"ok...if sharon wakes up before i leave the house for work, i'll tell her what happened. but wait! i'm going to tell her there's a crazy psycho that's watching every online move i make AND has my phone number and then walk out the door? like, HEY, DON'T ANSWER THE DOOR IF THE STALKER KNOCKS....I'M GOING TO WORK, SEE YA! yeah, i doubt that would be smart. no. i don't want to worry her. i'll just keep it to myself until i get home at the end of the day and then i'll tell her....right? ok. plan!"
scary how my brain works, huh?
so, that's what i did. i'm always the first one up in the morning, so i got up. showered and went to work. everyone was sleeping soundly in the bliss of a world that doesn't include crazy people. i was glad for them. frightened for myself, but glad for them.
as i drove into the office, i called my best friend vince....who is a therapist....for real a therapist. he deals with crazy people all the time, right? he'll know what to do. :-)
after telling vince the whole story he began to laugh....really? yes! like, only the way your best friend can laugh at you when you are in the middle of some life altering trama (ok, that's a little extreme, but you get the idea) and yet, still you don't punch them in the face. i asked him...."so, you really think this is funny?" he said, "actually, no. it's not. everything that you just described to me is textbook delusional behavior. this women...vicki, believes that she has a relationship with you and that you have been communicating with her. she has created a world for herself and you are a major part of it. you don't know what a person in that state is capable of, so if i were you, i would cut any possible ties this women has to you. any possible online access at all." he asked me if i had told sharon. i told him that i didn't want to scare her, and he said that i needed to tell her right away.
that's when i really got scared. what if she had money and knew enough of where i lived that she could hop on a plane and come out here. it sounds crazy....but only because it's me. not because it's never happened. right at that moment my phone rang. it was sharon.
she was calling to say good morning or something sweet like that. she certainly wasn't expecting to hear the tale that i began telling her. i didn't open with "hey, babe...guess what, i've got a stalker". i just started at the beginning. i was just getting to the part of the story where the crazy psycho said for the first time that her name was vicki when sharon interrupted me. "vicki....that's so strange. i get random voice mail messages every now and again from some lady named vicki in ohio too!"
........WHAT?
sharon went on...."yeah, i just always figured it was a wrong number or something"
i started to feel my heart sink into my chest. HOW DID THIS PSYCHO GET MY WIFE'S PHONE NUMBER??? this may be more serious than i thought. psycho lady was calling sharon too!
i finished my story and sharon was remarkably calm. she said that everything would be fine. just do what vince said and don't worry. i love her. i was so grateful that she was level headed in that moment, because honestly, i was on my way to the gun store right after i bought our new doberman pinscher puppy. so, that day i went through all of my social media removing vicki....it was a lot more labor intensive than i expected. youtube, facebook, twitter, my blog, google+, instagram....it's amazing how much access i had given a stranger, to my family. scary actually. i have been a lot more careful since then.
in the days following, i monitored the psycho's blog and facebook page to see if she was writing anything else about me, and with the exception of one final kiss off blog post to me, i am happy to report that there hasn't been any other contact made. vicki seems to have taken her imaginary ball to play elsewhere, never to be heard from again (i hope)....and for that, i am thankful. i'm grateful that nothing serious happened, and that i was given a pretty painless wake up call to be a little more careful on the intrawebs. you never know who's watching....
No comments:
Post a Comment