DENTISTS AND DENIAL Connor Mills

Hey everyone! Hope the new year has been treating everyone well, that resolutions are kept and your not being hard on yourself if not, I didn’t consider them this year, waking up new years day with a blown out check from an abscess and a limp from over doing it at work my thought was that the yearly attempt at a “glow up” would be easily achieved given a little TLC.

While catching up with friends my phone began chiming an unfamiliar tone with unusual urgency, not having a clue what the alert sounded like shows just how little I use the actual messaging function (who doesn’t use WhatsApp). After getting a blast about how tech illiterate I am and not saving numbers, including the two woman I was groomsman for sitting next to me. I looked at the messages assuming it’d be a dominos deal.

The messages were long winded requests for me to contact this person so we could “meet”, calling me by name, spelt correctly which even my nearest and dearest struggle with. Thinking it was a bad joke I ignored the messages. Within an hour more messages of how they’ve seen me about, they sent me their address and said how they love seeing me especially in, and then named my workplace. This is when the subtle panic started building, and I showed the messages to my friends, us all beginning our own amateur detective activities to work out who this was. My phone began ringing again CONTINOUSLY.

Thinking I’d recognise the voice I answered the call to silence, putting on my best scary voice, saved for times Cooper decides to nibble at something he shouldn’t, I asked who this is, I was met with an unrecognisable voice. I explained that this is odd and that I am not interested, to which he responded, “aww come on babe”. Asking how he even got this number he fumbled an excuse of finding it on a cruising website, which I didn’t even know Omagh had a thriving enough cruising scene to even warrant a website never mind anything else. I said how that’s not possible, and he then hung up. My friend showed me how to block phone numbers, yet I started receiving messages of the same kind from a different number. Feeling spooked but second number blocked we all continued to enjoy our night.

After a week of walking as quickly as possible to work I got my second tooth infection of the year and once again looked like what was lovingly described by my partner as the character from “The Whale”. Being informed by an emergency dentist the swelling’s too bad to remove the tooth, I resided myself to living in agony and spending each second explaining to myself that Castaway is a film, and I shouldn’t in fact “go D.I.Y” on this bitch. I couldn’t sleep due to the pain but when I did, I’d be woken up by a series of dings at odd hours in the morning. One night while in bed with my partner I got an alert of 39 new voicemails. My partner shocked asked what they were, I responded saying probably spam I’ve been getting recently, listening to the first voicemail sent chills down my spine. It was him again, me assuming that blocking a number meant they couldn’t call, the voicemail was a speech of how I’m special, how they know exactly who and where I am, and how I need to stop ignoring him and “fucking about”. I made it through four of the voicemails, all long, all creepy, some detailing when I went to or left work.

I spent the next day googling what to do yet at this point all I wanted was to sleep. Again, a night of voicemails and avoiding listening to any of them, I gave up and took Cooper for a walk at the earliest time I could without seeming like a psycho. I decided to listen to the most recent one just to know what potentially the police would be hearing, and it was the most unhinged yet. Calling me a tease for being so nice when he came into my work, about how I’m horrible for not responding when he just wants to love me, how nice I looked with “my wee puppy” and that I must call him now otherwise I’m still interested and just playing with him. Just nonsense but it’s from this I realised exactly who it was. Feeling a sense of empowerment, I sent the most direct message I could, making it clear they aren’t to come near me and that I’d be phoning the police if they contact again. Being honest I hoped he would just to get the satisfaction of seeing him get some form of judgement for the harassment. Luckily were about two weeks later and stalker free.

The situation got me thinking, with my past and unfortunately that of others I felt desensitised to the situation, it’s weird that one of my thoughts was hoping he doesn’t make a show at my workplace. It brings into question the line of consent, how someone can collect information about you and use that information to contact you inappropriately and my thought wasn’t “oh that’s messed up” it’s I hope he gets bored and leaves me alone. It made me think about how I deal with other situations that have my stomach churning yet instead of speaking out I’ve just carried on, obviously there’s context to be placed on our emotions but where is the line, why is it different for everyone and why do some feel implied consent doesn’t relate to them, seeing resistance as a challenge? It’s given me a lot to think about going forward and how I need to adjust my responses to not always be go with the easy non-confrontational route, that and maybe don’t have the last dentist appointment you went to be 2014.