Morgan getting into her character for a party

I came to the decision last night that the stress of all this was getting to be too much to handle. I had never been in a situation remotely like this before and I really wanted to be making good decisions, but I was so stressed out now on a daily basis that I decided, for the first time in my life, that I would go see a therapist. So I called someone that was highly recommended, and I made an appointment. Right away, just knowing there was going to be someone else I could talk it all over with was so very reassuring.

At 8:54 pm I texted Morgan, she wanted me to text her early, because she wanted to switch up on times. “On your way?,” and she answered “Ya”, I told her “OK” Morgan pointed out that all of our efforts had not yet to stopped him. She went through a range of emotions including wanting to confront him with a baseball bat. We had a good laugh over that, but I also knew she was serious – she was getting so angry about this situation and really wanted to get this guy to stop. I was worried she was serious about also wanting to minimize what was going on – she didn’t want us to lose anymore sleep, or worry over her.  I had Steve talk to her and he and Morgan made a deal that she would alert him when something happened, and he would try not to wake me, and they would see how that worked.

I am a light sleeper so Steve and Morgan’s plan did not last long. At 9:46 pm the backyard motion detector went off and I was up before Steve. A light tapping on her windows followed.  Steve wanted so badly to just go down the block and confront them all and tell them those nice little things you tell people when your anger bottle bubbles over.  But we knew if we took the law into our own hands this would all go from bad to worse in one fell swoop.  I recorded what had happened, and we all went back to sleep.

Today is October 1, 2012, and as I wrote this, I just kept thinking of some advice from a video on stalking I have since seen. There is a desire to try to minimize the stalking as it progresses.  And that is exactly what we were doing back then. Trying to minimize it. As if we could just cut that one minute out of our lives and then life would almost be normal.  And you really want your life to be normal. But the advice goes on to explain that as you go to minimization, the stalker usually goes to maximization, and that creates a very dangerous situation.  It is very good advice.