“So when I was in my early 20s, I got out of a two-and-a-half-year relationship where we lived together, and it was a ROUGH breakup. My ex was sleeping with another dude in our apartment while I was still staying in the other room. Good times alright.
So there was this girl I started seeing as a rebound. She was someone I’d met at a festival a few years prior and we’d kept in touch on and off as friends, but she messaged me out of the blue within a couple weeks of the break-up. It’d been a couple of years; I always had a crush on her, so I didn’t talk to her out of respect for my ex when I wasn’t single. I’m in VA and she was in NY going to school (Drama at NYU – FORESHADOWING!). We just kept talking more and more, and it culminated in my recently-liberated self driving up there within a week, and we were tearing each other’s clothes off within five minutes of meeting up. Had a fun weekend, then went back to normal life. We would still talk, and I ended up going up to see her a couple more times within a couple of months. I wasn’t seeing anybody else, but it was pretty casual.
Eventually, she wanted more and was starting to get really clingy and possessive, and that gets really toxic really quick when things are long distance, and I could feel myself starting to build up some resentment towards her because of this. So even though I wasn’t really interested in sleeping with anyone else or anything, I realized I did not get out of a toxic relationship to jump into an unnecessarily long-distance one that was starting to require a ton of work and need constant attention. So I called her to break it off.
She… didn’t take it well. She absolutely LOST IT on the phone. I ended up just keeping things short after our initial conversation – ‘I’m really sorry about this, but I’ve thought a lot about it now, and this is my decision, goodbye’ basically and I got off the phone. I felt bad, but I took a deep breath and was relieved it was over. Wrong.
About ten minutes later, I get a call and let it go to voicemail. It’s her MOM, who I hadn’t even met yet. She called her and told her I broke her heart, and her mom is calling me and asking me to explain myself to her so that she can better comfort her daughter. Obviously, I don’t call her back, but what in the world?
The next couple of weeks are when things really go off the rails. I start getting stuff in the mail. Packages of mixed CDs, food, letters. Some of the letters are like ten pages long and are filled with all this crazy stream-of-consciousness writing. The handwriting changes throughout, which really creeps me out – as it’ll just switch font or style completely like she started writing with the other hand. I read a couple of them, but decide not to continue. Every single day for eighteen days I have mail from her. My roommate (I was able to move in with a friend before initially going to NY) is bewildered by it all too.
The final straw is the blanket. On the eighteenth day since our breakup, I get a big box in the mail. It’s this enormous hand-knitted blanket she’s made for me. It’s like 6’ x 9’ and must’ve taken her eighty hours to make. If that wasn’t overkill enough, she sprayed her perfume all over it and it’s covered in her hair. Like she wanted me to miss her on an olfactory level.
Nope nope nope.
So I email her and was basically very sternly like ‘this has to stop, now. I understand that you’re upset but I’m really bothered by this. I’m very sorry for hurting you, but this is the last time I’ll say it. Stop contacting me.’
I never heard from her again after that.
I’m definitely not totally without fault in this – in some ways, I probably led her on, and if I went through something like this now (in my early 30s), I would definitely communicate better my parameters for starting something new. I also probably just wouldn’t get involved with someone that’s emotionally immature like that, but sometimes you just don’t know until you know. But sheesh… that was my experience that having someone be obsessed with you is not in fact fun, charming, or flattering.”