Nightmares, flashbacks and constant fear: how a stalker brought me to my wits’ end

I blocked them, threatened legal action and finally informed the police. But my stalker’s persistence made me afraid for my life

It started with an email. My brother-in-law had died of cancer and I posted a tribute on Facebook. Shortly afterwards, an email arrived from someone I didn’t know, expressing their condolences for my loss and saying it made their “snarky comments” on Twitter seem petty and ill-timed. I knew, of course, that this was their way of alerting me to what they had actually said on Twitter. It was mostly the usual trolling that can be found on the most antisocial of social networks. I chose to ignore it. Like many writers, I spend a fair amount of time on Twitter. Learning to ignore the trolls is part of the job.

But this particular troll refused to be ignored. The snarky comments gave way to homophobic insults. I was called “pansy”, “fag”, “queer” and “gaylord”. At the time, I was employed as LGBT editor at Time Out, so I was running my personal Twitter account and a second account on behalf of the magazine. The tweets kept coming. Some days there would be one or two. Other days, there would be dozens. When Guardian Weekend magazine ran a dedicated gay issue, I shared the link on Twitter and headed off to the gym. By the time I arrived, my mentions were mostly from this person. “GAY, GAY, GAY, GAY, GAY!” read one. Another described me as “the Aids generation”.

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