Tag: personal story

Scarred by a Stalker

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By Kelcie McKenney

Many things in life can be considered scary, like bugs with lots of legs, horror movies that leave your skin crawling, or hearing weird noises when you’re alone in the dark. But these things are predictable or easily solved. It wasn’t until recently, when my safety was at risk because of another person, that I discovered the feeling of true fear.

Over the past year, I have been trying to live my life around a constant fear, one that permeates my job and career, my personal relationships, my home life, and even my plans for the future. Every aspect of my life was changed because of one thing: a stalker.

This person, let’s call him Jack, taught me true fear. Now, I’m not hiding his name to protect his identity, but rather I want you to know this story doesn’t have to do with him and his actions—it’s about how it affected me.

Photo by Nicole Mason

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When you SEE someone who might need help, you DO something.

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By Nicolette Clairmont

Yesterday on the bus, a drunk guy kissed me on the neck. He was in the process of being kicked off. Once off, he yelled something at me through the window and licked it, leaving a 4-inch-long saliva streak in the dust.

Prior to that, he had sat next to me and bothered me for 30-40 minutes.

This dude was a 44 year old (he told me), 6’5 (he told me), ex-convict (17 years in prison, he told me) with a large scorpion tattoo on his neck and what appeared to be knife scars all over his face. He punctuated every sentence with a loud, “the fuck you talkin’ ’bout?” and frequently took pulls from the bottle of rum in his coat.

Photo by Aleksey Malinovski

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Learning to Love Myself

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By Jasmine Lane

Something interesting happened today.

I was going through my photos on my phone, like everyone does, and I came across a picture from about 9-10 months ago. I remember taking it and thinking how much I hated it, how disgusting I looked, how fat my face was, etc. You know, the typical body-shaming that women do to themselves.

Well, today was different. I looked at that same picture and thought, “Wow, you don’t look half bad. And your skin is nice. And your smile. And your hair. And your face is on fleek.”

What was different today was that I have grown to love myself.

Photo by Xan Griffin

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My Anxiety Story

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By Gina Van Thomme

This story was originally posted on Gina’s personal blog. You can read it here.

When I was five, I came to the realization that I was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it.

This profound realization resulted in night terrors, which essentially meant that one second I’d be laying in bed thinking about five-year-old things like Arthur and Furbies and the next, I’d be panicking over questions such as “How am I supposed to spend an eternity in heaven when I can’t even sit through an hour of church?”

Photo by Andrew Neel

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If you have to tell yourself something isn’t “that bad,” then it really is worse than you think

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By Catcall Contributor

I couldn’t help it; I fell in love.

And when I fell in love, there was a part of me that became him. I didn’t think of it as a bad thing, after all if I’m spending all my time with someone and talking to them every day, it would be hard not to mesh into a single being, to some extent. He was older, successful, and absolutely beautiful. He always said he hated being the center of attention, but I think he knew that’s where he thrived. He was a natural born leader and made everyone look up to him with the highest regards. He truly seemed like a great man.

But things aren’t always what they seem. I got to know him better and he told me about his troubled past full of being adopted, bullied, anger management classes, manipulative relationships, and lies. He told me that he would never do anything to hurt me because he knew what it was like to be hurt—but then the lies started.

Photo by Luis Galvez

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