Very unlike anything I’ve done on my tumblr before (usually just like other posts and occasionally reblog) but have finally decided to write out a story of my own (100% true retelling of events I lived btw). TW for stalking and possible attempted trafficking.
At my first job (grocery store, age 16) I was actively stalked. My stalker would park behind my car and watch me leave every Tuesday. Every Tuesday I worked 6-10pm. First two weeks, I thought nothing of it. I parked right next to the cart collector outside, ideal place to park. But then I noticed it was the same car. So I started being wary of Tuesdays. Then a month into this, I saw the guy sitting in his car. He waved at me as I got in my own to drive home. He didn’t pull out or follow me or anything. So I just drove home. By this point I’ve classified this guy as a stalker and he’s now made contact. He had been observing my movements every Tuesday for a month. He knows my schedule. He knows what time I get off work. And now I know that’s what he’s doing. Flash forward to the next week, I’m at work on Tuesday like always. Then my boss comes around asking if anyone wants to leave early. I jump at that, not even really thinking that it’s a Tuesday (I was a teenager that was just ready to jump at the chance to leave early). So I get off early, just before 9:30, roughly half an hour before I usually get let out. I walk out to my car, still not thinking about my usual (and more heightened) wariness of Tuesdays because I’m feeling the joys of going home early. Then I get to my car, there’s no car parked behind it. But there is a rose stuck under my wiper blades. A rose was deliberately placed there. Someone had to have lifted up the blades to stick the flower underneath. My first thought, admittedly, was aw that’s sweet, but then I very quickly remembered it was a Tuesday. Not only that, I had just laid out my thoughts on the whole possible stalker situation to all my friends earlier that day. So now I’m freaking out. I still haven’t fully approached my car at this point. So I crouch down and make sure no one is sitting under my car waiting for me (nobody was). I look around the cart stall (nobody there either). I glance around the parking lot trying to find the car/guy usually parked behind me (don’t see him either). I quickly snapped a photo of my car, and then I quickly get in and drive off. I didn’t touch the rose. I called my dad and drove all over the place before actually heading home. I then got home and disposed of the rose. I never worked Tuesday nights again. And I never saw the guy again either. I worked there until I went to college. I have since graduated college, but this story takes place in 2021. To this day, half a decade later, I wonder what could have happened to me if I didn’t get let out early that day. Because this man who had been stalking me for a month, assuming he was the one to put the rose on my car, he knew what time I was supposed to be let out. And I can’t help but think that if I got out at 10:00 like usual, he would’ve be sitting there waiting for me, and maybe I wouldn’t be here today making this post. And before anybody asks, no I never contacted my job about this. I didn’t know how to. So I didn’t. I just changed my schedule and where I parked my car (moved it to being as close to the doors as possible, employee handbook be damned). But yeah, who knows why that rose was even put there, or better yet, who even put it there. Maybe the guy behind my car every night on the same day and time for a whole month was a crazy coincidence and then that month just happened to be followed by another crazy coincidence with the rose ending up on my car. But that’s too many coincidences to truly believe.
Anyways here’s the photo I took of the rose on my car.
