So many times these last months, I have sat down to journal and failed. I had been so hopeful of finding help, of bringing my nightmarish experiences to a conclusion; but I hadn't been to the Slender Man site yet. My naivete became apparent to me soon enough. There was no help to be found here; not the kind I had let myself hope there would be, anyhow. And no one here was going to bring this hell to an end; they were, in fact, in it themselves. The blank white screen and blinking black cursor only seemed to mock me when I would try to sit down and write about it.

I allowed myself to become lost in grief and terror for a good long while. My husband took the kids and left. At one point, I even began to doubt my own sanity; maybe the doctor was right, maybe I really was just hallucinating. But no anti-psychotics would stop it, or even lessen it. I wish with everything I have that they would. I'm still taking them. Unfortunately, I have come to the conclusion that I am quite sane. I say unfortunately, because I have also come to the conclusion that being a nut job would be a hell of a lot easier.

Emergency medical services personnel and some of the military have a slogan that I have rather come to like: "We are not extraordinary people, we are ordinary people put into extraordinary situations." It is by coming to grips with all this that I am once again finding myself able to do something with myself and write about it again. The good people here at Slender Man Chronicles have asked me to create a blog profile of my own, so that I might become a regular contributor and post my own things. So, it is with this that the previously anonymous 'Patient 4077212'
becomes the somewhat less anonymous Jessica Nelson. We'll be seeing more of each other, I'm sure.

-J

It's been awhile.

I thought maybe it was over, maybe he had decided to leave me be. It has been several months since I have felt that absolute surety that he was out there, waiting in the dark. I long ago stopped looking out the kitchen windows at night. I fear seeing that dark shape silhouetted against the security lights out there, beneath the spreading branches of the Louisiana live oak that shades the patio. Last night I am sure he was there. I got up to wash the few dishes I had to do before bed and as I reached for the light switch, I felt it. That malevolent aura that I've never been able to properly explain.

The back of my apartment faces an empty field and small wooded area. A small chainlink fence overgrown with ivy and honeysuckle separates the apartment property from the field, but it is no great barrier. The children of the complex routinely scale it to go into the woods to play in their own little slice of Terabithia, as have many before them. The woods are small, and traditionally have held no danger. 

But he was out there last night. He has been out there many nights, I think. Out in the woods, wandering that old circular path, just far enough away that I do not sense his presence.

Or is it just me? Am I imagining this hunted feeling? I seem to be the only one that senses it here. The others never seem to notice anything out of sorts. It could be that they, like myself, simply choose not to mention it, but I don't think so. So is it just me? Is it because he is singling me out, targeting me for his baleful intent? Is it only me that feels his presence just outside the boards of my patio fence?

Or am I simply going mad?