The return of the penpal stalker

As some of you may recall, out of the blue earlier this year, I received an email from an Iranian penpal I had not been in contact with for around 13 years. Rather than being excited by this unexpected reconnection, several factor set off my creep radar, and led to my decision to simply not respond.

... guess who's back?

Apparently, my lack of response in one arena did not dissuade him, and he added me as a friend on Facebook... and send me the exact same email.

Not only does this email refer to googling me in the past, plans to call me, and the fact that he still has my letters (and photo!), it also contains details that clearly could not be obtain from a public Facebook profile, further clarifying the fact that he has searched for information for me from multiple sites. He even takes a guess as to what month I started my PhD!

And the bastard called me chubby again. 

He signed the email "still your friend"-- based on what? A total of maybe four or five letters from a 13 year old girl writing about her favourite food and why she likes cats?

I felt a little guilty over not responding to his first email, but his persistence made me feel reassured about following my gut instinct. So this time around, I blocked him.

I say this pretending as though I have strength of convictions, as though it didn't take a series of email interactions with the Duke in which he instructed me to "grow a pair" (which I chose to not take literally) for me to gather the force to click that button.

I have a really hard time being mean. In fact, over the past few weeks, I've been told a number of times that I'm too nice and need lessons in meanness. I talk to the oddballs and drunkards on the bus when I'd rather stare out the window. I am nearly incapable of telling a sleazy guy to leave me alone before the second in which he makes his intentions explicit, and thus I can safely turn him down.* I have a strange hang-up about needing people to like me, even if I can't stand to be around them. As such, blocking my random childhood penpal is a sadly significant moment of strength for me.

* This is not to say I don't have a line, as demonstrated by my lightning quick fuse and epic slew of profanities when some old man told me he was looking down the back of my pants to see my panties, or the time I shoved a huge guy for sexually harassing the crap out of a friend. I just have a hard time when I don't think someone's intentions are malicious.