I got surprise stalked by an ex-friend at the hairdressers today. It scared the hell out of me. I arrived for my appointment and she launched herself at me from where she had been hiding behind a wall. She ensnared me in a bone crushing hug. There was no escape.

An explanation is probably needed. I don’t generally fall out with people. This one is pretty much my only ex-friend. Normally if I grow to dislike someone, I just phase them out gradually. In this one case, I cut off communications very suddenly. This person was a parasite. She leached energy from me, she was totally self-involved, she was massively unsupportive of my recovery.

So I cut her off. I told her we couldn’t speak anymore. It was a relief. When I was in hospital, she walked into my room at the moment I attempted to hang myself. She held that over me. She emotionally blackmailed me with it for months. So I ended it. There was no big fight, I just stopped talking to her. We live in different towns so it was pretty easy.

At Christmas I got this sudden case of guilt over our ‘break up’. I felt uncomfortable with the sour ending; I didn’t want to keep feeling like a bad person whenever I remembered it. So I messaged her and cleared the air. I didn’t lead her to believe we were still friends, just that I didn’t want to part on sour terms. She accepted that and I felt relieved. I could close the book on that one and I had done the right thing.

That’s why it was really unsettling when she suddenly appeared today. I was so stunned I got a shot of adrenaline through my system, so I managed to do a good impression of delighted surprise. I laughed a lot. I grinned from ear to ear. Not because I was happy to see her, but because I was shocked and actually a little scared.

While I rushed the hair stylist through cutting my hair, I talked incessantly. I had so much anxious energy, I just streamed verbal diarrhea. I barely stopped for breath. Sounds fun right? No. It was horrible. I felt trapped, cornered. I felt hunted. She had obviously found out from the salon when I was booked to go in and booked her appointment to match. That’s just creepy.

Driving home, the adrenaline settled and I could feel how much this run in had shaken me. It was wrong and fake and I was too pathetic to just tell her to back off. I felt spineless and weak, because my default response was to pretend like everything was OK, when I actually hated it. And that feeling isn’t new to me.

Photo credit: Q Phia, Creative Commons