Alarm bells began to go off. For the record, I am incredibly fortunate to never have had to deal with sexual abuse, but regardless, he had absolutely no right to invoke potential trauma as a means to get a date. I immediately emailed our acting teacher, and she contacted him with instructions to cease communication with me and barred him from returning to the program.

He sent me a thinly veiled apology with some upsetting language, and after that email, almost a year went by without hearing from him. I assumed the ordeal was over, though I did worry about running into him on the street or at a play. I lived those months in a heightened state of awareness of men who came on too strong or seemed unstable.

Nearly a year later, the emails began again. I’m not sure what prompted him, but he started emailing me every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. The content of his messages varied — sometimes he appeared in good spirits and would talk about his day or arguments he had had with his roommate, or give me lengthy “writing lessons” he felt I could benefit from. Other times, he would discuss the numerous mental illnesses he believed he had, his troubled childhood, inappropriate details of what he remembered about me and the assumptions he drew from our brief time in class together, professions of love, and eventually, threats to my safety under the guise of a “joke.” What stood out was the level of familiarity with which he addressed me — a person who had not once responded to his advances. He spoke to me like I was waiting to hear from him with bated breath, ready to take in anything he said, and encouraging him to continue. The familiarity was infuriating.

My boyfriend at the time suggested that I stop opening the emails, as they only served to upset me, but some part of me needed to know what he was saying. I needed to know if he planned on taking this any further, and finding out where I lived or where I worked. Opening his emails became a dreaded daily ritual. I survived the barrage of unwelcome words by trying to find some humour in the absurdity of the situation. “Oh, look what he has to say today!” I would joke to my boyfriend in a halfhearted attempt to show that I was okay — to show that I wasn’t affected by this person. But it was all a flimsy cover for the fear that was creeping into my daily life.

After two months of harassing me online, he showed up in the lobby of the hotel where I worked as a waitress. I hurriedly explained the situation to my manager, who ushered me out the back door and got me a cab home, and I realised I could no longer laugh off a few dozen emails. I began the long and drawn-out process of getting a civil no-contact order, also known as a restraining order.

If any of you would like to hear about the bureaucratic nightmare that I undertook to get the restraining order, I am happy to detail it separately for you — but it is simply too lengthy and tedious to go into here. Just know that it took months, many repeat visits to 555 West Harrison Street (the Cook County Circuit Court Domestic Violence Courthouse), hours on the phone with various sheriffs’ offices, hours arguing with police officers who refused to acknowledge “harassment by electronic means” as a valid claim (and one particular detective who told me it was my fault for opening the emails), and hours of my doing my own legal research in case I would need to represent myself in court, if I ever got there. Brandon was finally served a temporary restraining order on March 2, 2011, which he reacted to by emailing me a copy of the play he was “writing for me” with a promise to cast me as the lead once it went to production, should I agree to drop the charges. I am not even kidding.

This seemingly innocent bargain was, in fact, an official violation and turned my civil no-contact order into a criminal one. Moreover, it indicated to me that Brandon had no idea what was actually going on, no intention to respect legality, and — as I had most feared — a too-loose grip on reality. I’d never presume to diagnose someone else with a mental illness, but it was hard not to speculate that Brandon suffered from one. And as angry as I felt, I also had moments of empathy, realising that he might be struggling with something that was out of his control. At one point, I even asked the domestic violence liaison for my case about the possibility of psychiatric screening and treatment. But these moments were interspersed among moments of thinking, No: He knew exactly what he was doing. He was a functioning member of society and was using these pleas of illness and helplessness to manipulate me into giving in.

I may never know the truth about what was behind all of this, but what I do know is that it sent me into a tailspin. The nightmare image of the angry and emotionally disturbed man who shoots up a movie theatre to get back at his ex-girlfriend started invading my dreams. I lost sleep. I missed work. I took my frustration and blame out on my boyfriend, and we broke up. I would wake up in the morning and have to massage my jaw for 15 minutes before I could open it wide enough to speak. It was an awful time that I look back on now with sadness and anger.