Dear Weird Creepy Dude at Ex Libris…

I have no clue who you are, though you seem to think you know who I am. The first time our eyes met, you smiled at me and I smiled back. It was an act of kindness or more like an automatic response on my part, that's all it was. As I continued looking  through a couple of books I was considering buying, I felt like I was being stared at. I looked up and there you were again, staring at me with that creepy-weirdo smile on your face. I started thinking that maybe you had X-ray vision that could see that I was wearing my hot underwear ...

I moved to another part of the library at that point because, to be honest, you were really starting to freak me out. That's when I noticed you were still following me. I tried to convince myself that maybe you just had the same interests as me and that's why you followed me to the cooking section.

Apparently, you thought I was your high-school crush, Lia Vho. Sure, it had been about 15 years since you had last seen Lia but you were pretty darn confident that I was Lia! Let me tell you that I am not Lia Vho, nor have I ever heard of Lia Vho. Nope, I swear I’m not lying to you. I'm sorry that I look "exactly like Lia Vho" and I'm sorry that somehow seeing me, even though I'm not Lia Vho, has brought back some painful memories for you. I'm sorry that Lia Vho always refused to go on a date with you. I'm sorry she broke your heart. Honestly, I am not Lia Vho trying to pretend to be someone else...I would show you my ID to prove it to you but I'm paranoid that you’ll remember my address and hunt me down and then next thing I know I'll be stuck in a deep hole in the ground with you screaming down to me "Put the fucking lotion in the basket". I don't think I'd be so lucky as to have Clarice Starling come to my rescue.

I'm a total stranger...Dude,do you really need to be telling me all this? Dude, you need help! I honestly think you think I'm Lia Vho…in the "psych world", this is what we call "transference". You might want to discuss this with your schrink next time you go in for a medication evaluation. You might even want to mention that you need an increase in your anti-psychotic meds.

Ever heard of Facebook? Twitter? Those are really good ways of finding the real Lia Vho, instead of stalking some innocent, unsuspecting woman who's just trying to buy a couple books during her lunch break. Although I suspect that if Lia Vho were smart, she'd probably have moved as far away as she can from where you are after high school (and most probably has all her profiles listed as "private").

For the next time you want to stalk a woman, a better way to have handled this in order to avoid completely freaking her out, you should just walk over casually (without the whole creepy smile thing going on) and simply ask "Hey, you look like a friend of mine from high school...any chance you're Lia Vho?". If she isn’t, I suspect she’ll just smile politely and say, "No, I'm sorry, I'm not...but have a nice day". That’s the moment you should walk away...end of story. It doesn’t need to turn into a therapy session for you where you try to cleanse your soul.

On that note, wishing you the best of luck in the future (and lots of psych evaluations and medications)....

Best,

The Girl You Freaked out…