Late yesterday afternoon, I had been cleaning my house, and I’d left my phone on my bed, unattended for quite some time. At some point I picked it up, and it was filled with all these voicemails and texts from the ex, all saying “Please call me or I’ll just have to go over there and see you.” Now, I’d been rather attached to my phone number – mainly because I’d had nice business cards made up for the non-profit my mom and I are working on which had that number printed on them – but at this point I just said, ‘fuck it, I can’t take this any more, I’m getting a new phone number.’ I went over to my mom’s to go online and do just that, and I hung out there for a while and didn’t get home until around 10:30pm.

I’d been thinking that there was a good chance the ex might be there waiting for me when I got home, so I’d intended to scour all the nearby driveways and such pretty closely before getting out of my car. However, as I pulled up, there was a car approaching from the opposite direction, driving very slowly. All my attention was focused on that car, because it seemed very much like it was driving slowly to get a good look at who I was. Turns out I was right about that part at least – it was the cop who has my block as his beat. Relieved that it was just a cop and not the psycho ex, I pulled into my driveway, turned off the ignition and began getting my stuff together.

That was when I noticed the ex’s car parked in the back of the neighbor’s driveway, and the ex himself running up to my window. I immediately turned the car back on, and told him through the window to go away and leave me alone. He pulled out a piece of paper, and asked me to take it, saying he’d leave if I just took the note he’d written me. I should’ve known that was a ploy, but at one point I’d actually liked and cared about this guy, and part of me still wanted to think that there’s some facet of the good/nice person I’d thought he was inside there somewhere. Hah. Won’t be making that mistake again.

I’d rolled the window down a couple of inches, and he immediately grabbed hold of the window frame and began begging me to take him back. I started to try and drive away, but he wouldn’t let go, and said I’d just have to drag him or that he would hop on the hood of my car. I told him I was going to call the police and took out my phone and began to dial 911. At that point he started freaking out, shouting “Why would you do this to me? You’re just trying to ruin my life.” and then he reached his arm in and tried to wrestle the phone away from me. Luckily, the window wasn’t open far enough for him to do that successfully, although he did end up slamming the side of his arm into my face in the process, which hurt, but not badly or anything.

As soon as he heard “…County 911, What is your emergency?” he literally ran for his car and tore out of there. The cop was there within two minutes (having driven past my house half a minute or so before all this began, he wasn’t very far away), and took my statement, and advised me to get a restraining order on Monday. He said that given everything that had happened that night, I shouldn’t have any trouble getting a restraining order. He said that this way if the ex shows up, even if he doesn’t do anything threatening to me, he would be in violation of the order, which would cause him to get arrested. The ex’s car is pretty distinctive, so he said he’d keep an eye out for it, and would definitely make sure they got him out of there if he showed up.

Also, when I told the cop the ex’s name, he repeated the last name like he was trying to place it. So I said, “His mother is the former boss of the ex-job.” To which he said, “Oh. Yeah. She’s a loon.” (And that’s a direct quote!)

But you want to know the scariest part of the whole thing? I’d been in my car the whole time I was talking to the cop. When he was getting ready to leave, he said he’d stick around until I got in my house. At that point I noticed that my front porch light was off. Sometimes I do forget to turn it on when I leave, but that usually happens when I leave my house in the daytime and come home at night. I rarely leave after dark without putting on the light, although it has happened. My first thought was, ‘this *would* be the night I forget to turn on my porch light.’ However, it was only after I’d been inside for a good half hour, with the cops long gone, that I remembered that the front porch light was off and went to go turn it on. Except that it WAS turned on. The asshole had unscrewed the lightbulb to make the front porch dark.