Katie, Bar the Door

She became an electronic, long distance stalker.

An opportunistic, self-serving, pain in the ass, actually.

I almost did half expect to come home and find one of the precious cats boiling in a pot a la Fatal Attraction.  Of course she'd have been an easy perpetrator to hunt down. The cats would have not gone down with out a fight. Someone would have lost an eye. At least.  And the trail of blood would lead straight to her smartphone.

So every-so-often little messages "to cheer me" became more frequent. And subtly more intrusive. More inquiring.  Asked for more detail. 

And before long we were right back where we'd been before I told her I was going to spend a little more time off the grid. 

I'd post something sweet that Hil said and she'd write an elaborate comment.

She'd message me thinly veiled reminders of the years of friendship between us. A beloved friend called to mind by a stranger who resembled him was supposed to spark a conversation about him. (It did not) A picture of someone close to her that she'd lost was intended to pull hard on my heartstrings - but I kindly and politely commented and did not gush or engage in a discussion.  Pictures of us a chubby, happy, beer-swilling co-eds were intended to pull me back into the fold. I let other people do the commenting and refrained. 

She was exhausting.

I am usually pretty good at figuring out what motivates people to act the way they do, but figuring out what her agenda might be was like solving a mystery.  I couldn't tell if it was Professor Plum in the Conservatory with the candlestick or Gilligan and the Skipper by the Lagoon with a a lovely bunch of coconuts.

And one day I reached my breaking point.

As I stood in a large conference room with dozens of colleagues - some of which knew me well enough to know my level of professionalism, others still needing me to prove myself - and made a 30 minute presentation based on the work my work group had performed as a team for the earlier part of the day, my phone sat on the table, well outside of my reach, basically bouncing up and down with activity.

Emails.

Texts.

Facebook messages.

Notes on my wall.

Beep. Buzz. Jingle. Honk.

Over and over and over again until I casually walked toward it while fielding an audience question, and casually turned it off without losing eye contact with the person asking the question.

I wanted to scream. But I finished our presentation without actually doing so.

And when we broke for 10 minutes just afterward, I sent a flippant text to her.

I AM IN A FUCKING MEETING. JESUS!