This is the beginning of how I lost my voice.
________
"Are you still being paranoid about all this, honey?"
The question buzzed slightly through the earpiece of my cell phone and, in the way of cell phones, filled the empty room in which I sat, so that any inclined person could listen if they chose. And they might have chosen to listen, given that Stalker had been actively searching for me, that friends had alerted me to it, that I had just moved for the second time in five weeks in order to try to stay a few steps ahead of a person who had threatened to kill me in very specific ways - threats that I believed, and still believe. Oh, the drama. Who wouldn't want to listen in.
I hadn't told many people what was going on. I chose my confidantes carefully; because Stalker and I had many mutual friends, I didn't tell anyone in my immediate circles what was going on, and Stalker used this advantageously to keep tabs on me: have you seen Lisa? having a hard time getting in touch. have some of her stuff to return. where is she? how long? with who? do I have time to get there? Eventually, I had to terminate nearly all of my immediate friendships, and I restricted my list of those-in-the-know to those who might be in danger if Stalker showed up looking for me. Practically overnight, I tearfully forfeited nearly every friend I'd made in the previous year, and couldn't tell any of them why without risking my safety.
Bewildered. In shock. Going through the motions of what made the most sense in a situation that made no sense at all.
In the weeks after I left, my email and social networking accounts revealed repeated hacking attempts. I deleted at least two accounts before creating one using every safeguard possible, with absolutely no identifying details about myself other than my name. I was willing to pick up and move in order to protect myself, but I was not giving up the only connections I had to so many of my long-term friends whose relationships predated this disaster. Stalker knew who these long-term friends were, and I prayed that they wouldn't find themselves dealing with any part of this.
And so it goes that some dear friends alerted that one of their online accounts revealed a hacking attempt. We discussed a few immediate safeguards, then they asked me to call them. I did. How are you, honey? I don't remember what I said. And then.
"Are you still being paranoid about all this, honey?"
The word screeched against me, slammed into me with the impact of a train against flesh. Paranoid. "Wh - what?" I couldn't breathe. what did you say? you know how sometimes, people ask you to repeat yourself, and you rephrase in order to be better understood? what did you say? because oh my god, please don't have meant to call me paranoid. is that what you meant? do you know what that means?
"Are you still being paranoid about all this?" Repeated slowly, for clarity. In a concerned tone of voice, buoyed with a little determined lightness - the kind of tone that doesn't want to feed into or validate a delicate person's hysteria. Or paranoia.
I couldn't speak. I stuttered some things. "I.. I don't know. I..." Explanations, falling over themselves like waterfalls, slipped away as I reached for them; all that I knew was oh my god. please believe me. oh my god. Hindsight Me wanted to have stood in my own solitary defense, asserted this is not irrational, this is real, this is actually life-or-death, don't you understand?? don't you understand how serious this would have to be for me to leave the school and teachers I love, the job I love, the people I've been learning and working with, the experience I left everything to pursue??
But all I did was stutter. I never stutter.
"Well" - the buoy-concerned tone - "honey, we just hope things clear up soon. Because don't you need to get back to the real world soon? get back to school, finish things up, get back to work? instead of just kinda" - hesitates, voice breaks a little, in hesitation - "kinda living in fear like this?"
For the duration of that conversation, which couldn't have lasted any longer than ten minutes, I could not catch my breath. There were other niceties; I spoke briefly with the other half of the couple. I don't remember anything else that was said. I hung up the phone, shaking so hard that I couldn't stand. Paranoid. I walked out to the living room to relay the conversation to the friend with whom I was staying, only to have a witness to what had just happened before I lost those words, willfully or otherwise. Paranoid. Get back to the real world. Get back to work. Living in fear. For two days, it was as though I had to set those words on the table, sit down, and stare at them, completely baffled as to how, and through whom, they'd decimated the wind in my lungs. It was the first time they'd been uttered toward me; it wouldn't be the last. Little did I know that it was just the beginning of many such losses, each as devastatingly unexpected as the first. I don't know what to do, and nobody believes me. And I never imagined such a long arm of destruction.
And now, over a year later, I look back at the overall timeline of events, and chuckle with a total lack of mirth - this conversation occurred five weeks into this nightmare. Five weeks, almost to the day. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to ask exactly what "getting back to the real world" and "not living in fear" looked like to all the people outside my situation who recommended I pursue these, five weeks into a nearly yearlong ordeal, as Stalker continued to show up at my old jobs and residences, looking for me, mailing obscenities to family members, using aliases to find information: unfortunately, these were the real world, for a time.
More than that, I wish I still retained a fraction of the grace I had before all of this began. I value it so, but it's gone.
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