Let's Not Meet Again

He Always Seemed To Find Me

It's amazing how things can haunt us and past experiences make us distrust other people. I've been carrying this around, but I've never told anyone the whole story.

This all started back in 2004. I can't believe it's been 11 years now. I was 14 back then. I was a pretty good kid. I was very polite, I did very well in school and I was always home by 6 to eat dinner. I never stayed out late or did anything "wrong", such as drugs or drink alcohol or anything of the sort.

I used to be fairly thin but strong, people had always compared me to other girls and I was never quite as feminine as them. I didn't mind much. In my opinion, climbing trees was far superior to wearing pretty dresses and make-up. I was proud to be masculine and strong. But it didn't exactly make me popular and as a result, finding new friends was hard.

So I started taking up some hobbies and among those was martial arts. It fit well with me and we were a small team of 7-8 people who got along pretty well. One of these guys, Matt, was a pretty shy and quiet boy. We were all around the age of 14 and I was pretty direct and I thought that it simply intimidated him a bit. So I tried to make him feel more included, when the others and I spoke, since I had previously known what it felt like to be an outsider in social groups and we were a really friendly bunch. We rode our bikes to and from practice and I noticed we always went quite a bit of way down the same road. So we naturally started to talk while riding our bikes home. It was fine, he seemed friendly, albeit a little weird. But I was weird too, so who was I to judge?

Everything went just like business as usual for the whole first year. We all became friends and I cherished it, as I didn't really have many others. But the year after was my last year at our regular schools and I wanted to do well and frankly, I had too much on my plate. So I started to skip practice from time to time to do homework. This didn't go over well with Matt and he started texting me asking where I was. Weird thing was that I hadn't given him my number, but I didn't know anyone else with that name. I didn't respond a lot, since my dad paid for my phone and he would get angry if I spent too much on anything. So one day I stopped responding at all. This must have prompted him to begin calling me. I didn't like that and didn't pick up at all for a while. I still sometimes came to practice, but this was kind of freaky and I didn't really like where it was going. Whenever he saw me there he just kind of stood and stared at me and had reverted back to always being the quiet kid in the background. I stopped trying to get him fitted into our conversations at this point, since he started scaring me and I began going home in an alternate route, since I couldn't deal with being stuck by his side for 10 minutes on my bike. While this went on, he kept calling me and I never picked up.

One day, I had had it with the constant calls and I picked up. "Hello?" I asked, pretty harshly. He probably hadn't expected me to pick up at all. His breathing was somewhat heavy and it gave me chills. "Hey..." He said. "Are... Are you coming to practice on Wednesday?" He sounded weirder than normal and I regretted my decision to pick up the phone. "Yeah, of course." And I was met with complete silence for a while. "Good! I'll see you there." I could hear the smile in his voice and it sent a shiver down my spine.

Wednesday came and I was in way over my head and decided against going to practice. I hoped he wouldn't call again and he didn't. My phone was silent for several weeks. When I felt comfortable I went back to practice, but he wasn't there. I thought that maybe he had finally gotten the hint and decided to leave me alone. But my curiosity got the best of me and I asked the only other girl about it. What she told me next was so surreal and chilling. "Oh, Matt? Yeah, it happened a few weeks ago, I think. You weren't here and he barged in - in the middle of practice - And yelled out your name. 'Look at what you've done to me' he yelled and showed off his arms. They were cut and torn and blood was dripping everywhere." She said. I was shocked, but also very glad I had decided against going on that day. She then told me how our teacher had called for an ambulance and tried to calm Matt down. He had apparently gone ballistic when he realised I wasn't even there. He had then been committed to the psych ward and as far as I gathered his phone and other belongings were not available to him until he had undergone complete psychiatric evaluation. I felt relieved. Now, surely, I would be safe. Only I wasn't.

The psych ward was in my city and at one point they must have let him have his phone back, because he began calling me and this time he left voice messages. He said things like "you're a horrible person", "You ruined me" and "No one will ever love you like I could have". I was mostly confused. We had never been romantic in any way whatsoever and I had never expressed interest in him. I begged my father to change my number, so I could be free of the harassment, but my father didn't budge. He was angry that people were calling me, but he couldn't be bothered to remember a new number if I got one, so I was stuck with what I had. After a while the voice mails stopped. But this was at a time when my rebellious phase began and I attended protests to keep some historical counter-culture buildings in Copenhagen.

Somehow he found me there. Every Thursday at the peaceful protests, he was there. Staring at me. I was with friends, but I still felt threatened. His scarred arms, sometimes with new cuts were horrifying. I didn't know what to do, so I always stayed close to my friends. I had hoped my punk phase would deter him, since I dyed my hair green, red, black, whatever and wore different clothes. But it seemed that it only made matters worse. He texted me, sometimes during the protests, saying how I "Looked hot" or how he "Liked me legs in that skirt". Weird shit like that. I tried to glare at him, but I couldn't look at him for long. He scared me. This went on for several weeks. Then, one day, he began sending me mails. I have no idea how he got hold of my email address, since I usually didn't share it with anyone. In the mails he described how he was feeling, that he was willing to "Forgive" me for what I'd done to him. That he had watched me from afar for a while now and he wanted to be in my life again. He described what I had been wearing that day, and even on days I hadn't been at a protest.

One day he messaged me "You look so peaceful when you sleep". I noped the fuck out at that point and told my dad everything. He was kind of upset (more that I hadn't told him anything until now), but he didn't yell at me too much. The following month, we moved to another town a few hours away. The messages stopped for a while until one day he wrote a chilling text saying "Why haven't I seen you in your apartment for a while? Did you move? Where are you?". I froze. He had known where I lived. I lived on the ground floor in an apartment and my room had been just by our small garden. I was chilled to the bone thinking that maybe he actually had stood outside my window and watched me sleep.

After this I heard nothing from him. I got a boyfriend and we moved into an apartment together in a different town when we were 18. I forgot about Matt and didn't think about him anymore. One day while we were out shopping for groceries, I saw him again. He hadn't seen me, it would seem, and I ducked behind my boyfriend and told him "please, let's just hide, I don't want him to see me". We stayed behind him for a while, but I was extremely nervous that he would notice me. He didn't. He just bought some stuff and went out. I hoped he was just visiting someone in the area and that I wouldn't see him again.

A few weeks later I went to the town square to draw in the sun. I sat down, music in my ears, and started drawing. A few hours went by and suddenly someone sat down beside me. It was Matt, of course. I took off my headphones, a little terrified, but we were in a fairly busy public place, so I didn't feel that threatened. He began talking to me as if we were old friends, telling me how he looked up to Kurt Cobain, how he had learned to play the guitar, how many girls he had fucked, shit like that. I listened and politely replied with "oh", "uh-huh" and "really?". He started complimenting me and I felt increasingly awkward. He then mentioned that I was welcome to visit him, whenever I wanted. I have always been a bit curious, so I asked where he lived and he pointed at an apartment. It turned out he lived right across the fucking street from me. I made up an excuse and said I had to go. He seemed annoyed, but accepted it. I went to the library and made sure to watch out for him, in case he was following me. But after a few minutes I decided he had lost interest. I haven't heard from him since, but the fact that he suddenly lived across from me freaked me out for quite a while.

So, Matt, I hope we never meet again.