The Stalker(Quora answer)

What does it feel like to be a stalker?

By: Anonymous via quora.com

I'm not irrational. Just compulsive sometimes. Here's the thing. I don't like most people. They are boring. They only care about boring things. But sometimes you meet someone, and there is that spark. A connection. Friends at first sight. Here's what happened: One of my coworkers had that spark. When we first met, I thought: "Wow, she's cool." Everyone in the office thought she was pretty awesome, too. I was halfway between wanting her and wanting to *be* her. We were both early-morning types, and often we were the first ones in the office together. Sometimes she'd stop by and we'd chat -- not about stupid things like tv shows or sports -- but about philosophy and how the world work and things that matter. I realize now I was depressed. My life sucked. My job sucked. My spouse was constantly travelling for work. One night I was drinking and dicking around on the Internet. Alternating between Googling ways to kill myself and Googling my name ... my exes names ... people I knew in high school. I Googled her. She did a 5k? She has a profile on X site? She had a livejournal six years ago? ... I read everything. Old blog posts, abandoned social networking pages, Yahoo Groups posts. Anything I could dig out. I glutted myself on information. Putting together the pieces of someone's life from one bit here, one bit there - it's a rush. I felt like I had just eaten an entire giant chocolate cake, with caffeinated icing. We still had our occasional early-morning philosophy hour at work. Sometimes, when I had been drinking (most nights) I started sending her long emails with random thoughts, continuing our conversations. Once night, I was curious if I could guess her email password. I could. A few nights later, I read her entire email inbox. And all the sent items. There were thousands of them. It's amazing how much you can learn from someone from their emails. Checking her email became an addiction. Not just at night/at home anymore. I'd spend hours at work going through her emails. And Facebook posts and messages. I was terrified she'd check the "last account activity" IP Address list - but she never did. When a noteworthy event happened, I'd check - what did she think? Who did she write to? Did she ever write about me? I started making noteworthy events happen, just to see if she'd tell other people about me. When she did, it was an incredible rush. When she didn't, it hurt. One time I invited her to dinner at my house with some friends. The next day, I couldn't wait to check her email to see if she said anything to anyone. She did. It wasn't complimentary. That hurt. A lot. Especially since she was still smiling and friendly when I saw her at work. We were still talking at work, and I was still emailing her sometimes. But it was just thrilling to get such an deep insight into her life. Seeing the superficial events - then going behind the scenes getting the real story. It was about a week later I started conveniently being at places I knew she'd be. (It was easy, having access to her calendar as well as her email.) Sometimes I'd say "Hi" and act surprised. Sometimes I avoided her to make sure she wouldn't catch on that I had her calendar. But, I realized she was having whole conversations I wasn't privvy to. (How dare she!) on her cell phone. That hurt. Who was she talking to? Why wasn't she texting me like she was texting everyone else? I found out in her email that she had talked to her boss and asked to not work with me any more. That hurt. A lot. She had stopped coming by for our morning chats. I didn't want her to know that I knew. I dropped by her cube a couple times, mentioning that I missed our talks. She told me she was really busy and had a lot of work. I suggested hanging out after work. She made excuses. She had blocked my number. That hurt. One of our friends told me to "back off." And That hurt. I still couldn't stop reading her email, though. I still got a rush learning about her life. Especially when she mentioned me. My brother sat me down and told me I had a problem. Looking at all the time I was spending (how much of my day was spent wondering what she was doing and what she was thinking), I knew he was right. Long story short - I managed to cut myself off from talking to and researching her. With a little professional help. But I do still miss the rush from being able to understand and live through the eyes of another person.