A Theft: My Con Man

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I met a man who fed a worm into my ear, and it lived there for more than a year, where it became comfortable and began to devour my mind and eat into my brain. Colonised and infected, I was anxious and depressed, and, at times, a shell. I staggered about like a dying man and slept as much as I could; being awake was no fun. I understood hiding, denial and the passion for ignorance.

Sense is usually the last thing that anyone wants to see, but eventually the truth presses down until you have to open your eyes. I began to hate this man, whom I had only recently met, but who had led me on, and then deceived and stolen from me. At one point, it seemed, he even pretended to be me. After doing this, he disappeared but rang every day for months, with apologies, offers of help and mad promises.

I found my hate was so great that not only was it corrupting me — ruining my view of the world until I believed it was only foul — but, to my surprise, by some mysterious alchemy, it was turning into love. I was beginning to love my thief, a man I barely knew, but whom I had trusted and even liked, and who had taken my savings, amongst many other crimes. At one low point I was phoning him every hour. I was impatient with everyone else because I was thinking of him all the time. I was waking up at night to think of him more, and when he did call, my heart leapt. I would retreat to a quiet room where I could hear every tone of his voice. I would, I even thought, go to his house and see him in his privacy. I would become his stalker.

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