On Monday the man in the photo up there plead guilty in local court. At the time of writing this I'm 100,575 words into my next novel, with just a few chapters to go, though my writing has slowed to a crawl. 

In September last year the man above was arrested and charged after he was caught repeatedly masturbating outside my bedroom window at all hours of the night.

He is the second stalker I've had in the past two years, and every time one pops up it destroys my heart & mind, and arrests my writing. It's difficult to write when I don't feel safe.

My first stalker came about shortly after the release of my first memoir. An antagonist from the story, they started hassling my friends online, trying to find out my location - something I don't often share, even with friends, for this exact reason.

Get Cancer or Get Fucked

That stalker became so desperate to find me that they infiltrated a breast cancer survivor's group and pretended to have cancer because the woman running the group, Libbie, was a dear friend and former uni lecturer - she passed away recently. I miss her.

When Libbie cottoned on to what my first stalker was doing, she told them to "get cancer or get fucked" and contacted both me and police.

Police were great. They offered me training, helped me develop safety procedures, gave me tips for recognising signs of being followed and what I could do about it. They offered practical advice like keeping emergency backpacks with supplies for a quick get away, secondary mobile phones charged, code words with friends. Following their intervention the stalker backed off, without any further incidents. 

The effect on me though has been long lasting, because that person had not only once sexually assaulted me, as a fledgling trans woman, they'd had me arrested and charged with my own rape.

Detailed in The All of It: A Bogan Rhapsody, my first stalker was a genuine psychopath. Today, the memoir is a recommended resource for N.S.W. police officers, with cops regularly reaching out to talk to me about it.

To know that same person was coming after me again obliterated my well-being. Since that time, I have struggled with having anybody, even my partner, come up behind me. I struggle in public with loud sounds - cars backfiring, doors slamming, dogs barking. I am frequently overcome with panic.

Panic

Sometimes I'll experience panic attacks, convinced I'm having a heart attack instead. It's difficult to know what sets these off - in April 2023 it was witnessing a murder, another time I couldn't handle the tightness of a room at an event with Grace Tame.

Once, my next door neighbour came into my house as a silly prank, snuck up on me and said, in a deep, intentionally menacing voice "Hi, Cady." He'd meant it as a joke but my body prepared for violence. I had a distinct feeling of "well, this is it" before realising who he was, that I was actually safe. I bawled for hours afterwards.

Two years on from my first stalker, I am still on edge.

My new stalker, "Captain Jack", as my partner Amanda and I have been calling him, fortunately plead guilty. He's in custody now, awaiting sentencing, and police expect jail time at his hearing later this month.

Because he plead guilty, I don't know why he targeted me. Until the morning of the trial, he had intended to plead not guilty - despite 3 different security cameras catching him on 3 different ocassions, entering our yard and jerking it in front of our bedroom window, while filming himself doing it on his phone.

I imagine his footage is online somewhere, posted on an anti-trans dark web forum, but I'll never know.

Reflections

To add to the surreal nature of all this - his trial was held in the same court room as mine was, 20 years ago, where my first stalker accused me of the rape they'd committed against me as a fledgling trans woman.

And worse; the shortened version of my new stalker's name is the same as mine was, before my gender transition.

It fucks with my head.

As a writer it's hard not to notice the reflections. And while in both visits to court the monsters coming at me were the ones found guilty, it doesn't entirely help to know that.

Why?

Because when you haven't done anything wrong, and people keep coming at you, it doesn't make you feel more safe, but less.

I am targetted simply for existing.

At a time when Trump and his minions are upending the world, trans people are being erased from history and persecuted, and I've lost huge swathes of income as companies drop me, for fear of being associated with a trans - I also have another stalker to deal with.

The now of it

My partner and I can't afford to move, assuming we could find a rental vacancy, and wouldn't have the energy anyway. We live hand to mouth, in a constant state of debt and panic. Signs for the release of my upcoming novel are mixed - I can feel allies pulling away from me, hedging their bets against trans people.

On two different screen productions I was writing for, about trans women protagonists, I've been replaced by cisgendered gay men, leaving the productions without any trans women on staff.

Last year a writer's festival asked if they could use me as a poster-trans for poverty & diversity, recounting in a major Australian newspaper how I collect plastic bottles by the roadside to pay for my travel to literary events. Not only did they misgender me in the article, after holding me up as an example of why festivals needed funding for diversity - the festival didn't invite me back this year for the release of my new book.

It often feels that there's more to be gained from the suffering of transgender people than there is from their continued existence.

In 2023 the memoir I mentioned above was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year - despite the newspaper refusing to review it. You can still see it on their website; there's no hyperlink on my title.

My publisher, Penguin, was surprised it had been shortlisted at all - as they "didn't think" to enter the book for awards, despite me making it a condition of signing with them. Yesterday The Age ran a front page ad on behalf of Clive Palmer, declaring in a bright yellow banner: "there are only two genders".

It is hard to know what and where is safe right now; physically, professionally and socially. 

It is hard not to feel abandoned, at a time when the wolves are circling.

I am beyond tired.

I am barely here.

And I am only here to finish writing this book. Slowly. One word at a time. Because that's what I do, and I don't know what else to do with all the fear, the pain.