I'm really angry today

I'm sure there's a million good reasons and if I told them right they might end up being funny. But instead I'm going to tell the story of my inner voice:

The other day I accidentally commented on my sister's friends post on facebook. It was a stupid comment and very random because I hadn't noticed that it wasn't her post. It's embarrassing because I sort of know who he is. Not because I've met him. No, that would almost be forgiveable. I saw him do silly videos for a major newspaper, which I guess makes him almost semi-famous and in turn makes me some sort of stupid stalker for making a random comment on a really stupid post.

In itself this is not a very interesting story, but I spent several hours in a pitiful little spiral of hate and self-hatred. I have an inner voice that never stops telling me what an idiot I am. It feels like stepping on your own toes while biting you lip, punching your own stomach and blushing furiously at the same time. It's memory is much better than my own and if I manage to go a few days without embarrassing myself, it'll just pull up something really bad I did when I was five.

Like the time I was in an amusement park with my aunt. You had to pay for each ride, and she'd bought us tickets for a crazy house with moving stairs. Inside I started running around like an idiot (despite the fact that I was too scared of the other kids and too physically awkward to be able to do anything fun) and then forgot where my aunt had said she'd be. I was suddenly sure she'd told me she'd be outside, so I ran out. She wasn't outside. I turned around to get back in only to be stopped by the guy at the door. He wanted my ticket. I didn't have one, my aunt was inside and I was feeling very small and stupid. I started crying and was going to explain to him what happened, but by the first sight of my tiny face going all red and whiny he let me back in where I found my aunt and was too busy crying to ever explain to her what had happened.

The look on the man's face as he let me back in has haunted me my entire life, though. It was tired, fed up. A sort of ”just get away from me and stop crying where I can see you” face, and I was always very ashamed of myself to have done something like that. Bothered a man at a door that is.

(I'm 24 years old and blushing at this memory)

Or like the time I said something really stupid. Yeah. That was dumb. Stupid stupid stupid dumb.

I really hate the guy who lives across from me

He keeps staring. The only windows facing mine are his kitchen and bathroom windows. And he's out there all the time, moving his hands below the half-curtains. I really hope he has a cat that lies in the windov a lot.

A while ago I realised that he can see straight into my bedroom from his bathroom. How did I realise this you ask? He stared at me from his bathroom window with the lights on as I was standing in my bedroom one lovely evening.

I shudder at the thought of the 1,5 years of living here where I didn't know that he could see me.

This isn't some sort of freaky staring contest between two weirdos, though. I promise! It all started with the lingerie incident 2,5 years ago...

In hindsight, it was probably a really bad idea to make myself a cup of tea wearing a lovely, see through set of underwear in dark red with all kinds of little sparkly bits and ruffles, but I was really slim and fit at the time, the underwear had been a present and I was still so caught up on how nice I looked in it that I didn't waste a lot of time with thinking.

The kettle was in the window and it was at night. I stood there to wait for the water to boil, vaguely aware that something was wrong. I looked up. The guy was in his window. It took me a few moments to understand that he was looking at me, and another few moments to understand why. By the time my brain caught up with me, the guy had turned off the lights in his kitchen.

I peeked out from behind the wall where I was hiding and looked at his dark windows. He was still standing there, staring at our stupid kettle.

For some really stupid reason, I forgot all about it. I gained a LOT of pregnancy weight, then lost most of it. A year after the lingerie incident, on my way back from the grocery store, he jumped up from the bench he'd been sitting on and ran after me. I'd been eating chips from my way home (celebrating loosing so much weight after gaining it pretty fast?) and was just trying to open the door to the house we share. It's a big house with a lot of apartments, built around a small yard full of trashcans.

Creepy guy: "Hey, could you let me in as well, sweetheart?"

Me: *staring at him with my mouth full of chips*

Him: *joyfully pretending I'm not staring at him and standing very still* "great!"

I did let him in of course. He was very close and I couldn't really avoid it. He's spoken to me a few times since then, always managing to sound creepy.

I've now hung a bedsheet in the window. Whenever I go to the kitchen and notice him staring, I stare back while very purposefully closing the sheet across the window.