I completely fell off the map for the last month, and am trying to catch up with other people’s posts, and yours is the first (as I catch up) to which I HAD to comment. Why? Because I really like your posts, and your writing is some of my favorite, and I would hate for you to have to compromise what you have to right because of some stalker! I sure hope you can find the solution, and I hope it doesn’t require the help of a friend of a friend of a friend.

Also, this post has totally inspired a future post, which has nothing to do with stalking, and everything with procrastinating a post and writing it under the influence of foreign substances!

Please be well, and keep up your wonderful work here.

Hi, stalker.

Let’s see, what can I say directly to you that might alleviate this situation? I seek to help both you and Dorothy.

My guess is that you’re not satisfied with not having contact with our friend. What you crave is some kind of control in your life, especially when it comes to communicating with her. However, the more you try to contact her, the more she shuts you out.

Of course, this is frustrating, but at the same time you should understand that the control you crave in life is only available to you through what you yourself say and do, never from other people’s responses to you. You can never fully control how other people respond to you. No one can.

There are many times in all people’s lives when they cross paths with other people with whom they’d like to be close, but, for whatever reason, it doesn’t work out. Sometimes (probably most times) this failure to grow and remain close is no one’s direct fault, but often is due to circumstance or simple incompatibility. It’s too bad, but that’s just how it is. People get hurt by this kind of thing every day.

The important thing is to learn how to respond in a way that is healthiest for oneself. My guess is that you understand that what you do with respect to Dorothy is not healthy for yourself. It seems to be something of a periodic borderline addictive behavior. You feel like you can’t help yourself from finding out where she is, what she’s up to, trying to contact her, etc. It may even really bother you that you can’t stop, but you don’t know what to do.

As an analogy, once in the past someone broke up with me. I was devastated. I felt like I needed to talk to her every day. Every day, I had an overwhelming need to call her. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes talking to her helped. Most of the time it didn’t. I felt worse and worse because I wasn’t in control of my urges or actions. Eventually, with a great deal of work on trying to understand myself and my need to contact her, I figured out that it was control I lacked and craved. I decided to work on controlling my feelings, channelling my energy elsewhere.

At first, I simply tried listening to the same 2 or 3 songs over and over whenever I thought about her. I practically wore out the grooves on those records (yes, records!). When I felt like calling her, I would play those songs instead. When I thought about her, I listened to them again. I would try to stop myself from playing them, embarrassed at how silly it was and how addicted to them I was. I would dare myself to go a day not listening to them. Sometimes I couldn’t, but sometimes I could. Then, eventually, there came times when I didn’t need to remind myself not to listen to them or to think about her. Those days became more frequent. Then, I just stopped. It seems stupidly simple, but this exercise in diversion and self-control helped me to understand that the patterns of my thoughts were like playing those songs over and over: boring.

It got tiresome, and so I stopped without eventually even really trying. I felt much, much better because I came to realize that I was the only one who could control myself. I felt empowered. My life improved.

Anyway, my advice to you is to try to gain the control you crave by controlling yourself. You are the only person you can control, and when you do control yourself you’ll feel accomplished, self-reliant, liberated even. Good luck with it.