For most, this COVID-19 quarantine lockdown comes as an inconvenience, cutting you off from the rest of the world and physical human contact— or, forcing you to work under insanely stressful scenarios. For me, though, it comes as a welcome gift. There’s nothing like the government mandating that everyone stay indoors as a way to free you from a stalker.
Within the first few weeks, the nightmares subsided, I stopped staring out the window scanning for his beige Mini Cooper, I no longer looked over my shoulder during walks. I drove down the highway without fear of being swerved at or run off the road. I opened my mail confident that he didn’t know my new address and therefore wasn’t sending me more glitter bombs, love letters, or “anonymously” printed-out articles about wearing perfume in the workplace. The seeds of doubt and unease that he planted in my brain starved and died as my mind shook the frosty grip of anxiety. Instead, my creativity began to flourish. I started to feel a little more normal and a little more calm each day, while the rest of the world panicked.
I started a wildflower grow bar for bees in an old plastic Swiffer container, planted pansies and petunias in flower pots, and tomatoes, basil, and parsley in seed starting kits. I talked to them, singing a ‘good morning’ greeting while watering. It’s been a wet, dreary spring, but I kept telling my fledgling green babies to stretch toward the sun and break through the spongey soil.
Myself, I took up yoga. I wasn’t good, but I’d stretch toward the sun, whether it was present on my cheek each morning or not, and began the day with a vitality and passion I hadn’t felt in the first three months of 2020. After a month or so of quarantine living, I was hitting my stride and had just about forgotten the nasty first quarter of the year.
But, when my harasser received a promotion and raise, announced in our weekly all-staff Zoom meeting, feelings swelled back up in my throat. When coworkers congratulated him in the chat box with “good job Tom!” and “you deserve it!”, I was thankful my camera wasn’t on as I felt my face flush with red. He is good at his job, don’t get me wrong. That’s not the issue. The issue is that he’s also good at harassing women, painting himself to be the victim in every situation, and moving onto the next one to continue the pattern. He has nearly everyone at our lab fooled into thinking he’s a divorced “good guy” who just can’t seem to “get the good girl.” In reality, though, he’s a predator, a manipulator, an incel… and, for the record, not even divorced.
The seeds he’d planted months ago had taken root— the disquiet in my mind spread like weeds.
Memories came flooding back. Text exchanges where I politely, gently— as not to set him off for fear of his retaliation— told him I wasn’t interested and suggested we just be friends. Then, months later, more firm texts asking him to please not contact me unless it’s about work. I remembered him pulling me on top of him. I felt the panic again. I remembered the meetings with Human Resources and the police. I looked down and saw my hands shaking as they had the day I had the meeting with harasser, HR, and police. I felt the unease. I remembered the notes I’d written my loved ones under the assumption that one day, he’d attack me as history tells us so many men will do.
So as we approach two months into working from home and everyone’s stir crazy and begging for their normal jobs back, I feel anxiety growing back into my body. My neck aches. My harasser invades my night mind again. I’m cautious, feeling the grey fog of worry and dread enclose on me once more at the thought of going back to work. Of seeing my harasser in his new, higher position at work. Of having to hear others praise him and ask, “what are we going to do without you, Tom?!”
My tomato plants droop under the shade of this wet, spring sky.