An Unhealthy Obsession
Okay, I’m going to get a little raw here, but I feel that since I never sat outside this person’s house with a pair of binoculars and because I sought help for what was going on inside my head that I can say with confidence that I’m not a stalker.
So I used to have this unhealthy obsession. It goes all the way back to 1987. I was a 15 year-old Air Cadet just finished grade 10. I was having a pretty hard summer. I had applied for a scholarship to go to an advanced survival training school and missed it by a hair. It was so unfair, there was only one question in the scholarship examination board that I didn’t answer correctly, I was asked, “Who is the director of Camp Wainright?” It was a trick, a trap. The person asking the question was the director of Camp Wainright. I still remember the name, Bud Worthington.
So what happened instead of going off to run around in the bush, eat snakes and fly around in search and rescue planes was that I was sent to a camp run by the Alberta Government. It was a leadership course in a mountain park. I had spent that summer so far working at MacDonald’s as a fry cook instead of going to parties because my best friend in the world decided he didn’t want to associate with me any more and I happened at the time to be suffering from a severe case of depression. Sometimes I think if I hadn’t developed this crush on this young woman that I would have ended my own life then and there.
I don’t remember a lot about interacting with this girl at the camp. I was busy showing off my muscles and chasing up and down mountains and rock faces. This girl was in the course in another group. She had been sent there from the YMCA. Actually, I think I can now piece together the first time we actually met.
We were participating in an exercise on two floors of a building. The upper floor was told it was a game to get the most trading cards. Halfway through the game, we switched. A lot of people kept trying to get more cards but the game in the lower floor wasn’t a game. It was meant to be a way for people to get to know each other. They were told to walk up to the person, put their arm around them, talk to them and welcome them. This girl chose me and I guess right off the bat I misinterpreted it.
Still, even though she had a boyfriend, by the end of camp we were friends and I managed to get her to agree to a date with me. Then nothing happened. I didn’t get ahold of her, and it hurt — a lot. But the camp had a second component, which took place in the winter. She was there and this time I got her phone number. We met up a couple of times and for some reason she was all I could think about. Then, out of the blue, her father told me to stop talking to her. At first I ignored him, then I felt really bad that the whole relationship was totally one-sided. I simply stopped talking to her, but never stopped thinking about her.
A couple of years went by and I had a mental breakdown. A big one. I ended up in a hospital for months. When I got out I decided there was nothing left for me to do but join the military. I signed up and was just about to be accepted. So some friends took me out and got me loaded. When I got home, I called her up and we talked for a very long time. But I never called her again — for a very long time.
When I did call her, it was sheer magic. She was so witty and intelligent. I don’t know if I mentioned that she was beautiful. But I was starting to slip back into my mental illness. At first things went well, then perhaps because I was delusional or because I mis-heard things, I thought she really liked me. I wrote to her and proposed marriage, and then she cut things off for good, changed her phone number and never answered any letters. Years later I spoke to her briefly on the phone and after she told me she couldn’t even go back to being friends with me I decided to kill myself. I took 100 extra strength tylenol and ended up in ICU. I would have died if my dad hadn’t stopped by and slid a $20 bill under my door. Just enough for a cab to the hospital.
That was around 25 years ago. I wish I knew why I think about her now and then — and a couple of other females I had crushes on. One of them I actually had a relationship with. She was my first girlfriend but it only lasted 2 months. We did stay friends and even now that she is married I still talk to her. It’s an amazing arrangement. I have a soul mate and I don’t have to pay her way through life or worry she will divorce me.
A few years back I went to my psychiatrist and told him about my obsessions, worried I was a stalker. He basically said that if I were a stalker, I would not be coming to him for help. My medications help with the repetitive thoughts but I still wonder every few years what this girl might be up to, I sometimes think that if I wrote just one more letter that it would be replied to and I could somehow have her as a friend again. But I have resigned myself to having just three amazing women in my life, all of them babes in their own right. One of them is an amazing friend and has changed my life with her simple wisdom and kindness, a total angel. (She also used to be a bikini model). The second one admits to loving me and so does the third. I think that’s a lot. I that’s enough to convince me that one-sided, crush-relationships just weren’t meant to be. It’s hard to admit, but it’s also a part of life and I’ve accepted it.
