FBI_

The Diagnosis

You are not a stalker. Stalkers act on information. You simply know. You know that the person who left the party early on Friday took a Lyft, and the Lyft ended at a specific block in a specific zip code, and that zip code contains exactly one apartment complex, and you are not going to do anything about this — but if asked, you could tell the class. Knowledge, to you, is its own reward. A private museum of other people's Tuesdays.

Your methods are patient and ethically ambiguous. Google Reverse Image. Archive.org. The Instagram grid of the sister. The tagged photos from 2017. The LinkedIn that was scrubbed but still indexed. You have opinions about the quality of different public-records databases. You have, in your phone, a note called "questions about [name]" with twelve bullet points, none of which you'll ever ask. The question isn't whether you could find out. You could find out. The question is only whether the universe has prepared a place to store the finding.

You are a librarian who refuses to hand over the cards. Everything you collect goes into a private archive — not to be used, just to be had. Other people see a suspicious stranger at a friend's birthday and think "oh, new boyfriend." You see them and by dessert you have a pin on the board. This is not paranoia. This is not jealousy. This is craft. Someone should be keeping track. You have volunteered. Sleep is a policy issue, not a personal failing.