The Clingy Ex – Part 02

For this part let’s name the girl as Arunima.

March 2016
I joined the new company. At the induction training, all the new joiners were divided into batches for some group activities, with each batch consisting of 7-8 people. The interaction in our group was not just limited to the office activities, we used to roam around the city and sometimes on our city tour we were accompanied by people from other batches too. The pictures from those trips were posted to Facebook and Instagram and people were tagged on these photos. Mostly, our hangout group was dominated by girls in numbers.

April End 2016

One of our mutual friends (mine and Arunima) called and told me that Arunima was asking about me. I paid no heed to his words and thought that she would have asked casually. One day I got a call from a girl. She said that she was joining this company and she needed some help. I was sitting with my friends at that time and we were just giggling around and I guess she heard all the laughs of the people over the phone.

One afternoon, I got a call from Arunima. On the call, she recited all my daily routine which I followed in the past few days. The places I had visited, the photos posted on Facebook in which I was tagged, and the place where I was staying currently, she had access to every information. The girl who called me a few days before was none other than Arunima’s friend. It was her who wanted to check on me. She recited all the names of the people who posted those photos. “You seemed to be very happy in your life, joined a new company, roaming around with new people, posting photos on Facebook. You are not at all affected by our breakup. You are standing very close to this girl in every photo of yours. Are you in a live-in relationship with this girl? You must be. This is what you always wanted to do and that’s why you left from here”, she said. “What’s your problem? Why are you spying on me?”, I said. I told her that I had moved on and it should not bother her, where and whom I roam around with. But she did not actually move on and did not understand how toxic that relationship was for me. I blocked her number immediately after the call. But she continued to call from a different set of numbers. I could only block her a few numbers because that was the maximum limit set on my phone and since her contact numbers outweighed my limit, she was able to reach out to me every time. She would say the same thing again and again that I was doing wrong. She gave me threats that if I did not talk to her she would reach out to my family. I told her to do what she felt like.

1st week of May, 2016

She had sent a word file of 10 long pages to my mom in which she painted a picture that I had kept my family in the dark and had hidden everything from them about Arunima, and I used her and now I was playing around with other girls. She even made a story that on a particular date when they were not at home she came to my home and I sexually exploited her. My family members started asking me a lot of questions. They doubted me because she had connected those stories with actual dates. They did go out for a few days and she did come to my place but no harassment ever happened. We were dating at that time and it was a smooth phase of our relationship. Some of the family members even supported her. My family members wanted me to sort things with her.

I unblocked her and called her number. On the phone she blamed me for her actions, “You only said, do what you want to do, so I did it. You were okay with the breakup but I was not.” I had never ever thought that she would fall to such a level.

May-June,2016

I got very scared and pretended to be back to her, perhaps, doing the biggest mistake of my life. I was faking this relationship. I did not call her for days and weeks and she would get furious about that. Soon she found out that I was faking this relationship.

It took me 4-5 days to explain everything to her. I told her that I was not in college anymore and I wanted to focus on my job and I did not want to come back to her. I had to explain to her that I was not dating anyone and the girls in the pictures were just friends. She seemed convinced but insisted me to be friends with her. She gave a justification for what she did by saying that she would have not done this had I not blocked her on call. I had accepted her offer of being friends this time.

She used to call me a lot. Sometimes at weekends, she would call after every 30 minutes asking questions like What was I doing, whether I was at home or roaming outside. I would lie to her that I went to meet a friend when sometimes I used to meet our office group. Once she found out this from tagged photos on Facebook. She accused me that if I lied to her about my outings then I might be hiding some more things from her. I told her that she was going again on the same track as before and there was no point in being friends too. I blocked her again.

June-Sep, 2016

She started calling my family members. She used to call my mom at late night, would give multiple missed calls and sometimes if my mom picked up the call she would hang up after 2-3 sec without saying a word. I made my mom block her number but she used to call from another number. I made her block that too but she kept on changing numbers. My mom had an old phone and the limit of blocking numbers was very less and within a few hours, the limit had reached. The phone’s inbox got completely full from her text messages. If there is an extent as to how much a person can annoy someone over the phone I think she had crossed that. She had sent around two thousand text messages to my mom.

She used to remain silent for 2-3 days and then call my mom again and again. She had also started sending emails to me. She sent some photos of her crying face and would say that she had been crying the whole day and night. I asked her what she wanted from me. She said that she just wanted me to talk to her. I also got to know that she had left the company a few days after joining. So her full-time work was to ruin my life anyhow.

The problem with her was that she never realized that she was threatening me. She used to blame me for the torture she did to me and my family members. She was having very fluctuating mood swings, within seconds she would change, for a moment she was completely normal as if nothing bad had ever happened between us and at another moment she went completely insane.

I started missing on office trips and in group hangouts because I knew that she would see photos somewhere and would ask me about it and would fight unnecessarily. I became a good listener to her. Every time she used to call and ask me anything or fight over silly things I would mostly babble by giving yes-no answers or sometimes I was very tired after the office that I went to sleep over calls only. My argumentative spirit had completely lost its way.

October End,2016

It was Diwali time and I went to my home town. When I came to my house, my family members started interrogating me. I told them that this girl was spreading lies and that none of the things ever happened between us what she had been telling.

I did not tell her about my homecoming but she soon found out about it from one of our mutual friends in the company. One day she came to a station located nearby to my house. She called me up and threatened to meet her.

I met her and tried to make her understand the things she was doing and explained that this would not work out but she was not ready to listen. She started fighting with me and started crying loudly in public. The crowd gathered near us, gave furious looks to me and started questioning me. I told them that I know this girl and she was with me and it was our personal matter. After seeing the anger of the crowd she became silent. I went to drop her home. On the way also I tried to console her but that effort again went in vain.

She planned our next meeting on Saturday a day before I was leaving. She thought that I was here for 7 days and was leaving on Sunday but in reality, I was leaving on Friday. I did not tell her this thing because I never wanted to meet her again and I knew if I told her she would force me to meet her before Friday. On Friday, I reached the airport, I called her and told her that I was at the airport and leaving in an hour. I made a story that the flight got preponed and I got this message four hours back and did not get time to inform her and I had to take this flight urgently and did not want to cancel it as it would lead to more expenses. She was shocked and fought a lot about it. She argued and cross-questioned me about the journey but later realised that I was not to be blamed.

March-May 2017

In these 4 months, she fought endlessly with me over Christmas party, New Year party and whatnot. Whenever she got some information from her friends she would call me and question me about it. Why did I travel to that place, why was I meeting new people, Why was I happy. because a person who recently had a breakup should not be enjoying, according to her.

I visited my hometown also in these 4 months but did not tell her. Her arguments and fights had increased. “I would commit suicide today”, she used to say. She started sending me suicide notes over mail and to my family members too. I was horrified by her suicide notes and called her mom and informed about her actions and the suicide notes. Arunima yelled at me when she found out that I called her mom. She said, “My mom’s medical condition is not stable and you did a terrible mistake telling her.” She got so frustrated that she planned to take revenge on me.

June 2017 – Feb, 2018

I blocked her from everywhere. Even though I disabled all my social media apps she got contacts of many friends of mine from tagged photos and public accounts. She saw various posts of office trips and movie posts, which my office colleagues or my roommate had put on Facebook. She was silent for a few months but after that, she started contacting my friends and relatives randomly. I started getting calls from random people because she was messaging these people and was defaming me and spreading false information by saying that I had done wrong to her. She used to message people and would send the same message to my email to let me know whom she contacted. She messaged my office friend’s sister and abused her. She texted a female office friend of mine thinking that she was my girlfriend and said that I broke up with her because I liked my office friend. She contacted a colleague’s uncle and said that her daughter was roaming around with me. She texted another office colleague and said that I wanted to engage in a threesome with her. She contacted a cousin of mine as well and talked to her in a very harsh behaviour and also said that I was having sexual relations with her. There were some more messages that I can not even write here.

I did not have the count of the people who called me during that time. On any random day I used to get a call, people would enquire about her messages. Some of them who knew me closely, they tend to ignore her messages but some of them would yell at me and block me immediately.

I did not visit my hometown also during that time as I had just joined a new company, and moreover, I knew that everyone would question me and how hard I try I would not be able to convince all of them.

March-Oct, 2018

I talked to her parents, her sisters and her friends and told them about her abnormal behaviour. I talked to her too and asked her what she wanted from me. She said that she wanted me to talk to her twice a day.

I started talking to her thinking that I would get some time to deal with her in a different way. She had again started to take control of my life. She told me that I should not go outside for food or outing, I should not meet any office friends. She wanted me to inform her about everything I did. She used to call several times during my office. Whenever I went on office trips she would start fighting with me. She had sent a lot of audio messages to me in which she was yelling and abusing me at a very high pitch. Meanwhile, I started talking to a criminal lawyer. I had sent all the audio messages to her that Arunima sent to me during our recent fights. The lawyer told me that I should immediately go to the police if the situation becomes unbearable.

She started a new round of sending messages whenever I used to ignore her or stopped talking to her. She had maintained a list of some 50 people and this time she used to send some pictures too along with very long messages. Initially, she sent some of my normal pictures in my vest, shorts and pyjamas but my saturation point had reached when she sent some nude pictures to the people, downloaded from the internet with my face superimposed on them. I got so irritated and angry that I wanted to sort this mess once and for all and was ready for any consequences.

7th, November 2018

I had blocked her from everywhere. I knew that she had gone completely insane and I was scared that she could take a bigger step this time. I went to the police station directly. I entered the police station at around 11 pm and narrated the complete incident to the SHO from the beginning. He could not understand Hindi properly and there was a huge communication gap but somehow I was able to tell the major events that took place in the recent past. He was very stubborn and was not writing the complaint instead he blamed me for her annoyance. He said, “If she does anything who will take the responsibility?”. He was not ready to listen to anything. He was not even letting me speak. He became so aggressive in the conversation that he was about to slap me. I told him to talk to the lawyer but he refused to do that too. I had a flight to my hometown the next day as it was Diwali time but he was not letting me leave the police station also. He told me that there must be some suspicion and that was why I was planning to leave the city and I just could not leave the city until things were sorted out and had to report to the police station daily for the next 14 days.

From 11 pm at night till 6 am in the morning, I sat in the police station answering all his questions. Only after pleading him multiple times, he let me talk to my lawyer. She sent another senior lawyer to the police station. The senior lawyer said something to the SHO and only after then he let me leave the station.

The moment I stepped out of the police station, she disappeared from my life as if waiting for the police to take some action.

From November 2018 to date I have not heard from her either on calls or on messages and I hope I do not. The verbal and mental torture did end the very next day but the imprints of the torture did not. The incident changed my life completely. I have lost some of my lifelong friends, and some close bonds with family members and relatives. It brought some psychological changes to my personality as well. I was in depression for many months, I could not gel with other people easily and became an extremely introverted person for quite some time. My social life completely vanished for some years and it is only recently that I have started using a few social media apps.

Hans Christian Andersen once said, “My life is a lovely story, happy and full of incidents.” I can’t say that my life is a lovely story or that it is happy but I can definitely say it is full of incidents.