When I was in middle school, grade eight, I made out with a boy over the weekend, he told me things were over between he and his girlfriend, we were already friends because we skied together, so whatever right, i went on a date with him, it was fucking middle school. When I arrived at school on Monday, with my place having already been solidified as as loser in elementary school [everywhere but on the track and the ski hill] I was shocked even at that age to find he had told her, wasn’t it over? Why would he do that?
I was, as she had bluntly put it: dead.
The end of the school day came and nothing happened. Had I relaxed? Of course not, attending school from grade six till the day I graduated was like being thrown into a different shark tank in a different country every god damned day. I never had a fucking clue what those fuckers had in store for me. The bullying I experienced in school was at such an intense level I have just started to stand up straight in the last couple of years.
A girl I had been friends with back before THE dreaded rumour, that never, not for one day, in Smithers or Terrace [only two.five hours apart] was I ever to live down, came up to my locker to talk to me. I don’t remember exactly how she got me outside, I remember she was nice to me but I wanted any positive attention I could get, so I trusted her. As we walked down the hall towards the backstairs to the door leading to the buses, a direction I did need to walk in anyway, I didn’t think anything of it until we hit the stairs.
The buses were to the left but she made me turn right and I knew instantly I was in trouble, the smokers, the bad kids, the bullies hung out round those parts and there she stood the girl who was supposed to be the ex-girlfriend. I remember she slammed me against the cement wall, she started punching my face and as I lifted my hands to defend my face she punched anywhere should could land one and was kicking me too, whilst screaming a bunch of venom at me, I did not try to fight back. Even back then with a really sore face I remember thinking why the fuck is she not mad at him? I don’t remember how I got away from her.
I remember heading back into the school, sliding down the wall, putting my head in my lap and balling. I heard the door open and froze. Outside, she hadn’t just beaten me up once, she came at me multiple times while I was trying to get away from her and the many onlookers. The girl who had lured me there in the first place must have had a change of heart, it was her who walked through the door picked me up and walked me to the principles’ office where, let’s face it, I spent a lot of time – not because I got in trouble but because I had nowhere else where I felt safe to go except the sick room, but this time the school had to call my parents.
The last time, I was off school property when I got beat up so I was able to hide it from my dad, fat lip and all for a couple of days. There was no hiding this and I was beyond horrified. Sometimes I’m really not sure how I made it to sixteen before making a valiant attempt to knock myself off. My dad had to come get me, I was a mess, crying, in pain, scared and bruising and it was because I made out with some stupid boy and my dad would know that. My being a huge loser must have been so embarrassing for my parents. Smithers is really fucking small, man. But worse than that, again, I had been a victim of violence that could by a sick and twisted individual be blamed on me. She did, the girl who shit kicked me on school property, thankfully she got suspended.
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I think one of the worst things is that I do try really hard to let shit go, in my offline life it isn’t even an issue. I don’t feel like that high school loser, I believe in myself, I feel capable, most days I even like myself. I’d have to say the work and relationship building with my parents is a pretty strong indication of this. But to move on in a cyber world, not a real world where you actually talk to people when you’re pissed or want some well deserved answers. Cyber people actually think you’re stalking them when you email them once to ask them why they deleted you off something, which no one has done to me lately that I care enough to ask, but catch that word there? Is was: CARE. I CARED. But do it, call me a stalker for that ONE message and have a great ol’ time believing I’m spending every moment tracking your life because I cared enough to notice that you didn’t and thought I’d ask why. By normal people standards, it is actually considered healthy you know, talking, asking questions of someone you THOUGHT you were friends with that may help you further yourself as a person. If this is the definition of a stalker we are in big big trouble people.
I’m only human, I can only take so much, I can only take the highest of highest roads for so long. I do, as we all know, suffer from some at times pretty serious mental illness, this shit eats me up inside. It burns. It hurts. I’m done sitting here taking it like a man, I was just told recently that it’s unbelievable we’ve taken this shit for so long. For a while I thought I was doing the right thing not speaking openly of the open online attacks that took place on Twitter against me. I thought I’d let it go. But I discussed things with my psychiatrist, you know the doctor you see when you recognize you need help and want to work on yourself that I’ve been seeing for well over six years now. YET, I am a terrible, just fucking terrible person right?
I realize that a lot of my extremely supportive readers that are not on Twitter are going to have no idea what I’m talking about but I can tell you this, there is no way they couldn’t have noticed my ridiculously long break from something I love doing because I don’t feel that I am being fully myself or ever can anymore, I am trying to avoid adding fuel to the drama scene, but it seems even when I think my life is drama free it turns out it isn’t, I don’t think anyone’s ever really is. And maybe I used to thrive on a little drama here and there but I’m pushing 33 fucking years old and if there is one thing I’ve learned about drama in the thirities is that it is nonsense, a blatant waste of time if you will, not something that in honest truth I want to spend an extensive amount of words on. So it pains me to give this any attention but the situation as a whole leaves me no choice.
Since June I have not posted at all on my depression, the main topic of this blog, yes I was out of the darkness for a while and had a really good go of it. But it wasn’t without its lapses, we are talking clinical depression here. I count myself very lucky to have had more good days than bad in 2009 – even with the drama surrounding my family, and other ridiculous shit online.
When I wrote this post in January about taking a woman we’d been friends with, Adam since university days myself since 2003, to child protective services it was because I was ready. I was sick of the lies being spread about me for doing the right thing and very personal things about my life where being attacked to a large online audience on her blog. And BS about what she thinks happened was being spewed to whoever would listen to her. To this day, and thanks to current events it will stay this way, we still know more about what happened than she does, her recent actions took any chance she ever had of knowing what I saw.
Her comment is actually one of the best, somewhere it states something about her being a GREAT mom now. AWESOME. That is one reason why we called, because we were worried about a BABY and she needed HELP, if you are confused at all here read the post link. The fact that we are still being villainized and hated and completely misunderstood by a large group of people who say oh we don’t want drama but just keep on fueling this fire with green wood is down right disgusting, to accuse me of being the ONLY one who is STILL keeping it going is a farce, I’m being bullied, I repeat, for doing the right thing. I have a RIGHT to stand up for myself. It is also pretty funny that her sidekick who called me insane on Twitter was nowhere to be found in those comments in January, you’d almost think they hadn’t even met yet.
Her fantasy that I’m stalking her is pretty humorous but only when you are looking in from outside the box, not when you realize it is yourself she is saying this shit about. I openly admitted that I looked at her flickr photos because I missed the kid, a child that she has lied multiple times about how much time myself and my husband spent with and her for that matter. Think just for a moment how much it would suck and how easily you’d get over a good deed being twisted to the point of your being called a stalker if I’m lucky, insert other choice words here.
The day that this attack happened, I was attempting to be the bigger person, I was talking to someone on Twitter who was friends with her and her name was IN those tweets to me, so instead of being a dick face I acknowledged her being mentioned in a tweet something like ____ is great to be friends with because she’ll give you her books when she’s done with them. I wrote that to show I could keep our shit out of the Twitter community. Suddenly I had an onslaught from the woman in the twitter picture, a full page of tweets – leave her alone, she doesn’t want to be your friend, stop trying to contact her, other people may stand by and watch this but I’m sick of it or something that is not verbatim, I choose not to torture myself reading over that entire attack. I got really fucking mad, I told her to fuck off, to shut the fuck up, that she was just a bully, she knew NOTHING. To which the final tweet calling me insane was sent. Reading that, knowing it went straight out to close to 8,000 people instantly, there are no words. I thought when I got back from Bali I’d be fine that I could start posting again, and when I was depressed it would just happen but it isn’t happening and I’m really fucking depressed and not because of THIS per se but because I suffer from it. A mental illness that she knew damn well I suffered from, I’m not sure where she gets off attacking someone she knows is mentally ill.
And about her accusations of not leaving her new friend alone, I sent her, in the last year, two emails, one was before Twitter had what is called fixed replies so you could see people you didn’t follow talking back and forth and she was going on about Yoga and how she was going to go. I go to Yoga at the West End Community Centre, we both live in the West End, she knows where I live, I have no idea nor do I care where she lives, it would make sense this is where she’d go, I emailed her and told her when I went and stated I didn’t think we’d both be able to relax in the same class and pushed send. The other, I sent her because on my website in that comment from her in January it mentions I never told her what we did, and she had also threatened to tell the authorities that we had made a false or malicious claim if we didn’t tell her what we’d seen, with a deadline, right there on her blog. If she ever did try her claim, your guess is as good as mine. Draw your own conclusions.
I emailed her that second time because you go through shit in life and it changes you, you make mistakes you move on and you look back and you think sure, even If I’d do it again, which I would, even with all this extra pain it has caused, and not tell her first, I decided I would finally meet with her. I messaged her and told her that’d I’d tell her what we had witnessed and why we felt it necessary to phone Emergency Medical Services, I was even going to tell her why we called her in so late at night and how it was EMS who made us call child services.
But that’s stalking, it has to be when her seminars describe me as having never been close to her.
True: Emergency Medical Services does not pursue every call. Also true, lying to the government to take someone’s kid from them is not only totally gutless it carries the consequence that it’s illegal, it’s a clear risk/reward. The first thing you have to do is TELL the COPS. That part is almost laughable because I do not have the power to have them show up at her door in under twelve hours, which they did.
What I can’t stand is the above. This sidekick in the Tweet, has also intimated that we shouldn’t be put in the same room together, shit, I’ve had the cops called on me for less. Her tweet alone made me feel the pains in my face again, everybody watching and no one stepping in. It’s behaviour like this that makes me choose to be the bigger person and bow out of events I’m invited to when this bully is too, no, not because I’m scared, far from it, the truth is on my side. The point is she won’t shut up about me, so tell me why would I put myself in a room with her and induce negative energy and more rumours? My job isn’t PR, it’s monkeys.
So this post ends on the dark notes, the sad disturbing knowledge/affirmation that when it comes down to it she doesn’t want knowledge or care about the truth. She wants blood, and any hopes I held of civility were only leading me down the hall to the back stairs.
And if you don’t like what I have to say, I’ll leave you with a line of hers;
*I have SO much more than you do, 18 months later. And all it took was saying on a blog that I hated my daughter. So thank you for that, really. ~ Terra Atrill aka Zoeyjane
(*no idea where she grabbed 18 months from in January 2009 when she wrote that on my blog, it hadn’t even been a year)
