Life is Officially Different Now

All I want to do right now is cry and yet I’m afraid if I let myself start I won’t be able to stop. So much has happened in the past two weeks and has changed everything. A part of me is hesitant to write about it because that means that this is and has really happened and I can’t turn back now.

Over the last 2 months now the FB has morphed into a stalker when I refused to enter into a committed relationship and tried to break it all off. He has officially become the one who “wont take no for an answer”. It all came to a head two weeks ago after he showed up at my apartment uninvited and unannounced, behaving erratically, and forcing me to call 9-1-1 while hiding in my closet close to hysterics. After that happened my life has been in an uproar.

I was forced to move in a three-day period in conjunction with explaining to my parents and siblings what happened causing them to be both worried for my safety and furious at his actions. Then I had to email my thesis supervisor who is currently battling breast-cancer, to explain my predicament and apologize for my uncharacteristic behaviour this semester and severe lack of work to show for the last few months of researching and writing time. I also lost my summer job over this because we worked together and I can’t go back there because that would open me up to more criminal harassment. Now my ability to support myself without a loan or help from my parents has been compromised and I’m extremely worried about how I’ll be able to afford Grad School. I also have to resign myself to staying in my University town over the summer semester in order to finish up if I have any hope of graduating this year and starting my Ph.D this fall. This also means any hopes and plans I had of traveling to the Netherlands this summer to begin my Ph.D research have been completely cut out.

Ever since he showed up at my apartment and turned my life upside-down I’ve been all keyed up. I’m constantly looking over my shoulder and I’m anxious every time I leave my parents house in my hometown because that’s where he lives and works. He knows my general movements there since I go home every weekend to play in a hockey league. I’m furious that my life has changed so dramatically and all he’s had to suffer is a “broken heart” and some confusion since he doesn’t understand why I acted the way I did. He seemed to believe I was his soul mate despite the fact that I professed not to believe in soul mates and wanted nothing to do with him anymore.

Above all I am furious. I’m furious that the laws in Ontario won’t allow me to arrest and charge him at this point. I’m furious that my future educational plans are in jeopardy. I’m furious that he basically gets off scot-free with no consequences while I’m out a good paying job that I enjoyed and excelled at. I’m furious that I had to leave my beautiful apartment and move into a house with roommates. I’m furious that my family and friends are all worried about my safety. I’m furious that I feel anxious every time the phone rings, or I leave the house or even when I check my email. Most of all I’m furious for how helpless I feel.

Despite all this, I’m grateful for my family who has been nothing less than fantastic through all this. My youngest brother allowed me to hide out in his dorm room for a few days before I could move, my Mom dealt with my landlady because I was too upset, my Dad dropped everything to help me move out of my old place and into my new house all in one day. My oldest brother called up a few of his police buddies to find out exactly what I could do about this and what my rights were. Brother’s 2 and 4 went and spoke to the stalker in a public setting, in an attempt to get him to leave me alone. This happened a week before he showed up here, after he called my parents house in a panic trying to gain information about me through brother #4. At this point I had cut off all contact for 5 days and was refusing to engage him anymore. I’m now living beside brother #3 who is keeping an eye on me and being very supportive, including giving me free internet, which is really a live saver at this point. I don’t know where I’d be right now without the support of my family.

A Moment in Time

This morning as I was reading through my daily dose of blogs I came to realize that right now I far more enjoy reading other people’s sites than I do updating my own. There are so many things I have thought about writing and started out putting down and yet they never come to fruition. My time has been pulled in innumerable directions and yet it seems like I never get to finish one thing I’ve started before I’m pulled in yet another direction.

Right now I’m hiding out from marking my students big essay’s and just enjoying some downtime- because really who wants to spend what will probably be one of the last, if not last sunny fall Saturdays marking 80 hideously written first year papers which each go in excess of 8 pages? There’s so much I want to write about like my new hockey league, the philosophical musings of my almost 3-year old niece, my siblings, the new twist my depression has taken, the daily fear I have picked up, the search for an acceptable University to apply for my Ph.D studies which would begin this upcoming September, and my current thesis advisor’s struggle with breast cancer. Yet, all that comes trickling out are half-started posts here and there saved to my hard-drive or softly formed, malleable ideas struggling to take on enough shape in my head to be transposed to the computer.

So, instead I sit and I dream and I watch the wind blowing the leaves through the back yard at my parent’s house while basking in the sun streaming through my window. I wish every day could fill me with this kind of contentment and then I remember that tomorrow afternoon I have to get in my car and drive an hour and a half back to my real life of thick books and due dates, of clambering students and unmarked papers. But for now I think I’ll just enjoy what I have right this minute and deal with the consequences later.