Looking For a Simile For Something That Follows You Around

Question

I'm writing a blog post about the impacts of an autoimmune disease. The sentence I'm trying to construct looks like this:

"The disease importunately follows me around like a god damn..."

I'm struggling to come up with something better than "... Puppy who lost his ball."

Any suggestions? The cruder, the better. A pop culture reference would be awesome!

I'm stuck.

I just thought out Richard Sherman on Michael Crabtree... But there has to be better out there. What does Kanye West follow around? — Talbert1209, Aug 20 '20 at 00:03
Make something up. ... Like toilet paper stuck to your shoe. — Jim, Aug 20 '20 at 14:19

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 20 '20 at 03:30

I am familiar with "Follows me around like a teenager handing me a mask."

For your purposes Reprovingly would work but is almost antique.

reprovingly - in a reproving or reproachful manner; "she spoke to him reprovingly"

Reproachfully is only slightly better. I'm kind of getting away from how it follows and more towards how it makes you feel; Miserably, Pathetically...

How about Accusingly. There! That's it for me.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 20 '20 at 03:49

Though I would love to brainstorm with you about the crudest possible metaphors in private, I'll confine my comment here to how I would construct these:

Think of bad people.
Think of edgy, cool, or comical agents such as sharks or tax collectors.
Think of culturally relevant people (though your writing will age better if the subject is culturally relevant on a long term basis).
What are these people obsessed with, or negatively associated with in the media? Or what do they mainly do?
Who do these people love, harm, or hate? Where do these people find targets?
Can the target be adapted to a more comical form, such as changing "surfers" to "hipsters", "fish" to "baby seals"?
Additionally, consider anything that "stalks" such as predatory cats.

You will generate associations. Filter the associations for those that involve following. Pick one that fits your tone.

This was all great! Thank you for taking the time to write this all out. — Talbert1209, Aug 21 '20 at 18:32

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 20 '20 at 22:02

How about stalker? From M-W:

stalker: a person who stalks : a person who pursues someone obsessively and aggressively to the point of harassment

You example:

"The disease importunately follows me around like a god damn stalker."

Just to be clear, stalker is a metaphor for the autoimmune disease. You just can't make it go away. You can replace "goddamn" with a cruder adjective, if you'd like.

Looking For a Simile For Something That Follows You Around

3 Answers3