I hate fox hunting. I just absolutely hate it. An archaic sport for the gentrified, a blood sport that sees the abuse and destruction of a beautiful amber animal and, often, the trampling of a happy dog.

I loathe and detest sport hunting because not only am I one of those bleeding heart animal lovers, I am also familiar with how it feels to be hunted. I got to be a fox for a long time, and I left Texas before they finally put the Anti-Stalking regulation into place, regulations that hopefully have freed many other little foxes from their hunt.

Spring 1994 saw me a troubled young woman. I had dive-bombed head first into a vat of pure anorexia. I was living in a condo in North Carolina and was unable to find a job, no matter how hard I tried. My marriage to my ex (whom I'll call Allen) was a complete and utter joke. Allen, 9 years my senior, my Pale Blue Tile man, the first man who had ever remotely liked me and I was so fucking grateful for that that getting a ring on my finger from him was the best way to prove that I could be loved.

I was so grateful to be loved that I stayed with a man that assaulted me in a shower.

Sometimes I surprise even myself with the levels of emotional crippling that echo in my soul.

One year into marriage and we were doing badly. We had nothing in common, and no common dreams. In March 1994 I got our phone bill and saw a number of calls to a number I didn't recognize. I dialed it and got a sorority house in a town that was north of ours, a town that Allen had to pass through sometimes when he travelled for work. I asked some questions and as the bubble-gum popped down the line, the sorority chick living my life affirmed that Allen was the new guy that Mary was seeing, some guy who travelled a lot.

I was not devastated. Nor was I relieved. I was wry, and I was sarcastic, and I felt the bindings begin to unwind from around my wings.

On my birthday that year I told him I didn't love him anymore. I told him we had to go to counselling or it was over, which he refused. I told him he couldn't see his sorority girlie anymore, a girlie he denied existed. We were living in the same house but I couldn't stand the sight of him, so smugly sure that my bindings were still on and so smugly sure that he had never had any.

I told him I wanted out. He said no, that he wouldn't let me go. It was as simple as that.

One month later we were done. It took a guilt-soaked act to end it.

I flew to Dallas for a bit of work and met up with an old work friend from the book store I worked in. We went for a drink in Deep Ellum and somehow went from the streets of Dallas to his couch in suburbia. As he peeled my jeans off of me, I had in my head the grim determination that this is what I needed to do. This would end it. My Italian Catholic partner would never stand for another man touching his property. As Michael took off his jeans and aimed his erection at me, I closed my eyes and knew that this had to be done. And as Michael entered me and gasped "This is perfect! It feels absolutely right!" I closed my eyes and just waited for it to be over. It felt anything but right to me.

I flew home and confessed my sins immediately to Allen, getting thrown against the wall in exchange for the chance to lift my wings and take flight. I left him and drove away, letting the white linen ties over my feathers fall on the landscape as I left.

Back in Dallas I fell into the life that I had left behind, a neat-Helen shaped hole still visible in the ozone of the Dallas landscape. I went back to university. I went back to working in the bookstore that I had been working at before I left. Everything was the way I had left it when we moved to North Carolina, only I was now a single girl.

Allen sent me a bouquet of red roses asking me to come back. I took them and planted them-vase and all-in the front lawn of the apartment complex. Letters came in the mail. He went and altered all of my accounts so I had to go and password protect everything. His family would come checking on me, and one of them tried to cause a huge scene in the bookstore I worked in and tried to get me fired.

And then Allen came back.

It was little things at first. I would go outside and see my VW covered head to toe in feces. Seriously. It was covered with a thin rotting layer of shit, human or animal I have no idea. Then tires got slashed. The soft top of the convertible met with the business end of a knife.

Then came the phone calls. I changed my number. He found me anyway. I went unpublished. He found me again. In a threatening tone he told me his best friend, a policeman for Grand Prairie, could find me no matter where I went.

A dribbling dog sat, waiting for the scent of its prey.

Then he started parking in the parking lot outside of my apartment. I called the police but each time they came they would tell me he was on public property, that the parking lot of an apartment complex was deemed public property, but if he came to my door then they could do something about it. So I would often come home from work and see him parked there and know, with tight-fisted fear, that there was nothing I could do.

Freaked out, I moved. He found me. I moved again. He found me again. It was a constant cycle. Eventually he took to sitting in his car and videotaping my front door to check my comings and goings.

I was being hunted, the braying of the hound right on my heels, the hedges getting too high to jump.

There was nothing I could do. He fought me on the divorce, contesting it, not wanting it to go through. It took over a year before we had to go through adjudication-I had to sit across from this wound of humanity while we sorted out why he was contesting the divorce.

At the table I stared down my tormentor, a broad expanse of polished cherry wood being the only thing to keep the hunter from the nervous fox. In terms of the divorce, he no longer wanted me but he didn't want anyone else to have me, either. When the divorce went through I had a protection order (similar to a restraining order) put in the divorce, specifying that he could not get within 200 feet of me. I took a massive chunk of the debt in order to get rid of him, and I got almost none of the possessions. I thought it unfair but I accepted it. I was free.

Almost.

I still had to always keep moving, keep changing my phone number. I never knew when Allen would appear. I had two cans of pepper spray and a panic alarm on me at all times. My home had an alarm. I screened all calls. I learnt how to get myself out of a locked trunk (thanks, Oprah). I was so fucking scared it was unbelievable. When I moved in with Kim things were much better-we had a Rottweiler, and Kim was a brown belt in Karate. He was also a gun freak (something I didn't approve of). He would keep me safe. As if he knew it, Allen disappeared from the radar.

Then when I moved out into my own house in Dallas, Allen came back, somehow sniffing the air and finding I had been seperated from the pack. I got a shotgun of my own. Another dog. The most expensive home alarm. Outside lighting all over the place. I was so paranoid and scared I couldn't breathe.

At night I would wait to hear the bugle, egging the dogs on to chase, notifying the sight of the prey.

And then I moved to North Carolina. I left my lovely little house in Dallas and had to start all over again. Driving across country, I wondered if the states between us would stop him. I wondered if time would stop him. I wondered how much security I would need to keep myself safe, and when I realized the severity of paranoia I had going through my head as I zoomed down the interstate, I reached an epiphany.

I was done with running and hiding.

It was time to stand my ground, to turn around and bare my teeth at the dog behind me.

When I got to Raleigh, I got rid of my shotgun, which had never been fired. I threw out all my pepper spray and lived without a home alarm. I signed up for Tae Kwon Do classes, the only allowance to fear that I gave myself.

I figured: if he's going to come again, after all these years, then so be it. What is he going to do, kill me? Rape me? Beat me? Let him. Anything would be better than this so-called living I was doing. I couldn't live a life of paranoid fear like that anymore. I was so sick of being afraid. I was so tired of looking over my shoulder. I was bone-weary of being hunted by someone who couldn't let something go.

I got a few weird phone calls.

And then...nothing.

I turned back to my fox hole and snuggled into it, letting my face hang out of the opening in the sunshine, no longer afraid of the hounds.

I hope the Anti-Stalker legislation is doing its job now. I think about other women that I know have had exes that just wouldn't let them go. I'm sure there are a number of men out there who have been through the same. I know that the loss of love can do funny things to us sometimes-when we are left behind, love can make us crazy, can make us become people we would never want to be.

Fellow foxes-here's to safe parking lots, to secure telephone lines, and to believing that we are worth more than staying in relationships like that.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:21 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
Post contains 1805 words, total size 9 kb.

1 That was terribly scary, Helen. The stress that must have put you under, living like that. I don't really know what to say, except that I'm glad that you are ok now and with someone who loves you and you love back.

Posted by: RP at January 11, 2005 12:38 PM (LlPKh)

2 Forever and ever, amen. But Raleigh? What a small, extraordinary world we live in.

Posted by: Jennifer at January 11, 2005 01:29 PM (jl9h0)

3 my heart goes out to you. that's a horrifying experience. i'm glad you're across the ocean now, safe from any chance of seeing that asshole again. love and hugs to you. xoxoxo

Posted by: kat at January 11, 2005 01:54 PM (3t8KQ)

4 *raises glass* To safe parking lots, secure phone lines and getting out of controlling relationships with psychopaths. I know the feeling you are describing. My heart goes out to you. It is liberating to finally take a stand against your abuser. But, does the fear ever completely leave or does it hide in the recesses of a mind bent on eradicating it? At least Louisiana has anti-stalking laws, but they are so hard to prove and even harder to get someone jailed for. Cheers for your courageous post.

Posted by: Ice Queen at January 11, 2005 02:58 PM (F6gzK)

5 This is my nightmare for my daughters. If you were my daughter that man would have become my own personal project. I'm glad you were able to escape, and not continue the cycle. That being said, I still have lots of friends down in the Metroplex and I know where all of the vacant buildings are here in St. Louis. If 'Allen'ever pops up again, just say the word...

Posted by: Easy at January 11, 2005 03:13 PM (VyZed)

6 Thank you.

Posted by: amy t. at January 11, 2005 03:35 PM (zPssd)

7 I agree with Easy. Any boy/man who hurts one of my angels is in for all Solomon can give him. That's part of why I stay in shape We fathers have to help make it a part of our daughters' primary thinking that it's better to stay single than to marry the wrong guy. Tons of heartache could be avoided if we'd all live by that. I heard of a public speaker who said, "The woman or man that you marry will determine whether the rest of your life on earth is heaven or hell." Tru dat.

Posted by: Solomon at January 11, 2005 03:45 PM (k1sTy)

8 the more I read, the more I realize that you have indeed lived many lives. Which one are you on now??? six? five?

Posted by: suz at January 11, 2005 03:53 PM (GhfSh)

9 What an awful thing to go through! I'm glad things are so much better for you now. :-)

Posted by: Mick at January 11, 2005 04:37 PM (VhRca)

10 Suz, I am on Life Number 6. Happily.

Posted by: Helen at January 11, 2005 05:43 PM (uFX1z)

11 From a certain book that was sent to me by a lovely woman: The important thing is to learn. I feel I've resolved certain issues, as well as gaining more self-awareness. I can understand how women get into abusive relationships, and how hard it is to get out of them. I can see how low self-esteem undermines and that gratitude is not a sound basis for love.

Posted by: Ms. Pants at January 11, 2005 07:55 PM (Zg+AA)

12 Had a teeny bit of that with my ex, nothing like what you went through, though. However, what little I went through is enough for me to simply boggle at the nightmare that must have been for you, Helen. Ugh.

Posted by: Amber at January 11, 2005 09:10 PM (zQE5D)

13 Hi Ho!! Many, many thanks for writing of your experience with a stalker. Hard for me to read 'cause I had experienced the same type of "being hunted" activity. It really brought back some memories-good, bad, fair and indifferent. I attempted to bring a cause of action in the southern county I lived in to no avail. The DA was newly elected and wasn't interested women's rights/lives. I tried every string I could pull-political and otherwise to no avail. Thank goodness that time does heal and memories do fade. I agree with you that I hope the anti-stalking laws are working for all men and women regardless of color, class or geopraphical location.

Posted by: Azalea at January 11, 2005 09:34 PM (hRxUm)

14 Oh I had one of those asshole nutcases...he used to go out and come home without coming inside! Hed tap on the windows,ring the doorbell,call on the ph and hang up,..when we split up(cos he bought another woman home to OUR house)...he would break into my house and leave notes on my pillow saying hed kill me.LOL...I was so bloody scared back then! NOW Im strong and tough and God help anyone who tries to make me afraid ever again ...what doesnt kill you makes you stronger sweetie. YAY for life number 6!

Posted by: butterflies at January 12, 2005 01:18 AM (sUcgQ)

15 I love what Solomon said about teaching our daughters. You are so strong and brave. I think that's one reason I enjoy reading you so much. And your honesty. So brutal and yet so refreshing. But I'm wondering (and pardon my intrusiveness) when you and Allen divorced, was the shower assault an issue? Did you tell your lawyer? Was it part of the case? If so, did he deny it? How did the court deal with the he said/she said of the rape?

Posted by: kalisah at January 12, 2005 03:11 AM (HRiMC)

16 I test for my blackbelt this year or next. I am a brown belt. Even when I achieve black belt, I will be no match for a man, especially one that is insane or on drugs. It is what it is. It's about escape and evasion to me, plain and simple. I always have a plan, but I will not live in fear.

Posted by: Boudicca at January 12, 2005 04:03 AM (z7nbM)

17 Allen was clearly getting off on the reaction and fear he was imposing on you. As soon as you confronted your own fear, his power was gone and so was he. Here's hoping your resolution is right and that tiny men such as Allen collapse in their own dung-heap of un-importance.

Posted by: Simon at January 12, 2005 05:27 AM (OyeEA)

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