The Object of His Obsession

I would like to say that Jose is history, but he is still part of my daily life. And not in a good way.

After four weeks of "having a boyfriend", which was a new and happy occurrence for me in Costa Rica, I broke up with Jose. I realized that he is an alcoholic who cannot control his drinking, and he is not a pleasant drunk. I learned too late that he has an obsessive personality. I became the object of his obsession, and now I cannot extricate myself from him.

As of today, September 3, it has been 12 days since I told him "no more." Every day since then, he has called me from 5-20 times a day, usually starting around 6:00am, and ending sometimes as late as 2:00am. I do not answer the phone when he calls unless he calls from a number I don't recognize, and then I hang up as soon as I recognize his voice. Sometimes he calls and hangs up; sometimes he leaves a message. When he is drunk, he leaves a loud, angry message that is undecipherable.

One Friday he was waiting for me after my exercise class. I had walked away from the building with a friend and we parted at the end of the street. At the next corner, Jose stepped out from behind a wall and scared the shit out of me. We talked for 10 minutes. He kept saying, I love you, why did you break up with me? After telling him why again and repeating myself many times, I just walked away from him, uphill toward my street. He must have taken a taxi to get ahead of me, because as I approached my street, he popped out again from behind another wall. This really freaked me out. I just kept walking, ignoring him.

Two days later on a Sunday morning as I was driving back home from the feria, I saw him walking away from my street, and he saw me. He would have had no reason to be in that neighborhood other than to look for me. When I got home, I put the letter to him that I had written the day before into an envelope and waited for him to come to my gate. Sure enough, he arrived, and I handed him the letter through the wrought iron gate. He read it. In the letter I told him again why I broke up with him, I asked him to stop calling me and to stop looking for me, and that if he continued, I would get a restraining order against him. I asked if he understood the letter, and he said yes. Then he said, I love you, why did you break up with me? I walked back to my apartment.

His calls have continued. During one particularly nasty call, he said "Voy a matarla" or "Voy a matarlo" meaning I am going to kill you or I am going to kill him. I wasn't sure which it was. He seems to think I broke up with him not because of his drinking, which he cannot take responsibility for, but because there is another man. There is no other man.

A friend of mine from my dance and exercises classes offered to be my witness to get a restraining order, so Wednesday morning Olga and I went down to the mayor's office and filed a formal complaint against Jose. I like to believe that people are basically good, that we all want the same things - to be loved, to have our basic needs met, to be happy - but I realized I have been naive about Jose. Still, I didn't want to file a legal complaint against him, but I did. And I was glad I did. The clerk waiting on me said that Jose had been in the day before asking if I had filed a complaint against him. So he apparently took my threat in the letter seriously; I was just delayed by a day.

I received a Protective Order and was told that if Jose comes near me again to call the police. Jose would be arrested and put in jail for three months. Olga found out that Jose had already violated a Protective Order filed by another woman a while back and had spent three months in jail for that offense. Geez, I wish I had known that when I met him!

Sometime during Wednesday afternoon the police delivered a copy of the formal complaint to Jose. Sometime after that he got riproaring drunk and found a friend who could write a little English. About 5:30pm, Jose pulled up in a taxi to the front gate where I live, handed my landlady, Ana, an envelope with his copy of the complaint in it, and took off. Ana delivered it to me and said Jose was drunk. On the back of the complaint was some scribbled handwriting with seven lines. One said that I was a bitch. Another said I was a lesbian. Another said he didn't like my body. And I couldn't decipher the other four lines. He signed his name to it.

Then the phone calls started up again. The first was angry and unintelligible. The next ones were more conciliatory as he worked off his drunkenness. In all, there were five messages yesterday after he received the notice, and so far today there have been eight messages. It doesn't seem to matter to him that I don't pick up the phone.

At lunch today, a friend gave me her shiny metal whistle on a rope. It has become my new necklace that I will wear everywhere. I also have to carry my cell phone and the order with me everywhere I go, even when I just walk in the morning, so I can be prepared and call the police if Jose shows up.

Meanwhile, something happened on our property and my landlords and I are not sure if Jose is to blame or not. Sometime between Tuesday at 5:30pm and Wednesday at 5:30pm, someone came onto our private property, opened a cement box where the electrical and telephone cables connect to the apartment next door to mine (those folks are away), and cut the cables. The cut had to have been made by someone who knew what he was doing. Jose has worked in construction and knows the trades. He or he and a friend could have done this, but there is no proof. Maybe he thought the cables went to my apartment (they didn't) and he wanted to get back at me for filing the complaint. Maybe he did it so I would call him for help (no way in hell). Whoever did it and for whatever reason, my landlords are not happy, and I am afraid they will ask me to move out if this harassment continues. I love where I live and don't want to leave, but if I move out of Santa Ana, I am pretty sure Jose will not follow me. He doesn't drive and doesn't have a license, so his stalking activities would be put to a greater test.

At this point, I hope he does show up so I can call the police and they can drag him away to jail for three months. I would like some peace of mind.

Before this happened, I would read about stalkers, but I never understood close-up what the victims were going through. Now I do. I am jumpy, I always look around me, I am afraid to leave my apartment, I am afraid for my students who come here. Even after this stalking stops some day, will I be able to trust anybody again? Will I feel safe going out? And yet a part of me feels strong, almost invincible, thinking that I am not going to let him get me down. HE is the crazy person. I am the sane person. He wants what I have (sanity), but he doesn't know how to get it. I am sooooo sorry I ever fell for him.