The Story of Tegan: Chapter 5 Covergence

2012 was the year all of these things converged into some difficult times. It was a year after the Gemini doctor. In the fall of 2011, my connection with a guy from the Olympic team I'd had a crush on since I was 20 and had a slow-burn friendship heated up. Even he disappointed me, saying he was going to visit, then using work as an excuse to cancel, even though he did travel to meet up with friends elsewhere instead. After a full year of putting myself back out there and connecting with a number of guys, I wound up single after all of that.

Tegan was a bouncy pup, popping into screens on our Skype calls with each of us on our beds. He got to see this tremendous personality I had helped nurture, and her full Tegan force potential she and I had worked so hard to help her achieve. Tegan had met a few black guys I had dated—one was a bit skittish around her, but the other had a dog also. It was definitely a good indicator for me to watch how introduction of guy and dog went.

I had transitioned out of the part-time mental health recovery role into my first full-time sales role in fitness. Something I thought would come naturally to me, but the male sales managers droning on about listening more than talking was a far cry from what I thought should be mission alignment as an athlete.

In December, I won two first-class tickets anywhere I wanted to go in a networking event. I admit I am not too imaginative, and I went to visit my cousin in Amsterdam to meet her first baby, where I envisioned a life in Europe with Tegan. I brought back tulips, thinking one would be a nice gift for my baby nephew. I also started a new internship in international business, but getting there involved this older man who was... well, you decide.

I met him through alumni networking events, and he offered to help me patch up my resume after the recession, crappy retail job, and other odd jobs for the past few years. He was the one who helped me start the internship that was the direction I had wanted to go. However, when my friend was staying with me, we went to a networking event at a sky pool bar of a posh hotel. We were waiting for the valet next to the older gentleman, who invited us to give us a ride in his Rolls. My friend who did not know him from Adam rightly turned him down flat, and thought he was creepy AF. Since I knew him, I suppose I let it roll off my back and didn't think anything of it.

When we sat down in his office to discuss my skillsets and a functional organization of my CV, he brought it up and apologized. I guess then he was been creepy and confirmed it in an admission of guilt in that moment? Instead of the benefit of the doubt I had given him at the time...

I was thankful for the new career opportunity. It allowed me to work from home several days per week, which was perfect for Tegan and my return to athletics, and that was something she could participate with me about. Often I would take Tegan with me to the boathouse and take a conference call before or after working out. She was always a very good training buddy. If I needed cardio, she curled up in a location where she could get a breeze from the fan vent. If I needed to do a circuit, she was there to dance with me after I was done.

The older guy who was supposedly helping me get hired, however, wound up being more harm than good. At networking events he would introduce me as "here's this fabulous woman with an impressive education and background, but here are her weaknesses..." or "here's why she'll be a tough hire..." Stop right there buddy! I can promote myself much better than you are doing, dragging me down with the backhanded compliments. Hell, Tegan could do a better job at promoting my strengths than this guy.

So now that you've had the overview, what have you decided about him?

Had I mentioned that my mother loved Tegan? Maybe Tegan reminded my mother of the black cocker spaniel she had as a child that was her favorite dog. My mother was infatuated with Tegan's abundance of personality, pirouettes dancing to go outside, attempts to mouth words at us while we were sitting around talking. The way my mother was attached to this dog, she wouldn't have questioned how hard it was for me to get over losing her.

Tegan was a runner. I was never able to train her off leash. She was not microchipped at this time, and there were more than a few times we were sitting around waiting for a generous soul to call the number on her collar to let us know they found her. The number was my parents’ landline. It was not anyone's cell phone number, which meant someone had to stay at their house while waiting, unable to go out and look around the neighborhood for her. However, my mother would have a panic attack every single time.

In addition to the other unhealthy mental health issues she was dealing with, which turned out to be more than just mental health related, she was starting to hoard—but oddly specific things, like our childhood toys that had been outside getting dirty and faded for decades. She had been obsessed about being a grandmother, which is why I was relieved when my brother took that pressure off of me. However, the strife it brought between my brother and me was something she was not able to cope with. She was fixated and obsessed with trying to solve it.

The summer of 2012, despite our very strained relationship, I was sitting on the floor with her, maybe to comb Tegan. I cannot recall specifically why we were on the floor in front of the couch at the moment. She told me that she was in denial about a terminal illness diagnosis she had received nine months ago.

While my brother had been trying to manipulate her with the baby, she had some issue with her tongue. Apparently, she was upset that she went to a specialist who sent her to a neurologist, which she could not understand. The problem seemed to be the bedside manner of the neurologist with an older woman alone had the texture of a sharp knife between the ribs. I could empathize that if he was going to deliver a terminal diagnosis in those circumstances, a soft blanket with hot cocoa approach would be more constructive.

Ultimately what it meant for me was that I was put in the position of being the "bitch" in the family. My roommates had done residencies in medicine, in palliative care, dealt with neurological terminal patients. I knew you cannot plan for how to handle their treatment and care if you do not understand exactly what to expect. I was not heartless, and we were candid about how much the diagnosis sucked.

However, as we took her to the airport to board a plane to visit my aunt for my cousin's first communion, and she was unable to stand upright or lift her head, I knew that the diagnosis of ALS was correct, and had seen her digression for the past six months and knew enough to know it tracked. Throughout her illness, I alone truly seemed to see my mother's emotional journey. Even though I had to force her back into a doctor’s office, I was angry she dropped the bomb on me after knowing for nine months. I was angry to be blindsided like that, even though she had told me about having those appointments at the time.

At one point, I felt like a period of time when I wanted to focus on my support to get my life and career back on track suddenly became about my mother and her drama again. It felt like I could never get out from under this presence and influence in my life. I wanted to rebuild my life, have things work out with a guy who would move with me to Europe. And my relationship with my mother would move in a healthier direction and be something I had never really had in my life of emotional chaos in this family life.

And Tegan's easy-going personality transitioned fully into emotional support animal.

During all of this, stalker number three thought it was an opportune moment to make his presence known. I had finally started efforts to return to my favorite sports activity, part of my home sports club where I had grown up, where they had seen me take the country by storm and be recruited for University teams. However, they had no space for my boat, so I did what you do in such a situation, and volunteered to build new storage space.

The oversight was supposed to be done by an engineer, who flaked, leaving my father to do the design for me, and the pipe weight we chose was too light. This is how I wound up trying to construct it myself one day in May, frustrated in an endeavor that was doomed to fail before I started. On this day, an attractive, tall guy my age showed up, and was a fun relief to an otherwise annoying mood. He seemed chill, but there was a disconnect for me when we met and he alluded to connections to the men's team. That being said, I was pretty familiar with all of my peers in that group and felt like I would have remembered anyone who grew up in my circle. Not knowing him seemed strange. We had a very chill chat for an hour or so, and it lifted my mood significantly.

Did I have a crush? Too early to tell. I did the only natural thing to do in such a situation, which was to find him on Facebook. With a name like a douche from Legally Blonde, and all of the mutual connections, it wasn’t hard. I discovered from this endeavor that he had a birthday. The next time I ran into him happened to be shortly after that, and it felt natural to ask how it had been. His answer involved some topic about liking to travel, and I mentioned my birthday had lasted 30 hours due to flying home from Amsterdam. I would say yes, I felt some chemistry in our first two meetings. I am not immune to meeting someone attractive with chill energy who I can chat easily. However, he said he was mainly based in California, with family locally.

However, the social media behavior of a blonde woman in California, who posted pictures of them together, caught my attention. That resulted in a response from me on a few fronts. First, I unfriended him. Second, I did a deeper dive, since he was native here—I expected we were in the same local circles as well. There was just something to understand about our demographic, which was that there were about five private schools everyone attended, and we all knew each other because we lived in the same neighborhoods but attended different schools. That yielded much more telling results. He had attended the former military school, which generally indicated parents wanting someone to have more structure, but the next part of his bio indicated that perhaps that was not even enough and there had been some behavioral issues. His timeline included leaving that school and being shipped off to the boys’ prep school a few hours away. (He—stalker number two—also happened to attend that school.)

After these insights to take into consideration, things began to get very strange very quickly. First, I would get weekly updates from him that went like this:

“I am probably going back to California next week.”

Me: “Ok.” (Why is he telling me this?)

“I changed my mind. I think I will stay around for the summer.”

Me: “Ok.” (Shouldn’t he be notifying the blonde woman in California, not me?)

When people ask me how I attract stalkers, I have to say it has followed this pattern a lot: a guy who women chase, suddenly being faced with me not caring about them. What I was actually thinking was pretty clear cut. He has a girlfriend, so if he wants to be friends, he can suggest coffee. If he expects anything else, he needs to lose the girlfriend. In my mind there was no in between.

As this began, I had the flexible internship where I could do work before and after training. But as the summer began, I entered the phase of the incredible pressure of being the one who had to force my mother to see medical care despite her aversion. During this time, training at the club was my zen space—to get away from the drama and process. Take Tegan to chase ducks and swim in the river, or stop at the dog park on the way home after a good hour of constant blood flow through my body.

What I did not need was a confused would-be stalker who couldn’t figure out what he wanted coming when I was alone there, interrupting my zen space with his now not-chill-at-all energy. Because my schedule was flexible, I varied the time of being there daily, and yet somehow whenever I was there, he would appear. From my amazing powers of deduction, I guess clearly he had decided to stick around and not go to California? However, instead of the weekly back and forth, it started to get even creepier with him just sitting in his Land Rover watching me.

After two previous experiences that went on for years, I had learned a few lessons: guys will always deny it and say the woman is making things up if you try to confront it, and that I wanted to shut this down as quickly as possible. As a result, I was not ambiguous in any way in my behavior toward him, and my internal monologue existed of “DOUCHE” echoing through my head every time he appeared. He did have a Legally Blonde douche name, and by all accounts a Land Rover is a douchy car, but his douchy name was replaced in my mind by his new moniker: California Rowing Douche.

In addition, every douchy stalker would not be complete without a Twit. This was always the younger, emotionally immature woman, who may have wished she was me, but most certainly wanted to stick her nose in the middle of whatever was going on. A combination of two people who become radioactive to me, and I avoid like the plague—which was not what I needed at all with the growing pressure.

I did luck out in a few ways; being on my home turf helped out a great deal. Remember when I said that all of the private school kids all knew each other? One of my classmates who knew CRD passed on a thought from him that he “didn’t know why he was chasing me around all summer.” Compared to my years of gaslighting, the admission was like the sky opening up and the sun shining.

The next mutual appeared randomly at the bar in my condo community. As soon as the guy seated next to me revealed he had been the same year at the military school, I almost yelled “Hallelujah.” Of course, I wasted NO TIME in dropping CRD’s name and getting the guy to spill the tea. Let’s just say “Nailed it” described how well my instincts and reality aligned. If you’ve seen the movie John Tucker Must Die, CRD was that guy in real life. The account was that he had five or six girlfriends at any one time. My Facebook post read something like, “Sorry, I won’t be in the middle of your full boat of girlfriends.”

Thankfully, it did not take me long after that to shake him for good. In December, I had a month free membership in a specific fitness center location, and one day he appeared there as well and circled me like a shark. I did not hold back a single muscle in my face from forming what I was pretty sure was a full-blown snarl, and managed to shut this down within six months of it starting, which I felt was a significant accomplishment. Previous Chapter: https://sylviawoodham.wixsite.com/home/post/tegan-chapter-4-occupation Chapter 1: https://sylviawoodham.wixsite.com/home/post/the-story-of-tegan

*All joking aside: Women do not pass through public spaces for the benefit of men. If a woman is in public, she is not there for a man to "tell to smile" or for a man to be entertained by watching, obsessively, every day.