My Favorite Stalker, or Something Like That.

Inhale. Exhale. Existential dread ensues.

Get up. Change clothes. Run out the door and pray I make it to class on time.

    It’s the beginning of yet another day full of social and academic responsibilities that I did not sign up for. (Except I guess I did when I enrolled in college. It’s FINE.) I constantly remind myself, I have to work through all of the tedious and difficult tasks thrown at me in order to earn the life that I want. Good days or bad, they all add up to achieving my greatest goal: becoming a successful, godly woman.

    As I’m making my way to class, thinking about the future, I do not feel Her behind me. Creeping up on me silently, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. One second, everything is fine. The next? She’s latched Herself onto me and I can’t shake Her off.

Her name is Annie. She loves me, but I do not love Her. She follows me everywhere. When I go to sleep, She is there. When I wake up, She is there, though usually a little slow. She’s not a morning person, I think. When I am in class, She is there. When I go to church, She is there. When I go home, She is there. I can never seem to evade Her grasp. She tells me things that hurt me. Every day, She has another flaw to pick on. What is it today?

“Your creative paper for Great Books is going to be awful. It’s gonna be your worst grade to date. Maybe you’ll fail! That would be terrible,” She whispers to me. Her malicious giggling is like nails on a chalkboard.

“It will be fine,” I reply, mostly trying to convince myself. “I know what I’m doing. I’m going to write it about you, and how much I hate you.” My face has a sly grin on it as I try to play cocky, but underneath that false grin is pain. I cannot help but think She might be right. I try not to entertain Her, but sometimes it proves to be incredibly difficult.

“Well that’s not very nice,” She retorts defensively.

I don’t really care that I hurt Her feelings. She hurts mine all the time, it’s only fair, right? Sometimes I deliberately say things to hurt Her, and She still follows me everywhere. I would think that if I hurt Her enough times, eventually She would give up and leave me alone because I make Her so miserable. Instead, She turns it around and turns Her misery into anger, and takes it out on me even worse than before. I never know how to satisfy Her appetite for pain. She’s very masochistic, like the theatregoers that Augustine talks about (Augustine III.ii). The joy She gets from my pain is obviously enough to make Her stick around. I don’t understand it.

Though She climbs on my back and weighs me down, I trek onward. I go to class. I sit, I stare, I listen, I take notes. She whispers rude remarks in my ear about anything She finds as prey.

“That girl looks stupid. Her outfit is ridiculous. That boy is staring at you. It’s because of how weirdly shaped your ears are.” How does She manage to make me question and ponder the most obscure thing about myself, like the shape of my ears? I don’t know.

Sometimes Her negativity rubs off on me, making me behave like Her. She’s like Dionysus, and I’m the women in the bacchic revel, especially Agave. I don’t realize what I’m doing until it’s too late to fix it. I hurt those closest to me unknowingly. I think everything is fine, and then I turn around and notice the path of destruction behind me and the blood on my hands (Euripides 53).

She makes me hate myself sometimes. I don’t like the way I behave when She’s around me. She’s a bad influence on me. My mama didn’t warn me about this kind of bad influence. You would think that we are in love because of how much of an influence She has on me. (We’re definitely not, though.) Sometimes I feel like Dido, so persuaded and affected by Her that I lose my sense of self, and all motivation to move on with my life. (Virgil 4.852-861). Sometimes I wish She was more like Aeneas and that She would leave me altogether. So far, no such luck. (Virgil 4.713-723).

“Do you ever wonder if you’re in the cave? You know, like Plato’s cave?” She always makes me ponder things like this: things I could never truly know the answer to.

“Can you shut up? It’s like… two thirty in the morning.” I roll my eyes.

“Well, in case you were curious, I certainly think you’re in the cave. I mean, it’s just like Plato said, ‘what the prisoners,’ or you, in this case, ‘would take for true reality is nothing other than the shadows of those artifacts,’ or, in your case, the illusions you try to convince yourself of.” She continues, ceaselessly (Plato Republic, 515c).

“Illusions? Like what?” I roll over in my bed, burying my face in the pillow. I just wish She would shut up at least long enough to let me sleep.

“You know, like the illusion of friendship. You convince yourself that your friends like you, and…” She rambles on, but I stop listening. Eventually, I stop her.

“Dude, I’m not listening anymore. Also Plato wasn’t actually the one who said that. It was Socrates. Also put my book back on my shelf,” I mumble.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. You get the point though.”

“Mhmm.” She’s finally quiet for awhile, so I try to go to sleep.

“You know, I’m kind of like Socrates.” She starts up again. Ugh.

“How so?” I grumble, face still buried in pillow.

“Well you remember how he calls himself like, a gadfly or whatever that stings the lazy horse that’s supposed to represent Athens? I’m like that! Without me there to bother you, or should I say, to bug you? Get it? Anyway, without me, you’d be lazy. You’d never get anything done. Really, I’m of more help to you than I am harm, I think.” I don’t know how she managed to get so full of herself. (Plato “Apology” 31)

“You wish you were as important as Socrates. At least he’s useful.”

“That’s just rude of you, ma’am. I know it’s late, but we always discuss philosophy in the middle of the night. Isn’t that the best time to do it? You always have conversations with your friends about philosophy late at night, why not me? Am I not your friend?” She’s pestering me purposefully.

“Hardly. If Aristotle were here, I’d have an answer to one of his questions.”

“Which question?”

“His question about ‘whether or not to dissolve friendships’ when the friends are neither useful nor pleasant (Aristotle 1165a37-1165b2). You’re neither useful nor pleasant, and I think the answer is yes, dissolve the friendships.” I feel like I’d have a more clever comeback than this, but it is nearly three in the morning at this point.

“How can you dissolve our friendship if you just said we were hardly even friends?” I could hear the sassy, hands-on-the-hips posture she had right then. She wasn’t wrong though. I groaned and rolled over onto my back, squishing my pillow over my face.

“Do me a favor and smother me,” I droned, muffled by the fluff of the pillow.

As the semester goes on, I get better at handling Her. Some days I do really well at getting Her to shut up. Some days I am able to ignore Her. Other days, not so much. She screams in my ears and bursts my eardrums with her sonic-boom-level complaining. I’m on the upswing, though. Each passing day yields better results. I have gotten better at calming her down when she flares up unexpectedly. The tiniest things can upset her, and when she gets upset, she goes all Clytaemnestra and starts wailing and killing people. (Aeschylus Ag.,1390-1400). Okay, well not exactly killing people, but definitely killing my eardrums. She’s absurdly loud. Incredibly annoying, too.

Lately, She hasn’t been around quite as often. Things have been… quieter. It’s unusual, and I’m not always sure how to handle it. As weird as it seems, I almost miss Her when She’s not around. I got so used to her terrorizing me, that now it feels strange when She isn’t there nagging about something.

She still visits sometimes, but I’m starting to figure out how to live on my own, free of Her. The semester is almost over now, and I can sense Her planning to come visit me soon, but I never know exactly when. No matter when She comes to visit me, though, I will be ready. She’s lucky that I agree with Aurelius when he said, “Whatever anyone does or says, I must be a good man” or a woman, in my case (Aurelius 7.15). Otherwise, I’d smack Her upside the head when I saw Her. Oh well, I will behave.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Pray.

It’s all good.