Sunday, March 17, 2013

Do You Face Your Attacker?

I know, it's been awhile since I've written. Awhile? A long time. And I'm not sure when I will write again after this. However I felt that this was important to share, and it's taken me awhile to work through this. You may remember my post a couple years ago about a rando that I met at the bar whose name was Awesome. I posted a sound clip of numerous voice mails that he had left for me, as I had thought they were extreme and funny and wanted to share them with my readers. All of 30 people read that post. A couple of days later someone posted a nasty note on Reddit linking to my blog, claiming to be Awesome and making up random things behind the phone calls that they supposedly left. I knew beyond a doubt that it was not the person who left the voice mails and had an inkling that it was someone I knew that posted it. This didn't stop the hundreds of hate comments I received, death threats and my picture and personal information (Facebook account, email address, and other links to my personal information) being posted on other trolly websites. I received emails and Facebook messages and ended up completely blacking out all of my accounts. And then it ended and the trolls moved on to someone else to attack. I never thought that I would out who felt the need to do such a malicious thing. However a few weeks ago my brother told me that he was told who it was. I screamed. I screamed bloody murder for about 10 minutes. It was someone who I went to high school with. We were never friends, nor were we enemies. To my knowledge, I never did anything to him. When I found out, all sorts of revenge ideas were streaming through my head, I wanted him to pay, I wanted him to know what hell he put me through, I wanted to see his remorse. And I wanted to punch him in the face. With my fist. The next day, I wanted to contact him and meet him in person to let him know that there are consequences for your actions. And then the anger subsided. Nothing I said would change what happened. It was years ago and it doesn't matter any more. I'm not writing for anybody to get angry for me. More of a lesson. Every action has a consequence, and just because you can't see the person's face, they are human and they have feelings. Also, don't name your kid Awesome. Or Wispy. So, Jeff. If you are reading this I hope that you never do what you did to me to anybody else.