Julie S. Lalonde's Resilience Is Futile is more than just a story about being stalked
For more than 10 years, Julie S. Lalonde kept a terrifying secret: she was being stalked by an abusive ex-partner. She left the relationship at 20 years old and would be stalked by him for the following decade.
While Lalonde rose to national prominence as a women's rights advocate, writer and speaker, she would ask herself the same question at every event, rally or conference: Was he here?
Her book, Resilience is Futile, is about this terrifying experience, and also about how we handle trauma and find the strength to not only survive, but thrive.
The Ottawa-based Lalonde spoke with Shelagh Rogers about writing Resilience is Futile.
Trouble brewing
"My initial hesitation in dumping [my summer love] to move away was that I had broken up with another boyfriend earlier in the year. I had this sense of guilt that I was breaking all these people's hearts and I'm supposed to be kind.
We did long distance for mere weeks before he showed up at my house and said, 'I can't live without you.'
"But he absolutely wore me down, saying that we could still be together [in a long-distance relationship] and that he couldn't live without me.
"I was coerced into going ahead with it. I then moved to Ottawa. We did long distance for mere weeks before he showed up at my house and said, 'I can't live without you.'"
Raising red flags
"I was overwhelmed. I tried to rationalize his behaviour. Of course, looking back on that, it was a massive red flag. But at the time I thought maybe it's easier that he's here because we're not doing long distance. But very quickly when he moved in, he became a different person.
"Prior to writing the book, I would have told you it was months of pure bliss or maybe even a year before things went sideways. But going through my old journals and notes to write the book, I discovered my first journal entry was a few weeks after he had moved in with me; we'd been together for mere months at that point.
"I didn't realize the extent to which this was dangerous until I was in too deep and had been together with him for about two years.
When someone's obsessed with you, you almost stop becoming a person. It's a very dehumanizing thing to go through.
"He was a very obsessive person about a lot of things. If he had a hobby, he was all in. And at the time, I admired that about him.
"He was very committed. He was very ambitious. He was hungry for life and I am that way too, so I felt like we connected. But then I realized that also includes me. That this isn't just deep, deep love; this is obsession.
"When someone's obsessed with you, you almost stop becoming a person. It's a very dehumanizing thing to go through."
The nature of abuse
"It was the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. When things were good, they were amazing and it was important for me to talk about that in the book. It's too easy to see someone like him as strictly a monster. I think what that does is it then makes people question why would someone be with someone like that.
It was the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.
"I think when we humanize abusers we actually humanize survivors as well and show that, 'Of course someone would fall in love with this person.' Because when things were good, they were amazing.
"He was a very loving and generous person in a lot of ways — as well as being all of those other awful things that he was: possessive, obsessive, paranoid."
Julie S. Lalonde's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
