Made for me....
Oh, where to begin?

Perhaps with the mad stalky bird. Yeah, that'd be a good place. I'm known for doing dumb stuff. But this one takes the biscuit. Factory.

I'd just been sued for divorce. The ex had moved out, leaving me lonely. So off I went to work again. I turn up to one site, and end up talking to the younger of the two women who looked after the computers. And we end up talking about random stuff, and somehow the topic of tattoos come up. She flutters her eyelids and mentions that she has a tattoo. And this is where I make a big big mistake. An Error with a capital "ERR". I ask her, flirtatiously, what she's doing that night, implying that I'd like to look for the tattoo. She mentions that she's washing her hair. OK, that's me, spurned as usual. I head back to the office, and check in. The salescritter there asks how I'd got on with this person. I mentioned that we'd got on OK. He points out that I'd asked her out and been turned down. "WTF?" I think. He tells me that she's single. I didn't wonder how he knew... but I should have done. So, I ended up calling her (the salescritter *just* *happened* to have her number) and we make a date.

And out we go. I was a bit nervous, as this was my first date since the whole breakup of marriage thing. Actually, we had an OK time. So we decide to meet up again. We go out a couple of times. A couple of odd things happen... we arranged to go out one night, but I was delayed in traffic, as this was when I used to travel. Cue one batshit stamping escapade. Oh.

As you do when going out with someone, we used to sleep together. Only, without fail, every time we did it (after the first time), she'd complain that I made her feel like a prostitute. To be fair, we were in a bit of a rut - she'd come to mine, we'd shag, then she'd go. She never ever stayed over in all the time we were together. She sometimes came over at a weekend, but she hated that too. It was kind of odd, but I thought that I'd put up with worse off the ex-wife, so how bad could it be...? Oh, if only I'd known.

There was the time she went absolutely batshit at someone in a pub, when they... asked her how old Demigod was. That was the first time she stamped out, threatening to have me beaten up. I kind of hid for a while. Then I got a really shouty sweary phone call about "some fucking boyfriends fucking phone their fucking girlfriends". Er, yeah, I guess, but she'd said she never wanted to come anywhere near me ever again, so I'd assumed I was chucked. Apparently not. Then I had to meet her Mom. In hospital. Um, not much you can say about that, except her Mom spent the visit telling me how fat she'd been... and she spent the next two hours swearing about her Mom being jealous of her perfect size 8 body. Or whatever it was.

She'd regularly lose it when I was away. Which was a bit whole lot, seeing as I travelled for work. I seem to remember a whole set of really upset text messages... so I called her. And then got texts about "don't fucking phone me when I'm upset". Er, OK. Whatever. From then on, I didn't. Did I mention that "Some fucking boyfriends fucking phone their fucking girlfriends". Oh yeah, I may have done. I can't really remember what triggered the final argument. She threw stuff at me, and stamped out. Then I had a text message saying that she'd really fucked things up. I said that I didn't think that we should see each other any more, and she agreed. "Phew," I thought. Oh, then she called and asked me if I still wanted the DVD player that she'd agreed with my brother that I needed. I politely asked her to return it.

Therein lies my mistake. This is when the trouble started. Over the next day, I had three death threats off members of her family. They left their names, which was nice. Then she started with the abusive text messages. One night, she did really well - I got 24 messages, of which about six were death threats. Of course, she knew where I lived, and where little one went to nursery, where I worked, and a bunch of other things. And the messages kept on rolling in. I lost count at six hundred abusive messages. They got eerily specific. At one point, the salescritter referred to above asked me how I was. I mentioned that I was really down, really upset, and thinking about jacking my job in and moving away. Twenty minutes later, I got a death threat off her, and a message along the lines of "Yeah, fuck off down there, they deserve you". And still I didn't get it... Then the emails started. All she had was my work email address, so I got death threats and swearing through that too. Great, as my work email was closely monitored, which she knew. At some point, she was swapping from emails to texts and back again. Some of them were dead odd - apparently she and her new bloke had had to go for AIDS tests, as she was afraid that I had caught it and given it to her. Um, no. Honest.

I honestly didn't realise how hard this could be. I was literally afraid to go near my phone, and I would have binned it, but it was my only contact with people. I still now sometimes worry when my phone goes. I had to delete texts twice a day, just in case one came in that I wanted. It went on and on. My family told me not to be so stupid, and asked how bad could it be? Um, really bad?

One interesting thing, of course, is that being as she and I were going out, she knew about one of my 'lifestyle choices'. One which my company would probably take a very dim view of, being rabidly ultra-conservative. So she used that as a threat, just as a change from the death threats.

In the end, I couldn't take any more. I deleted all the text from one of her emails, and forwarded it back to her company (bright, eh?), telling them to unsubscribe me from the mailing list I seemed to be on. I called my mobile company and asked for a new number. Turns out you need a crime number for that, so I had to report it to the police. I got my crime number, begged them not to do anything, and got a new number. Salescritter had left by this time, and so all seemed to go quiet. But I still got the occasional email... In the end I was made redundant and got a new job. It's finally over. It lasted for four years, and was pretty fucking awful all that time.

Oh, turns out her ex was the salescritter - which is how he had her number, how he knew she was single, and how she knew what I was doing, and how I was feeling. Yes, I am REALLY FUCKING STUPID for not working that one out sooner.

Sorry for lack of teh funneh, but there really isn't any. It feels better to have talked about it though. If you've made it this far, thanks for listening, and I appreciate you.
(purplegod counting down for Christmas!, Sun 3 Feb 2008, 21:18, 3 replies)

having just typed out
my own DIY therapy session... I can't help thinking there may not be that many fun-to-read answers to this QOTW.

Also, it can't just be me who can't get my head around the idea of clicking a button marked "I Like This!" for a tale of actual harassment?
( Batsgirl, Sun 3 Feb 2008, 22:21, closed)

Oh man!!
I got to the bit about the woman in the pub asking your age, and I had hair sticking up on my neck. The subject of my little post had that exact argument in our local and almost got barred for it... had to read on a bit before I was sure it wasn't her.

All these posts make me feel bad, mine is vaguely comical, these are all horrible :( Well done getting through it, I dunno if I would've.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Sun 3 Feb 2008, 23:12, closed)

Hey,
There's always room for a well told tale here -need for humour. No spelling or grammar howlers and most important: no apology for length, a man after my own heart.

The fact of your current purple-godliness shows that what doesn't kill you makes you strong. Strong and purple and god-like - that is something to aspire to.

...and a wave to the Demi-god.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Tue 5 Feb 2008, 12:26, closed)