“I don’t step out of my house alone”

I was harassed by this man in my early teens. I don’t know his name, I don’t know where he lived and I don’t know what he wanted from me and why was he after me….. He followed me to school in the morning, he followed me back home everyday after school.  He followed me when I went for my math classes in the evening. He followed me everywhere…. He was always stationed outside my house day or night, rain or shine. He contacted my friends and classmates and asked them to request me that I be his friend. He followed my sister to her classes and told her classmates that he is my friend. When my father went to him and scolded him he told everyone that my father likes him. He started to match his clothes to mine. He wrote my name on the walls everywhere. He spoke to everybody in my neigbourhood about me.

No one knows, what I went went through in those three years of my life. The trauma is only mine. It became so bad that my near and dear ones started to tease me and make fun of me because of him.

And then later on I came to know that he was doing the same with one other girl from a different neighbourhood. He stopped stalking me only when he found another girl as his latest victim.

I was put to shame because of him. What was my fault, I ask?

Now, I am a grown up woman with kids and family. Till this date, I don’t step out of my house alone, I don’t go anywhere alone unless until my husband accompanies me.

– Anonymous

Location: Sahibabad, Distt. Ghaziabad U.P., New Delhi, India

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