I quit my job. Do you know how humiliating that is? To walk into your manager’s office, someone who believes in you, and say you have to leave immediately without notice? I couldn’t tell them the real reason. I felt so much shame. I felt like it was somehow my fault for going on that one stupid date. I packed up my desk in a cardboard box, looking over my shoulder the entire way to the elevator. I left behind a career I had worked so hard to build, all because a man couldn’t handle the word “no.”
But quitting wasn’t enough. I still felt him everywhere. Every time a car drove past my apartment too slowly, my chest tightened. Every time the floorboards creaked in the hallway outside my door, I grabbed the heavy metal flashlight I started keeping on my nightstand. I wasn’t sleeping. I was losing weight. I was a ghost haunting my own life.
So, I moved. I broke my lease, ate the massive financial penalty, and found a new apartment in west Houston. I didn’t tell anyone on social media. I didn’t forward my mail right away. I changed my number. I thought, this is it. This is a clean slate.
I also went to the police. Over and over again. I sat in those freezing cold waiting rooms, clutching folders of printed-out emails and blurry photos I had taken of his car down my street.
“He hasn’t physically threatened you, ma’am,” the officer told me, clicking his pen with a bored expression. “Showing up in a public parking lot isn’t a crime.”
“He is stalking me,” I pleaded, tears burning my eyes. “I had to quit my job. I had to move. I am terrified.”
