Getting Stalked by Someone Double my Age

This post includes how I put myself in a dangerous situation with someone double my age. Reasons I don’t like hockey players. Receiving hate from my coworkers and so much more.

Fake names are used to protect identities

Niagara on the Lake, 2020

Going to Asia was perfect timing. When I started working at the Crown and Anchor I was the youngest person by a couple of years. A lot of my workers were in their late 20’s or early 30’s. I was a fresh 18-year-old still in high school. If you were a new hire at the bar you would typically be left out of everything. If you had rung your drinks in incorrectly, you would be yelled at. If you had taken a table that was not yours people would talk shit. It gave me character and even though the girls were ‘mean’ they did it out of love for the bar. It made me a strong server because it was so fast-paced with little mistakes being made every night. Working a Thursday, Friday and Saturday I would easily make $700 cash and if you include wages another $405. Plus if you add in the other two days a week I was working there and the yoga studio, I was making bank. So even though I did not have many work alliances or relationships it was very worth it financially.

To rewind a little bit to why Asia was perfect timing let me tell you about something I did when I first started working at the bar. I was out one night at a chain restaurant called Earls. When my friend left me to go home early, I noticed some girls I knew at the bar celebrating one of their birthdays. I went over and bought a couple of rounds of shots for the two of them and picked up the birthday girls bill. I was drunk at this point and wanted to party. At the bar beside us was this guy, I had no clue who he was but he seemed nice. I asked him to drive us three girls to another bar with more of a dance floor. We ended up settling for one that I had not been to yet. The guy that drove us there said his name was Cory. Cory was a bit older. He ended up buying me shots on shots and soon enough I was puking in the bathroom. I called my friend to pick me up and said goodbye to Cory. He told me to take down his number and text me when I got home safely. That ended up being my biggest mistake.

Cory and I texted a bit here and there but nothing crazy. He was 36 and at the time I was 18. Although he asked me to hang out all the time, I always said no. Slowly everything fizzled out and I resumed regular life.

I was feeling a bit down one day in mid-May because of a guy I liked named Patrick. Patrick was this all-star hockey player who moved out of our town to play for a larger team in the states. Patrick and I would talk every once and a while, flirt a little bit and always talked about what we were going to do when he came back into town. I did not like many boys because I felt like I had so much more life experience and maturity but Patrick was different. He came into town and we both wanted to hang out. I ended up picking him up. I asked what he wanted to do and he responded with let us go for a drive. I drove about 15 minutes out of town till we had prairies on either side. He told me I should go on a dirt road to explore it. I wanted to impress him so I did. I knew what was going to happen next when I parked the car. He touched my face and we started to kiss. He then put my hand on his crotch making me feel his boner. I knew I was willing to do anything to make him like me. Afterwards, he cleaned up and I started driving again. The conversation was awkward and I didn't know what to say. He told me I could drop him off to meet the boys at the movie theatre. I would say after months of talking and having feelings for Patrick a 30-minute drive ruined them all. I felt used. I was used.

I wanted to replace the feeling of being a piece of meat with being appreciated and feeling loved. This is where I totally and completely messed up. I texted Cory asking him if he wanted to hang out. He said that he could pick me up in 45 minutes. This made me nervous because I had no escape plan if things went bad but in a way, I did not care. He picked me up in a jacked-up truck. The conversation began to flow. We hit it off like two peas in a pod. He lived out of town and it was a bit of a drive however time passed so quickly. When we got to his house we opened a couple of ciders and continued our amazing conversation. I had not connected this well to anyone in a long time. We started bringing up trauma after trauma without judgement. Both of us crying then dancing then crying again. At his house, I had found out that he had dated one of my coworkers. I made him swear up and down that they were no longer together. He said how he would never get back with her how their relationship was toxic and that she was in another country hooking up with other people. There a zero chance in hell they were getting back together. So I felt calm. I felt like this would be a one-night thing and I was not hurting anybody because she would never find out. I made him promise he would not tell anyone.

I spent the night and I think the next day was a weekday so I got Cory to drop me off early in the morning so I could get to high school. I got text after text from him. Always asking to hang out. Telling me that he could fly us to Vancouver, how he had enough money to travel the world for 5 years with me, a whole bunch of shit a 36-year-old should not be texting someone who is still in high school. I had gotten the attention I needed that night and felt huge guilt toward my coworker. I stopped replying to the messages altogether. This did not stop him. He knew he could not enter the bar I worked at because it would be too suspicious. I liked to go out a couple of times a week. I went from only seeing him in Earls that one night in February to him always being out when I was. At first, I thought it was a coincidence but after the 5th, 8th or 12th time how could it be? Cory was stalking me on my nights out. It got so bad. Plus who could I talk to that would believe me and not him? I blocked every form of contact with him. When I left for Europe in September that is when everything got better. When I returned to Canada I would see him occasionally but it was not so bad. I found out Cory and my coworker got back together.

For Christmas at the bar I work at we have huge parties. I was not scheduled to work however my employer said I can dress as an elf and sit beside Santa Claus for photos. We would get minimum wage but an unlimited bar tab for the night. Sounded good to me. My coworker that had gotten back in a relationship with Cory was also an elf. The night started off well but it ended with me telling her what had happened 7 months previous. The news spread like wildfire. All my coworkers choose her side and did not even ask me what had happened. Some of the girls were more angry at me than my coworker was. My life felt like hell. I didn’t even care to defend myself. I stuck it out for 20 more days before I left for Asia.

Crown and Anchor, 2019

I still have issues with Cory. I will go more into detail another time about how I started screaming at him and his friend on Halloween. It was so bad to the point that a waitress at the bar needed to leave work early to drive me home and the bar manager contacted my sister to tell me I needed therapy. Like a cockroach, Cory keeps coming back.

I think back to myself at the age of 18 and knowing what I know now about the world I should have never put myself in a situation with Cory. Cory taught me a lot of life lessons. He showed me that just because you are old does not mean you have your shit figured out. I also learned what gas-lighting and manipulation were. I think it is okay for couples to have a large age gap as long as both of those people are over 20. I could have seriously gotten myself hurt or even worse. I am lucky I am strong because many people would have easily been manipulated. When I had slept over that one night, I was sleeping on a bed of 100 dollar bills. He offered me everything I wanted and I think what drove him so crazy is that I kept saying no.

Also, Patrick is the reason I hate hockey players.

My next story is about an Austrian guy restoring my faith in men while travelling throughout Vietnam together. It includes my birthday. Running away from who? What happened when I visited him in Austria? Till Thursday. xx

Restoring my happiness. Malaysia, 2020