EPISODE 1: PART 1
It was finally the date of my much anticipated 21st birthday party. My family and I had been eager to host this event, expecting it to be a night of fun and excitement amidst our busy daily lives. As I entered the room with some family and friends who had made their way over from interstate for the party, I spied a room that had been elaborately decorated with a bunch of beautiful tropical trinkets. A big smile swept over my face as I noticed my parents and grandparents in the corner of the room taking photographs. My grandparents had just moved to Brisbane from Sydney, and I had been spending more time with them recently. My paternal grandmother had also flown over from Fiji. They all donned Tropicana-themed outfits, making the cutest effort to observe the night’s theme. My sister Minnie looked gorgeous, wearing a long blue tropical dress, and my brother in law rocked a white and green tropical two-piece. Our family was very tight-knit, and I would usually be over at my sister’s place once a week. As much as I loved my parents and appreciated living with them, that and hanging out with friends was a bit of an escape from everyday life. My sister was my best friend and knew me better than anyone else. We shared a close bond, and had shared many ups and downs in life. I had been overjoyed when she introduced us to and married one of the kindest, most honest people I had ever met, who was now my brother in law; the brother I never had.
My mum walked over to me, and met me with a warm embrace. “You look beautiful”, she said. “Well look at you!” I responded. My mother was one of the cutest and strongest women I had come across, when she wasn’t scolding one of us for something or the other, and looked gorgeous in her knee-length pink cold shoulder dress. My dad smiled at me and said, “That’s a nice dress”. I was wearing a bright pink mid-length dress with a lei around my neck. Family and friends began to trickle into the room. I started mingling with people, feeling like the luckiest girl in the world to have such a beautiful mix of friends and family. After a while, my sister and brother in law called everyone to attention as they began to give a speech. The speech was kind and much more than I deserved. I remember my sister saying (ironically) that I was always the voice of reason in our family. They then tried to play a video of my cousin and her husband in America saying a birthday message, but my brother in law was unable to get the link to work. It so happened that this was just a distraction, and in walked the couple from America. They had flown all the way just for my birthday. My mum let out a happy shriek, and it took me a while to digest what had just happened. I gave them both big hugs and found myself feeling happier than ever. This was the cherry on top of the cake.
My best friend Tiana then gave a speech, telling everyone about how we had become friends when I complimented her shoes in high school. Tiana is also one of the kindest people I know, and we had each other’s backs through friendship dramas in high school, boy problems, when we had happy news to share and whenever there was something to be sad about. I was blessed to have her in my life, and saw her as another sister. Then began the dancing. The first part of the night culminated in my friends and I breaking it down on the dance floor, with me performing some original and unexpected moves, as I was slightly tipsy. The second part of the night was hosted at my sister’s place, with some of the younger friends and family getting together to continue drinking, play cards and dance the night away.
It had been a couple of weeks since the party, and my sister and I were sitting at her kitchen table, chatting. I was on my laptop scrolling through my social media feed and saw a post about a girl successfully sliding into Kobe Bryant’s direct messages. For a while now I had a bit of a fake crush on this guy named Rohan who my aunt had tried to set me up with. At first when I heard about it, I laughed it off. Then, out of curiosity, I looked up his social media profile. He looked cute and like a genuine, kind person. I would joke to my sister about it all the time and showed her the post, cheekily alluding to my own situation. “Would it be weird if I sent him a message?” I joked, to which she replied, “you never know, he could turn out to be the love of your life”. A few days went by, and I thought that my message had been ignored. My sister and I just joked about it and I carried on with life.
Three days after I had sent the message, I had a group law assignment due, and was in the law library at university all day working on it. It had been a long and stressful day and I could feel the weight of stress on my shoulders. As I began walking to the station after finally submitting the assessment, it became dark and I glanced down at my phone. There was a message request from Rohan, and I cracked up laughing to myself. He had responded! The next morning, I replied to him, and from there began a frenzy of text messages. I would text in class, on the way to university, on the train, and while I was with friends. I went out dancing with Tiana and another friend and although I didn’t usually drink much, had a low tolerance and became tipsy and messaged him from there as well. We were talking a lot, and amongst other things he told me that his favourite movie was the Dark Knight and where he’d like to travel and that he would love to learn some gardening skills. He sounded like such a nice guy, and we were giving each other a lot of attention. Over the next few days, I found myself feeling extremely tired and placing all my energy into texting Rohan. I felt a bit out of it, and didn’t go out when my friends and family asked me to.
I started to have some weird thoughts, and remember watching the royal wedding on television while chatting to Rohan, feeling like my life was on track to experiencing its own fairy tale. The night of the royal wedding, I began thinking about conversations I had had with Rohan all night, right from when we had first started talking up until then. All night I ruminated upon our conversations, and then in the morning, something just clicked. I jumped out of bed, ran downstairs and yelled out to mum. She came into the kitchen and I blurted out in an alarmed frenzy, “Mum I think someone is stalking me and watching everything that I do. I’m really scared and don’t want to be left alone”. My mum just looked at me in disbelief. Usually I was very level-headed and sensible, and I looked scared. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Who is stalking you?” I was so scared and had the belief that I was in imminent danger. “I’ve been talking to this guy, Rohan, and I think he’s stalking me, mum, he’s really smart and has been watching everything that I do”. Mum was alarmed, and called my sister Minnie who is a general practitioner to see what to do. They came to the conclusion that I hadn’t had much sleep the past few days, and was a bit out of it, and that there was nothing to be scared of.
Mum went to work and told me that I should go to my grandparents house (as they stayed at home throughout the day) if I was feeling scared. That day, I stayed at home, convinced that I was being watched through my laptop, through my phone, and that possibly, someone was in the house watching me through the walls. I was terrified and decided to reach out for help. I messaged my sister and told her that either I am being stalked and need to get the police involved, or I need help. I told her that I felt Rohan was being really weird, and was really smart and had hacked into all of my devices. I told her that I was so scared that I was willing to give her my social media passwords so that she could further investigate. As I am quite a credible person, my sister was fearful that I was actually in danger and accessed my chat with Rohan. She read through the entire thing and told me there was nothing wrong with what he was saying at all, and that he sounded like a nice, decent person. It was then that my sister realised something was horribly wrong. She decided to talk to my whole family about it that night. I remember going to get coffee with my mum and sister that afternoon. I was terrified, and I could see that my sister was visibly distressed. She knew me best, and she knew I wasn’t acting like myself. Later that afternoon, we went home. We all sat around in the lounge room and my sister began explaining what had happened to my dad, as I was quite out of it. My dad just laughed it off and said that I was probably stressed and hadn’t had enough sleep, and put some ideas together in my head and decided I was being stalked. He reassured me that no one would be able to hurt me while he was around, and that people like Rohan, whose family we know of, don’t do things like hack into people’s devices or stalk them.
Perceived: Losing and Finding my Mind 