There are many things that the last three years have taught me.

But nothing has been more profound a lesson than the art of letting go. Of learning that sometimes some people will always be rotten apples.

Picture this.

I log in to the MyndStories official Twitter account. It’s a rather abandoned account, as Twitter doesn’t fit in with our social media strategy for now. But I use it every now and then to pick up trending stories for mental health. And then, I see on the right. “People to follow.” And there, staring at me, is a woman I have known, who shows up for some strange reason with a cat in the DP. If you ask me, my life stories are this. Strange people who the algorithm ideally shouldn’t be suggesting.

Why? I ask my co-founder. She’s equally bewildered.

There’s only one possible reason: This woman has checked out our Twitter profile. Because we most certainly don’t bother.

This comes a month after I tried to open the forgiveness window and sent a LI connect request, unblocking her, wondering if we could bury old ghosts. Predictably, I received no response, so I removed the request.

And that’s that, I thought.

My friend and I wonder what to do. We want to remove this suggestion, so I click on the profile and see a pinned Tweet about a room and leaving that room. For reasons I can’t fathom, I click on that link. I don’t bother reading through it, written as it was in October 2022, but a phrase catches my attention at the end: “I have endured a woman’s stalking and abuse.”

And I fall off my chair. I close the window and my friend and I stare at each other.

Please, my readers, see this as a classic example of projection in action. This is the woman who allowed her “partner” – the beacon of compassion and empathy, apparently – to stalk me on phone and social media. Who refused to help and get the beacon, this Bodhisattva of compassion, to offer an apology for an action this woman admitted on SMS was “stalking.”

Who, after that, stalks my website unfailingly even though I haven’t bothered to find out anything about her in 3 years. The only chance find was our cold-emailing software that showed up her name when we searched for Stripe Customer Support in Feb this year for a payment gateway issue.

I have repeatedly told her not to visit my website, yet there are repeated hits, no matter the VPN she uses.

And this woman talks about stalking and abuse from someone else. AFTER reading all my posts. Sigh.

Hilarity is this. Hypocrisy is this.

And that’s when I decided to end this. I chose the same action the woman was famous for: Block. On Twitter. On my personal LinkedIn.

There is a time when you realize that these aren’t the people you want in your life. You don’t want the shadows of dark.

You are grateful for the lessons because, without this woman, India’s first content-led mental health ecosystem wouldn’t have been born. I wouldn’t have known what it is to have trauma or to throw up before a call, and I wouldn’t have known who to keep in my life.

I know this woman will visit my site again, so this post is more for her.

I will reopen all the posts that were closed, that detail what her partner did.

Empathy is not holding a cat or dog. It’s imbibing an animal’s deepest qualities: the kindness these companion animals show us. Their trust. Their loyalty. And they know no hypocrisy, these animals.

Someone calling 90 times? Stalking. A punishable offense.

Someone reaching out to a sister or friend to ask for help? Called help, in my dictionary, and many others. Not stalking. Help, which should have been given by the woman in the first place.

What’s abuse? Silent treatment. Manipulation. Beacon of Compassion saying on a call “What do you want? You deserved it.”

What’s stalking? Visiting a site despite multiple injunctions not to do so? Stalking.

I am tired of this woman. May I ask that we never cross paths again to a Universe that seems determined to throw me on that path?

Hell is other people, Sartre said. God, he was right.

PS: Of course, why am I assuming I am the woman referred to in the post? Perhaps, an assumption. There seem to be women going around supporting stalking. Perhaps. There may be a doubt, and let there be. After all, we form our storylines from the words we are shown.