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.
