason I can fathom except that he was always drunk in the lunchtimes and he was abusive and toxic, they made sexual jokes all the time and I didnt leave as I was scared and had to pay my rent which was high and I was quite new to the corporate world, so vunerable, looking back I wish I had left years ago when the comments started, although I would now never put myself in that situation, they also didnt pay me for new client accounts that I brought into the company.

eMarie

Went to a concert. Man in the crowd said to his friend, “man look at all the hot girls here.” Man then called out to me, “Hey baby….” I turned and as he leered at me as if he was raping me in his mind. I hurried off with no reply. I hoped he hadn’t followed me. I hoped I hadn’t made him angry.

Just Doing My Job

Part of my financial aid for university allowed me to work at a library on my college campus. I got the job as soon as I enrolled and within five a weeks a young man came up to my desk and informed me that he had seen me there several times and wanted to talk to me. I think, okay not too bad, but now that I knew he was there, I start seeing him stare at me from across the building. He wouldn’t say anything, just stare until he came up to me and then he’d compliment whatever necklace or shirt I had on, but he wouldn’t be looking at my accessories. Then he started to appear outside my gym whenever I’d finished exercising or follow me into restaurants. I told myself it was a small college town, this was bound to happen, even as he started appearing outside my classes, pacing back and forth in the hallways. My coworkers and boss started to notice he would come up to my desk and stand over it, staring down my shirt and mumbling to himself. They started to find things for me to do to stay away from him, but they asked that I report it and I thought he was just a harmless, unusual creepy, individual, perhaps with some sort of social disability or anxiety. The stress was piling up, I started taking self defense lessons, but seeing him everywhere staring and following me was eating away at my mental health. I started having nightmares, didn’t want to leave my room and was physically ill. The day I finally reported him he followed me back to my building in nearly a full tilt run, thankfully I had a friend with me who called the police, but the police told me there was nothing they could do other than if I called them when he was ogling me at work, they could tell him to stop staring. It was only after I called my father in tears, who when he called the police only then did they agree to make an incident report of him following me home. My boss and I filed the paperwork for a no contact order the next day, but it only keeps him twenty feet away from me, and he can still stare at me from across the room at work so long as he initiates no contact when I’m just trying to do my job. I keep up with my martial arts and I keep working, but I can’t wait to graduate and get away from him.

Maggie

I had a man I didn’t know follow me while I walked my dog. Somehow, he found out my name and whenever he saw me in our small town. He’d run at me yelling my name. I was ducking into bathrooms and stores to hide. I didn’t even feel safe getting gas or going to the grocery. I changed markets, no longer walked my dog, and eventually moved. My life was controlled by this one man. When I’d mention this to people, they’d laugh and say he had a crush on me. No one really took it seriously.

Cecilia

Today I was walking over to visit my fiance, a cyclist, who was t-boned by a car yesterday and as a car drove past me I heard the driver and passenger shouting and whistling at me. I was so pissed off (because those words were the final straw and because idiotic drivers like this one being distracted could have killed my fiance) I turned around to flip them off. But, as usually, I spent the rest of the walk looking over my shoulder and wishing I’d paid more attention to the color of the car so I’d recognize it if they came back looking for me.