She's my stalker, and I invited her back.

I’ve allowed a stalker back into my life.

Sad, I know.

It started in 1984. She was my first friend in a new state. I didn’t like the way she treated me, but, then again, I didn’t have anyone else. She was a "church" friend, too, which is why my mother would rather me hang out with her than my "school" friends, who somehow understood the golden rule a little better.

She lied about everything, even little things, like being forced to take apart her flute when she misbehaved in band. I told her to show me. "Oh, we’re too busy."

She picked on my weight nearly constantly. She wasn't so much thinner, but so obsessed with her looks.

The time came for her family to move. I bawled and bawled. We missed each other so much that my family and hers conspired to send me down to where her father was training, in Florida, and we could go to all the theme parks.

By the end of that trip, I never cried when I had to go home. By the end of that trip, I went back and hated the thought of their family making one last stop in my town. It was over. The way she treated me just made me beyond angry. Just a bunch of little kid stuff, but it revolved around all the lies she’d told over the years, and me targeting each one.

By 1987, when it came time for us to move, coincidence would have it that I would be going to her school just as she was leaving, cross country. Phew. Dad couldn’t have timed a transfer more perfectly. I had long ago stopped reading the letters she sent (she was a Nordstrom model, she was on the cheerleading squad, she danced) and, of course, when I got there, none of those things had ever transpired.

I heard from her right after I got married. I left those friends behind (they told me at one point that she had informed them before she left of what a rotten person I was). Again, typical kid stuff, but she found me right after I got back here, was 5 months pregnant, left my husband’s family behind (I really like them), and my friends. She called, and I unloaded. I confronted her about every last lie. She denied them all.

It’s been nearly 17 years since I last spoke to her. Over the years, she has had her mother contact my mother in an attempt to get me to talk to her.

She found me. Like I said, it’s been 17 years. Maybe it’s time to let go. She found me registered online for our high school, which we never attended simultaneously, but she figured I’d be listed there somewhere.

Rolling eyes.

I e-mailed her. She doesn’t know my last name. She barely knows the area. Her life is splendiferous and she did have a few pics to prove it. She has two children, and they are very, very cute. We spoke in IM for about three hours before she wanted to know why I was so mad at her the last time we spoke.

Did I mention the paranoia? No, guess not. She thinks her nasty friends told me that dirty lie because they wanted to ruin her. Nobody in "the group" as she kept calling it remembered her fondly, and it was the quietest person, the devout Christian, the most trustworthy of "the group" that finally told me a year later about her accusations.

I know these things that she denied, but didn't tell her. She obviously remembers things quite differently than I do.

So, I did enjoy talking to her. She’s still obsessing about me, and two male figures, one guy she had a really, really big crush on in junior high, and the other guy, who she really, really cried over when she moved away from in high school. The last time we spoke, nearly 17 years ago, she was trying to find this guy. I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now, and I told her so.
It was a good chat, but I’m not telling her my last name or my location. She might already know it if her mother and mine have been talking. I long ago told my mother not to give out my information to the woman’s mother, but it has been 17 years. Maybe she has changed.

Maybe she hasn’t. I’ll see how it goes. I don’t want to give her my phone #, tho. It’s convenient that I work nights, because Stud is already sleeping, and the phone may or may not be hooked up to a dictation tank somewhere. IMs are really, really nifty things.

It's terrible, but I still have to question where she, indeed lives! Isn't that awful? Why the hell am I doing this? Obviously, I have an anger problem to be wary like this, but is 17 years enough to let the water flow under the bridge?

I am an idiot. I go from one head-banging situation to the next. I'll kick myself and feel stupid later.