#but man oh man if I'm not going at 60 tangents a minute

[honeysuckle-venom]

It's been almost a year since my last psychiatric hospitalization, which was very traumatic and involved a lot of inappropriate actions by the staff, including the weirdest antisemitism I've ever encountered. I don't think I ever wrote about it here, but I'm going to now. This is going to get extremely long, so it's going below the cut. This deals explicitly with antisemitism and Holocaust justification

Important background info: This occurred on an adult psychiatric unit in the North East, an area where there is a decently sized Jewish population, but I was the only Jew on the ward at the time. The group leader I'll be talking about was an older white man.

One morning I had my meeting with the psychiatrist during the first few minutes of morning group, so I missed the opening. I arrived to group late and pulled up a seat. I didn't know ahead of time what group it was, but when I sat down I heard the group leader telling us the story of the Buddha. "Huh," I thought. "That's kind of odd, but whatever. Maybe it's a mindfulness group." I sat and listened to the story. Eventually he does start talking about mindfulness and the importance of being in the moment. Standard group material, whatever.

But then he starts on a tangent. He starts talking about Woodstock and the 1960s. Then he decides to fully give us context on Woodstock he needs to give us a history lesson, starting all the way back in WWI. He begins with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. "This is weird," I think. "Why are we having a history lesson. Isn't this group therapy?" He gives us an overview of WWI, and then moves on to WWII. I start to get a little uncomfortable. He reaches behind him and pulls up a copy of Time Magazine, and opens it to a fucking photograph of Hitler at a rally. He shows it to us and says, "Does anyone know who this is?"

I'm shocked. This is an inpatient psychiatric unit. Everyone here is in severe mental distress. I am Jewish, schizophrenic, and in the middle of a psychotic break. Why the fuck is he showing us a photograph of Hitler. I become very, very uncomfortable, get up, and walk to a different part of the main room where I can still see what's happening but not hear it. I want to go to my room, but I know I'll be penalized for not attending group, so instead I do some deep breathing and rejoin the group a few minutes after he's put the picture away when I'm pretty sure he'll have moved onto a different topic.

I get back and he's talking about the 60s. "Great," I think. "This is still weird but at least we're through talking about Hitler." I prepare to wait out the rest of group.

Eventually he goes back to mindfulness and spirituality, and then he starts talking the afterlife, which is odd, and mentions that "all religions have a concept of hell." I point out that this is not true, and that for example Judaism doesn't believe in hell. He says, "Oh, yeah, Jewish ideas about the afterlife have always confused me." I offer to talk about it a bit after group but he says, "No, I know about it, I have lots of Jewish friends." A weird and slightly uncomfortable overall exchange, but whatever. I sit and listen.

Then he starts to talk about Taoism and "the Way." And when explaining it he gestures to me and says, "it's kind of like the Jewish concept of [the Tetragrammaton]." Except he actually says it, out loud, directly to me, the only Jew present. I am so uncomfortable and also think to myself, "I don't think you know as much about Judaism as you think you do." I don't really respond, and soon after the group ends and it's time for lunch.

As we're putting the chairs away, he comes up to me and apologizes for showing a picture of Hitler. He noticed it made me upset (obviously, I walked away) and was sorry. And if it had stopped there? It would have been fine. The whole encounter would have been weird and mildly antisemitic, but it would have been okay. I would have let it go. But it did not stop there. Instead he said, "I totally get your pain about the Holocaust. I believe in past lives, and in a past life I was a Jew who died in a concentration camp. It took me a long time to process that experience. So I get it." He said that directly to the face of a schizophrenic Ashkenazi Jew.

I just kind of nodded, because I was not going to argue with someone who was both a nurse and group leader and risk getting my time in the ward extended. And I went to lunch. At lunch, I complained about the situation to some of the other patients, and another patient came up to me and said, "Can you stop talking about that? I'm German and you're hurting my feelings." HELLO??? If your feelings are hurt by a Jewish person talking about the Holocaust because you're German, you have some introspection to do.

But the story doesn't end there. Oh no. Because the same group leader was back for the group after lunch! This time we were doing an art group. I drew my picture, and he went to people one by one and they explained their pictures to him, after which they were free to leave. I was the last one to go. And he opened up by apologizing for bringing up Hitler again, and mentioned that he had written a play attempting to process "his" Holocaust trauma. By this point I had calmed down somewhat and was still angry, but also slightly fascinated by him. I wanted the whole story. It was my way of taking control of the situation. So I asked him about his play.

He told me that he had asked himself how G-d could let a thing like the Holocaust happen, and he had written a play to answer that question. This in and of itself was offensive and presumptuous to me. "How could G-d let the Shoah happen" is the defining question of modern Jewish philosophy. We as a people have been desperately trying to grapple with that question for decades. To come in and think that you found the answer to it? Offensive. But I wanted to hear his "answer."

He described the entire plot of his play to me. I'm not going to describe the whole thing because this has gotten so long already, but suffice it to say it was horribly offensive and involved glorifying Jews who walked bravely to their deaths rather than trying to fight back. And in the play the main character receives the "answer" for why G-d allowed the Holocaust to happen. A "holy woman" (he didn't remember who) came to the main character in a vision and explained that G-d put the Jews through the Holocaust so that they would be stronger, better, more morally pure people in their next lives. That was his answer. An answer that flies in the face of Jewish philosophy, that is based on non-Jewish ideas of reincarnation, and that turns the Shoah into a good thing for the Jewish people. And he told me that arriving at that conclusion allowed him to process "his" Holocaust trauma from his past life.

He said all of this directly to me, completely straight-faced, with absolutely no sense of how deeply offensive it was. Besides, he couldn't be antisemitic! After all, as he said, he had lots of Jewish friends!

[georgiainportugal]

Well another week has come and gone. I can’t believe it is September and I have almost been here for 2 months. Well this week I have actually received some compliments that my Portuguese is getting better and people are starting to understand what I’m saying at times. Maybe they’re being nice or they want me to buy them a beer? Or perhaps it’s actually true!

I still make the same mistake of saying ‘tu fala ingles’ which means ‘you speak English’ instead of ‘eu falo ingles’ which means ‘I speak English’. But I think people know what I mean. I use this if people start saying something that I don’t understand or, if a random person tries to sell me something and I want to pretend that I don’t understand.

Sometimes it’s obvious that I don't understand though because apparently I pull a strange face of shock/panic, according to a nice lady in the shop. I went to buy a dress during the week and she asked nicely ‘can I help you?’, in Portuguese, but then started speaking in English to translate about 2 seconds after. I laughed and asked how she could tell I spoke English and she replied, “because you pulled the biggest face of panic!”

So, I clearly need to work on my facial expressions because I would hate for a charming Portuguese man to come and speak to me, and then for me to pull a face like I've just sucked an extremely sour lemon. I don’t think they would want to continue the conversation if that happened, in fact, I think they would be extremely concerned and may even call an ambulance.

Saying that, I think my Portuguese is slowly getting better because I led a game of bingo on Friday with some children in the youth centre and managed to read out the numbers in Portuguese, with some help with pronunciation.

I have 2 Portuguese lessons per week and this week, we didn’t go on too many tangents as per usual. We usually start talking about one thing and end up going completely off topic. For example, we were talking about kings and queens one time and then had a 30 minute conversation about roman numerals instead of learning Portuguese. That’s why I really like my Portuguese teacher. She is from Mozambique and always teaches me something new about history or politics each week. I only recently found out that Portuguese is commonly spoken in parts of Africa. It is another reason why I want to continue learning because it would be amazing to travel and speak with people around the world.

One thing which has been helping me to learn Portuguese is by listening to Portuguese music. Some of the songs are proper good tunes which I bop to, as I’m walking alone with my headphones in. Anyone walking past must think I'm quite crazy as I sing to myself and walk looking like my legs are twitching strangely. Oh well, it makes the walk to Lidl easier, especially when you’re carrying bottles of diet coke or Superbock beer home. Jesus, they can be heavy! Or perhaps I'm just not very strong… I'm choosing the first reason.

I love running along a beautiful river nearby and listening to any upbeat Portuguese song makes it much easier to continue, despite a waterfall of sweat flowing down my back. The only problem with listening to music while running is that you lose track of sounds and people behind you. The other day, I went to turn down a path to the right of me without realising there was a bike overtaking me. I knocked into an old man in his 60s, thank goodness he didn’t fall off! However, he didn’t look particularly impressed. It was lucky that I was running, and I subtly smiled apologetically and sped up my running to get away as soon as possible.

Why do I always have to do something embarrassing? I guess it will make these blog posts a little more interesting perhaps… if anyone is actually reading.

Well congratulations, you got to the end of my first blog post. See you next time :)

[pisati]

it’s never so simple as “just”. just do this, just do that, then...

I wasn’t really surprised by my neuropsych results; in fact if I was surprised at all, it was that it went as well as it did. reading “based on educational achievement and performance on measures tapping general fund of knowledge (99th percentile) and reading (99th percentile), [her] intellect is estimated to be well above average” made me smile. good to know my thinker’s still intact. 

I still really want to take some time to research the tests they ran on me, now that I have the names for them. I want to learn what they’re meant to do. what research has shown that those are good empirical measures of cognitive function. just thinking about that gives me the warm & fuzzies. it feels so quintessentially me. I miss getting excited about things.

I knew what the doctor was going to say, partly because I already got the brief rundown from my psychiatrist. once again proving to my doctors that I don’t just want something to be wrong with me, I’m actually grateful that there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with my brain. my MRI and EEG both came back normal, and on my cognitive function tests I did, to quote the doctor, “very, very well”. he chalked it up to insomnia and depression, possibly whatever’s behind my insomnia as well. so I’m glad I’m seeing my sleep med doctor on the 29th. I just almost panicked for a second because I’ve had that appointment scheduled since january (the woman is booked out for months) and now I’m starting a job and I am scheduled that day, but thankfully the appointment is at 8:30 and I don’t start work til 12:30. phew.

but yeah. they think I should get a sleep study done; like a legit one. the last one I got was just making sure I didn’t have any physical problems affecting my sleep, and I already know I don’t. my brain just won’t quit. I’m going to have to remember to ask the doc if she recommends any rheumatologists in the hopkins system; anyone who could look at my test results and do anything but shrug at me. university-system doctors like to see weird cases, as far as I know. 

I’ve been sitting on this result for two days now, and I don’t really know how to feel. maybe a little confused, but at the same time not. doc thinks my depression is part of why my memory has been declining. and it’s not really memory, necessarily; we both know that. I had a lot of trouble on the story recall test. I need to look into the results more because I think I might have somehow managed to guess more correct answers than incorrect ones on the second part of the story test: at some point after the “recount as many details as you can remember” part, I was asked to say yes or no to statements about each of the stories that the examiner would recite, if I thought that detail was part of the story or not. I knew I was guessing on a majority of them, but somehow I think my results said I got 13/16 right. it was a 50/50 chance on each detail, so it’s not impossible that I could do that well by accident, but I know it was an accident. I really couldn’t fucking remember. anyway I performed in the 4th percentile on that test. very poorly. but it’s consistent with the memory issues I’ve been having for the last two years; information-heavy material just goes in one ear and out the other now. it doesn’t stick. it’s a lot of effort to remember things and it almost feels like my brain assigns importance to things randomly. I don’t forget everything, but I never know what piece of information is going to disappear next. not really “disappear”, of course. we’ve established I’m not losing anything. it just slips deeper into the sludge bucket until I forget it’s even there. 

I think what’s puzzling me most is that he doesn’t think this is characteristic brain fog stemming from an autoimmune disease. at least, that’s what the report says. it really could just be because I’m tired and sad. and it makes me wonder how that could be. on the one hand, I don’t feel like my depression has made it harder for me to think. but on the other... as doc mentioned to me in our meeting, when you feel bad, things just stop working right. people with long-term illness can’t remember what it’s like to function normally. I literally don’t remember what it was like to not be sad. I told him that I did estimate my depression to have started around 17, but looking back... I was exhibiting signs much younger. 13, 14, definitely 15. possibly even before that; I can’t remember not having a melancholic temperament (though I was a pretty happy kid til maybe 9-10, all said). the depression was only obvious to me at 17. I don’t remember what having energy was like either; I don’t remember if having energy helped my brain work better. that energy kick I felt the first day I was on wellbutrin... that was something else. I felt like someone opened a room-darkening curtain just a crack on a bright, sunny day. I had no idea it was even sunny out, or that the outside could be so bright. I remember thinking to myself, this is language-learning energy. this is what I’ve been missing. and just as soon as it was there it was gone again. maybe that really is what I need.

so the real issue, then, is figuring out why the fuck none of my sleep is restful. that kind of puts it back into the hands of both my sleep medicine doctor and my psychiatrist. I just want to know what’s wrong with me. I want to know that one day I can fix it. one day I’ll be able to pull back that curtain entirely and I’ll always be able to have light when I need it. 

it’s also weird reading an objective report of yourself, based partly on your own words and your doctor’s observations. coming out of my own mouth I guess I don’t see my depression as being that bad, but on paper, written by someone else... if it weren’t me and I was reading that, I’d have said “get that kid to a therapist”, lmao. it doesn’t feel that bad. it just kind of is. we’d talked about my home life back in high school, around the time my depression started. I’d apparently described my home life as “not great” (also unsettling to read so many quotes; definitely my words, but they almost read like sarcasm-quotes). sometimes reading things like that, even though I said them... it makes me feel bad. makes me feel like retracting it. well, it wasn’t that bad... like, no, I totally wasn’t writing blog posts at the tender ages of 15, 16, and 17 saying I couln’t stop crying and felt like I wanted to scream and felt like I was going insane because my mother was being a massive bitch to me for no reason other than the fact that she was stressed from work and having a shitty boyfriend and I was feeling a lot of emotions already related to being a “normal” 15-17 year old girl who couldn’t even process those properly because she couldn’t talk to her own fucking mother and was too stressed out at home to be stressed about those “normal” teenage girl things

mom gave me a lot. she gave up a lot for me and worked really hard for me. she raised me and my brother basically by herself, because, bless my father, he was useless before the divorce. I feel like I was able to take those things for granted, and I’m sure I did. but at the same time... you’re supposed to provide for your kids. spoiling us was her choice. but the value of those things, I think, diminishes if you neglect your kids emotionally. I can’t forget some of the awful things she said to me; when she’d storm into my room looking for things early in the morning, snapping at me and calling me a lazy bitch because my room was messy. taking away my things if I didn’t do something she wanted me to. I still don’t feel like I can talk to her about anything personal. sometimes I have to and I’m cautious about it. and even still, she’ll try to hold things over my head. I didn’t think it happened much anymore. I haven’t been able to think of examples to explain it, because it hasn’t happened in so long. but today...

I went to get my EKG done today. I couldn’t tell her that; my psychiatrist ordered it to make sure I was cleared to be on adderall, and I had to go to my GP to do it. mom doesn’t know I’m seeing a psychiatrist. but when I got to the office today (they could only schedule me before the 20th with a doctor that wasn’t my primary), they told me that since my doc wasn’t on my insurance card, insurance might charge a specialist visit fee for the EKG. I texted my mom later asking if we could make my doc my PCP through the insurance, since it’s her policy and I don’t know if I can make those changes, and she said she could do it when she got home. cool. but later I went downstairs and she snapped at me for not visiting her mother. now that we’ve moved grandma to a building a few miles down the road she’s been asking me to go over every single day, and I haven’t been. I guess that makes me a shitty person, but I just really don’t want to. if my grandmother had ever been any kind of pleasant to be around, I’d be more inclined. but anyway, mom said “I’m not changing your insurance til you go visit grandma”. are you fucking kidding me? this shit again? holding something I need over my head til I do what you want? I’m glad I’ll be getting my own health insurance through my job soon. I had to bite my tongue so I didn’t tell her that she’d be footing the specialist bill if that came, then. I get it, grandma’s alone. I’m a major asshole. I’d also like to enjoy my last few days of freedom. it’s absolutely not fucking fair to not change my PCP on my insurance, something that should have been done two years ago when I moved home and started going to this GP, because I don’t want to sit by myself in a room with someone who can barely hear anything I say if I say anything at all and will only talk about her hearing or what a pretty little girl I am; little girl, like I’m still 5

and it is unfair, I suppose, to be talking about my grandma like that. to be actively avoiding spending time with her. I feel like a callous dickhead for feeling the way I do. it’s the same thing I felt about being around my dad, almost. he could be so frustrating and doing literally anything with him, especially towards the end, was ulcer-inducing. I loved my dad to pieces, but I dreaded spending time doing things with him; even a simple trip to the store, it was always something. those conflicting emotions were, and still are, really hard to deal with. 

grandma’s schizophrenic. or, at least, very likely is. she’s lonely. she’s losing it a little (but she’s always been pretty nuts). I feel bad, I really do. I should want to be there for her more. but even my mom says it’s been the same story as long as she could remember. it was always about her. everything was always about her. a lot of it was the schizo. she’d never been diagnosed-- refused to talk to doctors. there’d be no getting her on meds. it just was how she was. but now mom has to hear every single day about how she just doesn’t hear so well anymore and she doesn’t get why (because being 94 doesn’t have anything to do with it) and how she’s terrified of losing her hearing (what’s left of it anyway; she’s deaf in one ear and has a hearing aid for the other). the schizo makes it so that she’s terrified that literally anything will affect her hearing. the AC unit in her apartment. a truck going by. a light, somehow. mom says the blinking light on the phone bothers her and she gets nonstop calls when there’s a voicemail on the machine. mom put a camera in her old apartment to keep an eye on her just in case anything happened, but apparently she couldn’t remotely pivot it if grandma was in the room because the motion would freak her out. and I feel awful about those things. I know what it’s like to live in constant irrational fear. it’s horrible. torturous.

but even as someone who tries to be patient and compassionate when it comes to mental illness, it’s really hard to stay sympathetic when it’s years and years of the same shit and she doesn’t even try to help herself. won’t try to distract herself. keep herself busy. she just wants to stew in thoughts about shit that happened 50 years ago and obsess about her hearing. and there’s really nothing to do besides just try to work around it, since we can’t get her to a psych. mom has tried everything. she won’t do anything by herself or with much of anyone besides my mom, so mom has tried playing boggle with her, coloring in coloring books with her (my idea), sitting and reading with her.. I recommended watching ASL videos with her and doing the signs with her like a game (but of course grandma outright refuses to learn ASL because even the thought of being totally deaf scares her; like, ok, but how will you communicate then). mom says she won’t sit still for long. she just wants to get up and leave the room for a few minutes, turn on the tv real loud for a few seconds to make sure she can still hear, whatever else. there’s only so much you can do and my mom has done all of it. it’s been years of this. sometimes I’ll hear mom yelling on the phone at her because she called, yet again, to ask her if she thinks some completely harmless thing will hurt her hearing (no, ma, it has nothing to do with your hearing! now stop!) or “this lady in my building was asking me about my family and my kids and I don’t know why she wants to know those things” (that’s just what people do! they ask questions to be polite!). even my mom loses her cool with her. it’s so, so frustrating, and it’s even more frustrating to feel so conflicted; like we’re not allowed to be frustrated because she’s mentally ill.

and that’s not to say I haven’t tried too. whenever I’m dragged over there with my mom I’ve tried talking to her, but no reasoning gets through. my aunt is awful to her, but no matter how much we tell her that’s just how she is, she’s like that to everyone, it’s the same things. I told her how my aunt didn’t talk to me for 3 years after a trip she took me on where I did exactly what she said I could do (but didn’t want me to do anyway), and she kind of laughed at it, but then continued on about how my aunt is so awful to her. don’t take it personally... followed by more taking it personally. it’s exhausting. if she can hear me at all, it’s like my words mean nothing anyway. she did like hearing about my rats and seeing pictures of them. she thinks they’re kind of cute. she was really surprised that they have so many babies and she kept talking about how amazing that was. that was probably one of the only good conversations I’ve been able to have with her in years. but I really had to reach and come up with more things to talk about so we didn’t steer back into talk about hearing loss and how pretty I am

it’s just. a lot. I do feel bad about not wanting to spend time with her, especially because I know she needs it. but it’s exhausting and awkward for me; I’d rather not be alone with her because I have nothing to talk about and she’s just going to go on about her hearing and won’t listen to anything I tell her if she can hear me at all and just ugh

don’t remember how my post took that hard left, but it did. writing is nice, tangents and all. I’m still feeling mixed emotions over my results, where to go from here. it probably won’t be as simple as “just” going to another rheumatologist, “just” getting a sleep study done... I don’t know what this is but it’s going to continue being an uphill battle for a while. I’m just glad I have people in my corner who have been reminding me that there’s always something else. I haven’t exhausted every option yet. encouraging me to keep going. it helps so much. if I didn’t even have that little bit to hold on to these last few months... I don’t want to know where I’d be.

I was just thinking about that last night, actually. one of my journal prompts had me thinking about it. the tiniest little things make such a big difference. just hearing I did a good job with something, or that someone’s proud of me. even if it didn’t seem like I did much, or even if my brain wants to tell me they’re just saying those things to be nice. I really haven’t been talking to much of anyone in at least a year. only one person with any kind of regularity. it’s been deafeningly quiet and honestly really lonely. and it easily could have been much quieter and lonelier. I’m not sure I want to know where I’d be if I hadn’t been talking to anyone this last year or so. probably would’ve spent a lot of time back on okcupid, reactivating, feeling sick to my stomach, and deactivating. over winter I was looking for any kind of community online; facebook groups, meetup groups, hell even subreddits... I felt too late to the party on everything. but I guess it hit me real hard that I just missed having company. people to talk to. it was really frustrating watching everyone else living their lives and feeling cocooned away; like I wasn’t doing anything worthwhile and I wasn’t ever going to. I guess that urge mostly subsided. winter is a lonely time in general. I can only imagine where I’d have been mentally if I’d spent the whole thing completely alone.

part of that is really on me for not reaching out. I know I need to let people know more often that I care about them. I’m learning that I’m pretty damn bad at showing it, but I don’t think I realized I was never good at it. I know I show it in different ways from most people, but I thought it was a little more obvious than it probably is. I feel, from an outsider’s perspective, that I seem kind of like a cat. even when I am showing affection, it’s hard to tell. I do wait for people to talk to me first, and I’m not sure why. I don’t think it’s necessarily fear of being annoying, but that does cross my mind occasionally. it feels more like... they don’t want to hear from me anyway. they’ll look at the notification and ignore it for a while before they think of a polite reply. what do I even have to offer them? I guess it’s more fear of being rejected. people have asked me why I don’t invite friends over to do things instead of waiting to be invited out, and I asked myself the same question. but then I realized... I did do that. I’d ask charlotte to go to concerts with me, she’d either ignore me or not really want to go. I asked her if she wanted to do even a monthly craft night, if I could go over and help her clean her house; anything. we did two yoga classes together and that was it. now she’s too busy to even talk to me; my messages go unread for days. all of a sudden she actually wants to spend time with sawyer; the boy she’d ditch handily for me when they were still dating. she’d nudge me out the door when it was about time for him to come home from work, even though he’d usually go straight upstairs and not bother us anyway. she just posted pictures on snapchat of them going to a peach farm to pick peaches, and she takes him to all these antique markets and stuff that she knows I’d like going to too. always busy doing something with his family, when I do ask if she has a free weekend. can’t really invite my PA friends over either, and I’d only ever been successful in getting one of them to come visit me more than once. the others, and only some of them, came down for my little grad party in 2017. that was it. I absolutely am projecting the results of a few past rejections on to my future, but I really do fear rejection. I’d rather not even bother. good thing I spent a lot of time learning how to be alone, I guess.

I forget where I was going with this. my eyes are starting to cross; I think it’s bedtime

[voidcat101]

creepy encounter

I decided to pop home from work today to make some lunch. The drive home was uneventful and pretty mundane. I parked up and as I got out of my car I tripped a little and had to balance myself on the car door so I didn't drop my bagel!

As I was standing back up straight and about to lock my car a man pulled up in his car and asked if I was ok.

I thought he was just being nice and said 'Oh yeas, I'm ok thank you for asking!' and laughed a bit.

He said he liked my outfit and I thanked him, thinking that was it. But he kept talking.

I will preface this with the fact that I am terrible with confrontation, and am definitely a little too nice even when in uncomfortable situations.

He asked me where I worked and I just said 'In town, I'm training to be an accountant', but he definitely knew where I worked as I parked out the front of it. He then he asked where I live and I lied and told him 'about 45 minutes away' and he seemed to buy it. He was speaking in a really creepy manner too, looking at me like I was a piece of meat.

Then he went on a tangent about how he knows a guy who's really ugly and is about 60 years old, who has a 'hot' girlfriend who's in her 20s. something about how he'd always thought must she must be with him because he wont the lottery but it turned out he was a millionaire. I laughed awkwardly and just said 'yeah, haha, you see that sometimes'.

The he started talking about how his friend is a barrister, so he knows people in high places or something, and added on the end that, it 'made him think that the next time he saw a pretty young girl, that he should chat her up'.

I had no idea what to say and awkwardly said 'oh thanks that's sweet of you haha' and he said 'So you're not single then?' and I said 'oh, yes, I do', because I do.

At that point I was planning after his next sentence I was going to laugh and say ' Well, nice talking to you but I have to go', but luckily for me he was blocking the road and people need to get past so he had to leave.

He said again that he loved my 'little ensemble', referring to my outfit, and said goodbye, that it was 'lovely' speaking to me, and that he would see me sround.

I said, goodbye and waved, but fuck no, he will not be seeing me around.

There was CCTV covering that area, so I got the whole video sent to me, and I have his number plate and appearance written down.

I know it seems like overkill but he obviously knows where I work, so for safety measures I thought I should have evidence of the encounter.

Hopefully I never see him again!