“I don’t like the term ‘SMS stalked’, it sounds very unserious,” says Bangalore student Tara.

“It makes me feel like whatever I went through was locked into my little phone or something. Like it didn’t spill into my real life.” She was stalked by her own boyfriend. It was her first relationship ever, and someone she really liked. But she ended up living in fear.

Part of the Men Say No blogathon

I was in the first year of college and the guy was my best friend’s older brother. I think the fact that it was my boyfriend and not some random psycho who was harassing me actually makes things worse.

The sick thing is that I thought it was kind of cute in the beginning. It was like he really cared for me. So he’d message me asking me where I was, tell me he missed me and all.

Accusation
Then it got worse, he started texting me every couple of minutes saying cutesy things or asking me random questions and if I wouldn’t text him back right away he would get really upset. It was crazy because he would have an entire conversation with me without me texting him back even once.

Like if he texted me asking what I was doing and I didn’t reply instantly, he would text back saying I was ignoring him and before I even had time to reply he would send me another message saying he always knew I didn’t love him. It went on and on from one silly accusation to another.
 

Blank texts
Because he was my first boyfriend I tried to make things work with him. But every time I wasn’t with him he would text me constantly, demanding to know what I was doing, who I was with, where I was.

If I told him I was hanging out with my other friends he would accuse me of not giving him any importance. If I was with a male friend or even a male cousin he would accuse me of cheating on him. When he ran out of accusations he would send me blank texts, so at one point he was texting me close to 40 times a day.

Crazy
I’m very used to texting and at that time I admit we all went a little overboard with it. Me and my friends were on a ‘free messaging to five numbers’ scheme so we used to text each other even when we were sitting in the same class. My problem with him was not the number of texts he sent me but the crazy tone of his messages and the fact that he kept messaging me even after I begged him to stop.

Of course I broke up with him. And the tone of his messages got even crazier.

Scared
It’s very difficult to describe is why his texts scared me, even though he never clearly said that he would harm me in any of his messages.

He would say things like ‘You can’t get away with hurting me like this,’ or ‘You’ll see that I was right, we are meant to be together.’ And even though it doesn’t really sound violent it scared the hell out of me. I mean this guy knew where I lived, who I hung out with. He was my best friend’s brother, for God’s sake.

Parents
I couldn’t tell my best friend that he was still texting me because he was her brother and I didn’t know whose side she would take. As it was she was upset with me because I’d broken up with him.

But I had to involve my parents and they ended up speaking to his parents about it. I don’t know exactly what his parents told him but he stopped texting me. I bet he told his sister that I was an evil person or something because she stopped talking to me also.

Tara (not her real name), is a 22-year-old B Com student in Bangalore.

This Blog is part of the Men Say No Blogathon, encouraging men to take up action against the violence faced by women.

More entries to the Blogathon can be read at www.mustbol.in/blogathon. Join further conversation on facebook.com/delhiyouth & twitter.com/mustbol
 

Photo: adam & lucy under CC licence

Have you been stalked? Or have you even been a stalker? What makes someone become a stalker?