TRIGGER WARNING: Stalking and Sexual Assault

I signed up for SV-ISSA today. A long time ago I was looking into this. I wanted to go to the SF one but it doesn’t seem like they have anything and then my friend said I technically don’t have to join but I wanted to donate so I signed up. When you sign up there’s some kind of profile you fill out.

I hate picking out usernames for anything because mostly I just want to use something easy to remember like my name or something. It’s cute anyway and it’s simple but I get all this anxiety over being seen or tracked because I’ve legit had multiple stalkers.

One of them was a bank teller who lifted my information at the bank and started contacting me in the middle of the night. I figured out who he was and contacted said bank (who never responded). I had to get a lawyer and the dude had a paid Spokeo account which is a service that lists out all your past addresses. My property manager uses shit like that and my lawyer said, technically it’s not illegal for him to have that. He ended up getting fired and could have gotten a payout but I would have had to sign some bullshit releasing liability fuck that.

Another time I started avoiding this guy hardcore on my team at work who propositioned me multiple times. I think the distance bothered him and I had to tell him to stop following me, stop contacting my friends looking for me, and talking to me for anything outside of work. He apologized and said my friendship meant the world to him (barf) and then I sent the entire conversation to HR. Instead of getting fired they gave him a choice of parting forever or letting them fire him. He had an identical twin brother who worked in the den behind me though so I still had to hear and see him in the office until I got a new job.

The last example (and actually chronologically first out of all these) is the worst. It actually started with SA and then he started stalking me. That was something I had to learn. The second thing the police asked me was if I had somewhere to go because apparently rapists will stalk you afterwards. They told me, “It can’t be your place and it can’t be your mom’s place” but I had nowhere to go so when he showed up at my apartment I jumped out my bedroom window and ran down the street and my friend picked me up. Then he showed up at my mom’s house when I was there but I had told her what happened so she just said I wasn’t home and didn’t let him in. She used to call him “son”. He ended up dying a few years later. Life is crazy sometimes.

This is part of why I’m anxious a lot but I fight back a lot too but put all those experiences together and they manifest in weird ways that I have to untangle later. This is the kind of weight that female founders carry sometimes and it’s horseshit that I have to carry it. So imagine carrying that load and then having some guy who you have already rejected twice kiss your cheek in public at some bootcamp that you are working at. But in those situations, I think people like that are thinking about how much they can get for themselves and not what another person’s perspective might be.

Normally I wouldn’t write about this so publicly but I’m starting to realize the how the effects of trauma really impact the way you move as a founder. As a female founder, there’s a lot of this too that males just won’t experience in the same way. Hopefully this will help someone understand something, or help people maybe not be inappropriate. I’m not sure though because I guess people who are inappropriate are just inappropriate and would still try to line step but maybe societal pressure and shame would keep them in line. Better them than the rest of us. Weight for these kinds of things is asymmetrical AF.

Anyway, I usually end up filling whatever it is that I need to eventually. It just takes a super long time for me to do it. I have no idea how long it take most people but I’m sure they don’t sit around convincing themselves that this is just a username. Don’t worry I’m also working while I’m convincing myself, and then I kick it to as late as humanely possible, which in today’s case, is the day before I’m going to my first SV-ISSA event. Yay… The thing is, even if I’m not looking at it, I’m still carrying it, and all those tiny things add up.

But I also did it.
So, that’s also kind of cool.

Trauma untangled: Some
Memberships filled out: 1