Close Encounters of the Crazy Kind

I was reading a Reddit thread about a girl being relentlessly stalked online and over the phone by some weirdo and his entire family because she broke up with him. And wow, did that resonate. Crazy. Oh, have I had run-ins with the crazy. Thankfully, only a few were truly notable, but here they are:

 Some names may have been changed to shield the innocent, protect the traumatized, and spare me the drama of the criminally unhinged. Then again, maybe they weren’t. If you see yourself in these pages and feel called out… that’s between you and your god. 🤷‍♀️

One was a “friend” I met online years ago—a real nutcase. She stirred up drama with and about me, all because of a fourteen-year-old girl and her twenty-five-year-old son who were playing online.

We were all “blog buddies” (back in the blinkies-and-collectible-dolls-for-your-sidebar days), and this young girl confided that she was getting creeped out by the son. I told her to block him and move on—she was just a kid, after all. But apparently, I poked the bear. He must’ve had some weird fixation because he ran straight to his mom—his grown-ass adult mom—and together, they launched a campaign to terrorize me online. They stalked my page like clockwork, racking up thousands of hits a week. I’m not exaggerating; I kept the IP logs just in case. He even stalked me from his job!

They spammed me with nasty comments, but I ignored them. I tried going off the radar with new usernames, but they always found me. In hindsight, someone in our little blog circle was probably feeding them info, just to stir the pot. The harassment escalated to constant threatening emails until—thankfully—they found someone else to obsess over. I heard they still brought me up from time to time, but even their little crew got tired of the drama and drifted off.

After it blew over, I started getting emails from other victims of their circus act, all sharing their own horror stories. Apparently, that family had a long history of lunacy. But up until then, it had mostly been irritating internet nonsense—until they teamed up with a freak show in my hometown who was causing similar chaos, except in real life.

And now we peek in on:

A Vaguely Recent Ex (at the time) and His Lovely Hellbent Companion!

These two created the most hideous blogs filled with nonsensical lies and spelling that needed an idiot-to-English translator. It was stupidity at its finest, and honestly, I pitied them. He was damaged; I knew that when we dated. But I was in “fix-it” mode and made a bad call. She used to be one of my closest friends—until she kept hopping into bed with guys I was dating. That friendship wasn’t exactly built to last.

They met working at the same department store. The moment she learned he was my very recent ex, she pounced, and their shared shenanigans began.

Soon after, they started following me to shops and showing up at the clubs I used to frequent. It was ridiculous. I had to call the police after she gave me a face-to-face death threat. At that point, I was pregnant with someone else’s child, completely over their drama, and yet—oh, Felicia. Honey, no.

Insanity? Absolutely, especially considering they were the ones creeping in my backyard and harassing me in public, yet they’d spin tales about me stalking them. We literally caught him sitting on the roof outside my bathroom window. They even moved her whole family into an apartment directly across the street from mine.

My server logs showed them hitting my blog over 300 times a week. They clicked through every link to my friends’ blogs and left comments claiming I was stalking them, following them through town, etc. I filed police reports, but cyberstalking wasn’t “a thing” back then, and physical stalking only counted if you had witnesses and injuries. The one time I had a witness (during the death threat incident), the girl backed down out of fear. The cop told me, unless they assaulted me in public with a witness willing to testify, there was nothing they could do.

They signed me up for porn newsletters, religious mailing lists, charity spam—anything they could think of to annoy me, they did.

Oh, and they even spread rumors that my pregnancy was fake and that I was lying to avoid getting beaten. That “fake baby” is now 19 and 6’3”, so yeah... okay then.

And then…

There was another headcase who dated my daughter’s father. She became convinced I was a threat to her, even though I was in a committed relationship and didn’t care about her life. She told him I wasn’t allowed near his house—fun fact, I lived upstairs. She spun wild tales, claimed I persecuted her for her faith, hunted her, insulted her. This, while she was teaching my daughter that bulimia was “refreshing and balancing.” Real gem of a human.

She blogged obsessively about how I tormented her, called me a slut, yet bragged about her own anonymous flings. She’d trash-talk Pagans but the most I ever said was, “You’re not a very good Catholic.” Because, I’m sorry, but if you preach virtue and live the opposite, you deserve a mirror moment. “Turn the other cheek,” “do unto others”—remember those?

She mirrored my life. Tried on my clothes, matched her hair to mine, and built blogs that were carbon copies of mine. She’d never even blogged until she met me, and suddenly she had this "huge" following. She didn’t have a real self—only what grocery-store Vogue covers told her she should be.

Eventually, she found a new guy to mold into her suburban dream. Left my friend in pieces. That’s just who she was.

But here’s the thing—I don’t hate her. Not even now. I still hear bits and pieces about her life, and honestly? I don’t think she’s happy. I’m not sure people like that ever are. She married the guy she cheated with, maybe they have their “balance.” But sometimes, you just feel that certain vibe… sadness.

But hate? Nah.

My ex-husband? He didn’t know any better. His mother’s toxicity was his legacy. His dad’s a saint, bless that man’s soul. How he ended up with her, I’ll never know. Love blinds, I guess. She eventually discarded him when he couldn’t feed her narcissism anymore. Now my ex lives in an apartment building with his mom and his copy-paste sister—each on different floors, all wallowing in self-pity because why not? When your life’s a mess, sometimes there’s no one left to blame but yourself.

My mother? No. She’s literally certified. Severe substance abuse, schizoaffective disorder with bipolar type. Refused treatment. That’s a whole different monster.

The stalker couple? Nah. He did four years in the ninth grade, struggled with body dysmorphia and a terrifying eating disorder. His family was a dumpster fire—think sexual affair with an aunt, “family porn nights,” the whole nine yards. His girlfriend (my ex-friend) was abandoned in a broken home, left to go feral when her mom remarried. Nobody noticed. Nobody cared. It’s just… sad.

Today, he’s happy. Gained weight, settled down with a woman who loves him, has a good job, a stable home. Good for him. Her? She’s on husband number three or four, city number three, career-of-the-month… it’s hard to say if she’s happy. I hope so. I truly do. I haven’t heard from her in years, and that’s exactly how I like it. I hope she found the peace she always needed.

Do I hate my ex, Bean? Thirteen years of friendship. Two years of a relationship filled with abuse and deception. One night when he tried to kill me. No, I don’t hate him. Karma is a patient thing. Leaving him to his own devices is far more damaging than anything I could do.

These are all threads in the fabric that make me who I am today. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes ugly—but always real, always flawed, and never afraid to admit it. And I’m not afraid to give credit where it’s due, either.

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