Every profession has a cost of doing business. There are the obvious costs, like advertising, supplies, insurance, and taxes. Then there are the costs no one includes on a spreadsheet because they are harder to calculate. In my business, one of those costs is coming into contact with people who become obsessed with me.
This does not happen with most clients. Most understand exactly what our relationship is, enjoy the time we spend together, and return to their lives when it is over. But every so often, someone begins to believe there is more between us than there actually is. The more time you spend with someone, the more you naturally share with them. A story here. A memory there. Small pieces of yourself that seem completely harmless until they land in the mind of someone who has decided those pieces mean something more.
Then there is Google.
With the internet being what it is, someone who has become obsessed can start searching and find ordinary information about me. The same ordinary information that exists about nearly everyone. Where I have lived. Where I have worked. People I have known. The regular pieces of a life that can also include information about my family and my children.
Every new piece of information creates another connection in the mind. That is what information does for all of us. We learn something new, connect it to something we already know, and begin forming a larger picture. But when those connections are being built on a foundation of obsession, they do not necessarily lead to reality. They lead to a story the obsessed person is creating, one Google search at a time.
The more the obsession is fed by the all-powerful Google, the more pathways are built. Eventually, somewhere along the way, the person literally loses the plot. Those pathways lead them right to the edge of a cliff. Most people reach that edge, look down, and think, “Holy crap. This is the edge of a cliff. I need to stop.” They recognize that they have crossed an emotional boundary, step backward, and return to reality. But a very small number of people cannot stop. Their obsession will not allow them to turn around. So they jump.
That is the true danger of my business. It is not the danger fictionalized in movies, nor the extremely overinflated dangers preached about by politicians. In all my years doing this work, I have never come close to experiencing most of what they claim waits around every corner. The danger I have experienced is far less cinematic and much more personal. It is someone mistaking access for intimacy, intimacy for love, and information for ownership. That cost is greater than anything I encountered in any other profession. It reaches beyond me and touches people who never agreed to be part of my business at all.
I have finally come to understand that this is simply a cost of doing business. I do not like it, and I do not accept that it should happen, but I understand that I cannot reason someone else out of an obsession I did not create. The obsessed are going to obsess, and I am going to stay grounded in reality. They are an exhausting and ridiculous cost, made even more absurd by the fact that they would be utterly embarrassed if the public at large knew what they were doing. But ultimately, they are still just a cost of doing business.
But as Taylor Swift wisely explained, the haters are going to hate, and I am going to shake it off. They can keep living inside the fairy tale they have created in their heads. I am going to keep living my very real and totally wonderful life.
When they inevitably pop up again, I will give them exactly the amount of attention they deserve. None. They are the herpes of doing business. Unwanted, irritating, and prone to disappearing for a while before suddenly flaring up again. To be clear, I do not have herpes. I do, however, have an exhausting, ridiculous, and recurring nuisance that is simply a cost of doing business.
Cost classified. Moving on.
💋 Charlotte