When TikToker Kirsten (@sewlange) was in high school, she was stalked by a boy in her grade. He even followed her to another state. Pretty much the entire time, she was told that she was being dramatic and that he wasn’t really stalking her.
So, she had known this guy, Aaron, since elementary school. He was widely ostracized by the other kids due to being a little weird and nerdy.
The other kids also bullied him. Kirsten felt bad for him because, as weird as he was, he was still nice. She never saw him as a malicious person.
No matter what, she tried to treat everyone with respect. She was never friends with Aaron, but she always treated him nicely. In middle school, she invited him to sit at her table.
Afterward, he became attached to her and wouldn’t leave her alone. He sat with her and her friends every day, learned her class schedule, and waited for her outside of her classes. He knew where she would be before and after school and would go out of his way to see her.
When she explained his obsession to her parents and friends, they just brushed off her concerns. She didn’t want to be mean and tell him to leave her alone, so she resorted to avoiding him as much as possible.
“This was really a seriously anxiety-inducing, prolonged event for me throughout the very end of middle school and into high school,” said Kirsten.
“I was in a constant state of fear that I would run into him in public, that he would find me. And he never gave me any reason to believe that he would harm me, but when you look into stalker situations, that’s pretty much where it goes.”
Aaron had also been suspended from middle school for bringing a fake weapon to school and threatening an administrator with it, so Kirsten was scared.
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The only person who took her seriously was her middle school band director. She sat next to Aaron in band, and the band director would step in and tell him to leave her alone.
Eventually, she did tell Aaron to leave her alone. He backed off at first, but acted very hurt about it and would somehow find ways to reinsert himself into her life.
In high school, they had to sit next to each other in band. She tried to explain the situation to her new band director, but he blew her off.
She also felt like she couldn’t ignore him; otherwise, she would look like a jerk. Her friends made her feel like she was overreacting, and some of them even encouraged her to go out with him once or twice.
She did summer school P.E. in high school because she was an overachiever and wanted to graduate at the top of her class. He ended up being in the same P.E. class as her. So, they were together four hours a day for four weeks.
Once again, she told him to leave her alone. One day, she overheard him telling some other kids that his family was going to San Francisco for summer vacation. She started freaking out because her family was going to San Francisco.
She went home and told her mom, who tried to calm her down. San Francisco was a big city, so the chances of running into him were slim. After being in San Francisco for a few days, Kirsten saw no signs of Aaron.
But while they were at a dim sum restaurant, Aaron and his family walked in just as Kirsten and her family were paying the bill.
After that, she was unable to relax or let her guard down because she was convinced that he was somehow tracking her location. However, their moms did go to the same hairdresser, so he could have gotten his information from there.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
