Thought Dump
One of my most common pastimes these days is composing LJ-entries in my head, never to be written. Sometimes factual, sometimes horribly bitter. And then I never write them.
Sort of scared, knowing those who attacked me so viciously had been reading my LJ for a long time. Sort of angry, seeing no point in interacting with anything Internet-related at all. Sort of sad, seeing no point in heaping my own misery on the unsuspecting crowds (who, granted, have chosen themselves to come to my journal and read, but still)
When I went to get antidepressants prescribed, the doctor ran a few standard tests. Turned out they didn't look all good. So I got some more blood sucked out of me this past Monday. Turned out it looked even worse. I am apparently quite sick psychically as well as psychologically. Heh. Just what I needed.
More doctor's appointments this Monday, to start a full out investigation to try and figure out what's wrong with me - aside from being clinically depressed, stressed out, severely anemic, dehydrated and having such horridly low levels of iron it's laughable.
My father's been a great help when battling this depression. He teaches crisis-counseling and trauma-therapy with the Red Cross, and he can give me all those nice technical terms my rational mind so desperately craves - if we're going to suffer, we're at least going to suffer scientifically, dammit.
It's a strange kind of relief, though, to be able to read up on how these things work and see that it's all natural reactions - it's not just me overreacting or going crazy, it all follows neat, logical patterns.
"A natural reaction to an unnatural situation", my father called it.
There's the Psychological Trauma - "A traumatic event involves a single experience, or an enduring or repeating event or events, that completely overwhelm the individual's ability to cope or integrate the ideas and emotions involved with that experience. The sense of being overwhelmed can be delayed by weeks or years, as the person struggles to cope with the immediate danger." according to dear Wikipedia.
"Trauma can be caused by a wide variety of events, but there are a few common aspects. It usually involves a feeling of complete helplessness in the face of a real or subjective threat to one's life or to that of loved ones, to bodily integrity, or sanity. There is frequently a violation of the person's familiar ideas about the world and of their human rights, putting the person in a state of extreme confusion and insecurity."
"Long-term exposure to situations such as extreme poverty or milder forms of abuse, such as verbal abuse, can be traumatic."
"It is almost always seen in torture victims and targets of mobbing (see psychology of torture)."
"Trauma is often defined as a coping response to and a consequence of overwhelming situations. However, as an individual's sense of being "overwhelmed" is subjective, the occurrence of trauma is also subjective."
It certainly fits the bill. I was threatened and attacked from several different directions, sending mind and body into fight-or-flight mode, responding to a threatening situation, causing horrible stress on mind and body alike. People I thought of as friends, in places I thought of as safe-havens turned on me one by one, ganged up on me, hiding behind anonymous handles but dropping enough hints that I soon learned who some of them were, although I still learn of new familiar names involved every week. Damn, it hurts.
I befriended these people. I many cases I would encourage, welcome them warmly into the communities I ran, trust and and support them. I still don't really understand why they developed such a hate for me - it seems to vary from person to person, ranging from imagined slights and perceived arrogance, to a dislike for me involving certain characters in my art and writing, to a worry that I by expressing my own personal opinion would somehow influence the fandom away from their preferences.
And in most cases it seems that now that the actual conflict is over, they all want to be best buddies again, as though my friendship is the latest status thing to flaunt around the fandom, and that any means of acquiring it are okay.
Insanity.
The trolling on my LJ and Y-account was only the tip of the ice-berg, and I managed to cope with that, although it still hurt. I'd been trolled before, I could manage. But then other people started badmouthing me, and new threats surfaced.
At it's very worst, the point that broke me, I had managed to start a dialog with several of the people involved to understand why they were doing this to me. I knew at least one of them had my home address, and they were calling me 'the new Snapesnogger' and threatening to hang me out in very, very unpleasant places with the sole purpose of siccing the nastiest trolls around on me.
And then I was told that to appease them, I had to explain to them why they hated me, to prove that I had 'learned my lesson'.
And I still couldn't tell why, since it seems they all had different and often contradicting reasons for hating me, down to and including unforgivable crimes like expressing my own thoughts and preferences in my own LJ (since that might make other people agree with me because of my apparently humongous influence, risking that these people would lose club-members in their clubs because I didn't particularly like those themes), drawing and writing Larxene, apparently turning her into a Mary-Sue, not branching out enough in my pairings, branching out too much in my pairings, being an arrogant bitch, including my own name in a joke-poll about what Org-member Vexen would be best with and finally having drawn the image I have for my LJ background, with an unforgivable Vexen-plushie in my avatar's cleavage.
Right. I can see why they'd want me destroyed for that. Or not.
I tried so hard to resolve it all, tried being so horribly diplomatic and actually understand why they disliked me so much, because no-one likes being hated. But when I was faced with that ultimatum, I truly broke. Because how could I save myself from the nasty things they were threatening to do if the only way to do so was by understanding something incomprehensible?
That was when I chose to leave rather than even trying anymore. I told them they'd won, they had achieved their goal of getting rid of me, and that I would trouble them no more. I was so broken by then that by the time I went to the doctor, they just threw one glance at me and managed to fit me into their busy schedule just an hour later, and made sure I had some good, hardcore medication in my pocket by the time I left.
"Some traumatized people may feel permanently damaged when trauma symptoms don't go away and they don't believe their situation will improve. This can lead to feelings of despair, loss of self-esteem, and frequently depression. If important aspects of the person's self and world understanding have been violated, the person may call their own identity into question."
"After a traumatic experience, a person may re-experience the trauma mentally and physically, hence avoiding trauma reminders, as this can be uncomfortable and even painful." Wiki says, which explains why merely the process of posting the first few messages online a few weeks ago sent me straight back to shock phase.
I had promised I'd stay around, promised both friends, fandom and myself, because KH had become so very important to me. I really believed I would fight for it to the end - but I had to break that promise. I couldn't take the pressure, and in the end the thing I had treasured so much was so poisoned by all the viciousness, hatred and stress I couldn't even bring myself to like it anymore.
For a while I still wanted to care, forced myself back by playing the game and being involved in that KH-related writing project I'm part of. It just made the stress worse, though, being a constant reminder.
Now, finally I've found something to replace it, and it's such a blessed relief to be able to finally let go. No more fandom, no more threats, no more hateful people ready to tear you down over a mutual interest interpreted slightly differently.
"Clinical depression (also called major-depressive disorder or unipolar depression) is a common psychiatric disorder, characterized by a persistent lowering of mood, loss of interest in usual activities and diminished ability to experience pleasure.
While the term "depression" is commonly used to describe a temporary decreased mood when one "feels blue", clinical depression is a serious illness that involves the body, mood, and thoughts that cannot simply be willed or wished away. It is often a disabling disease that affects a person's work, family and school life, sleeping and eating habits, general health and ability to enjoy life."
And that's where I am today.
Some days are better than others, thanks to the medication. It'll take the worst edge off the darkest moods, and help numb the wildest ups and downs of an uncontrollably fluctuating mood. It's a horrible thing for a usually very stable and down-to-earth person to have thoughts not thought by oneself, become utterly overcome by emotions not truly felt but just appearing out of nowhere, like having a conscious beast inside trying to live your life for you.
I've reached a point in the trauma experience now called the Reaction Phase. All those things numbed by sheer survival instinct and stress before are now bubbling up to the surface beyond my control, and I'm angry.
Utterly, horribly angry, downright furious at what was done to me, and what it's led to. Angry about how those who did it got away free, can move on and pretend nothing happened, many of them even now remaining anonymous - cowards who never dared step forward to even try and work things out. Furious about how something so dear and important to me was so cruelly taken from me. Furious at the self-important bitch who would sit aloofly judging me as I struggled, marking words and painting me out to be an arrogant asshat when I was desperately clinging on by the fingertips to even justify my right to be part of the communities I myself had built, worked hard on, nourished and helped grow.
Disappointed that those believed to be friends weren't, and equally disappointed that no-one else cared, intervened or helped me at its worst, or even notcied my absence.
Sometimes I even get angry at those closest to me, because I'll feel they didn't do enough even though I know they did so very much, far more than could ever be expected of them, and then the anger will turn into guilt, grief and self-contempt instead, for even thinking such thoughts. I know this has affected my friends as well, because they worry and care about me, and they, too, have had their experience of the fandom ruined by watching from outside how this whole mess unraveled, how people would act in the name of the fandom. And that, too, makes me righteously furious, that my friends are made to suffer because of me in ways I cannot prevent or control.
I am not a hateful person.
Never once during this ordeal have I dropped names or targeted any person specifically. I wouldn't dream of conspiring against someone, although there have been many I haven't cared much for, because you don't do that. If people have a differing opinion, you either ignore them or you rant about it in your own journal. You do not start up hate-campaigns, troll or threaten them. No matter what certain younger people seem to believe, this is not okay behaviour, it's not 'just how it is'.
I've started, run and participated in communities online for over a decade, and the toughening climate online is a recent trend. Never once, in any of the countless other fandoms I've been part of, has this been okay. But it's becoming more and more frequent, and the brats who'll resort to this kind of harassment don't even realize how far out there they are, or how horrified we oldtimers are by their attitude and behaviour.
I am not a hateful person.
The most traumatic event of my life was when someone I loved and trusted came very, very close to getting me and my younger brothers killed, and although I grieved and was very afraid, I told him " You can hurt us, and you can kill us, but you cannot make us hate you."
I don't hate. I would never encourage hate, or for people to actively set out to hurt or harm another person.
But by all gods, right now, caught up in these unbalanced, wild emotions, I do feel hate towards those who hurt me, caused all this hurt in me and those I care about.
I wouldn't want to wish harm upon them, because I need to believe I am still the better person, but I sometimes do wish they will all have to go through what I was dragged through, and come out wiser for it, never, ever hurting someone else like that again.
Maybe I should have been stronger and fought it from the start, to make sure no-one else would risk being the target of these self-appointed judges. Maybe I should have taken the oft-repeated advice to take things to the police, since it was a case of (actually illegal, yes) harassment, and I knew the identities of the ones involved.
Sometimes I wish I had, if it had meant I would be better off now.
But then, I've been through enough crap in my life to know that trauma and depressions will pass, one way or another. The pain will numb, and life will go on.
And I want to be able to look back at this conflict five years from now and be proud of how I handled it. Know that I did everything I could, tried to understand, explain and solve everything in peace, even though the price was high.
Christmas is coming, and next week I'll go home and spend several weeks with my family. I'll get to see good friends again.
'Tis the season to be jolly. I hope it will help.
And for all the things we're both much too rational to ever say out loud, damn, Chi, I love you so much. If not for your support through all this, I could never have made it through, and I am so, so sorry it's been so hard on you. Having you there means more to me than words can ever say. I just wish there was some way I could ever repay you.
Sort of scared, knowing those who attacked me so viciously had been reading my LJ for a long time. Sort of angry, seeing no point in interacting with anything Internet-related at all. Sort of sad, seeing no point in heaping my own misery on the unsuspecting crowds (who, granted, have chosen themselves to come to my journal and read, but still)
When I went to get antidepressants prescribed, the doctor ran a few standard tests. Turned out they didn't look all good. So I got some more blood sucked out of me this past Monday. Turned out it looked even worse. I am apparently quite sick psychically as well as psychologically. Heh. Just what I needed.
More doctor's appointments this Monday, to start a full out investigation to try and figure out what's wrong with me - aside from being clinically depressed, stressed out, severely anemic, dehydrated and having such horridly low levels of iron it's laughable.
My father's been a great help when battling this depression. He teaches crisis-counseling and trauma-therapy with the Red Cross, and he can give me all those nice technical terms my rational mind so desperately craves - if we're going to suffer, we're at least going to suffer scientifically, dammit.
It's a strange kind of relief, though, to be able to read up on how these things work and see that it's all natural reactions - it's not just me overreacting or going crazy, it all follows neat, logical patterns.
"A natural reaction to an unnatural situation", my father called it.
There's the Psychological Trauma - "A traumatic event involves a single experience, or an enduring or repeating event or events, that completely overwhelm the individual's ability to cope or integrate the ideas and emotions involved with that experience. The sense of being overwhelmed can be delayed by weeks or years, as the person struggles to cope with the immediate danger." according to dear Wikipedia.
"Trauma can be caused by a wide variety of events, but there are a few common aspects. It usually involves a feeling of complete helplessness in the face of a real or subjective threat to one's life or to that of loved ones, to bodily integrity, or sanity. There is frequently a violation of the person's familiar ideas about the world and of their human rights, putting the person in a state of extreme confusion and insecurity."
"Long-term exposure to situations such as extreme poverty or milder forms of abuse, such as verbal abuse, can be traumatic."
"It is almost always seen in torture victims and targets of mobbing (see psychology of torture)."
"Trauma is often defined as a coping response to and a consequence of overwhelming situations. However, as an individual's sense of being "overwhelmed" is subjective, the occurrence of trauma is also subjective."
It certainly fits the bill. I was threatened and attacked from several different directions, sending mind and body into fight-or-flight mode, responding to a threatening situation, causing horrible stress on mind and body alike. People I thought of as friends, in places I thought of as safe-havens turned on me one by one, ganged up on me, hiding behind anonymous handles but dropping enough hints that I soon learned who some of them were, although I still learn of new familiar names involved every week. Damn, it hurts.
I befriended these people. I many cases I would encourage, welcome them warmly into the communities I ran, trust and and support them. I still don't really understand why they developed such a hate for me - it seems to vary from person to person, ranging from imagined slights and perceived arrogance, to a dislike for me involving certain characters in my art and writing, to a worry that I by expressing my own personal opinion would somehow influence the fandom away from their preferences.
And in most cases it seems that now that the actual conflict is over, they all want to be best buddies again, as though my friendship is the latest status thing to flaunt around the fandom, and that any means of acquiring it are okay.
Insanity.
The trolling on my LJ and Y-account was only the tip of the ice-berg, and I managed to cope with that, although it still hurt. I'd been trolled before, I could manage. But then other people started badmouthing me, and new threats surfaced.
At it's very worst, the point that broke me, I had managed to start a dialog with several of the people involved to understand why they were doing this to me. I knew at least one of them had my home address, and they were calling me 'the new Snapesnogger' and threatening to hang me out in very, very unpleasant places with the sole purpose of siccing the nastiest trolls around on me.
And then I was told that to appease them, I had to explain to them why they hated me, to prove that I had 'learned my lesson'.
And I still couldn't tell why, since it seems they all had different and often contradicting reasons for hating me, down to and including unforgivable crimes like expressing my own thoughts and preferences in my own LJ (since that might make other people agree with me because of my apparently humongous influence, risking that these people would lose club-members in their clubs because I didn't particularly like those themes), drawing and writing Larxene, apparently turning her into a Mary-Sue, not branching out enough in my pairings, branching out too much in my pairings, being an arrogant bitch, including my own name in a joke-poll about what Org-member Vexen would be best with and finally having drawn the image I have for my LJ background, with an unforgivable Vexen-plushie in my avatar's cleavage.
Right. I can see why they'd want me destroyed for that. Or not.
I tried so hard to resolve it all, tried being so horribly diplomatic and actually understand why they disliked me so much, because no-one likes being hated. But when I was faced with that ultimatum, I truly broke. Because how could I save myself from the nasty things they were threatening to do if the only way to do so was by understanding something incomprehensible?
That was when I chose to leave rather than even trying anymore. I told them they'd won, they had achieved their goal of getting rid of me, and that I would trouble them no more. I was so broken by then that by the time I went to the doctor, they just threw one glance at me and managed to fit me into their busy schedule just an hour later, and made sure I had some good, hardcore medication in my pocket by the time I left.
"Some traumatized people may feel permanently damaged when trauma symptoms don't go away and they don't believe their situation will improve. This can lead to feelings of despair, loss of self-esteem, and frequently depression. If important aspects of the person's self and world understanding have been violated, the person may call their own identity into question."
"After a traumatic experience, a person may re-experience the trauma mentally and physically, hence avoiding trauma reminders, as this can be uncomfortable and even painful." Wiki says, which explains why merely the process of posting the first few messages online a few weeks ago sent me straight back to shock phase.
I had promised I'd stay around, promised both friends, fandom and myself, because KH had become so very important to me. I really believed I would fight for it to the end - but I had to break that promise. I couldn't take the pressure, and in the end the thing I had treasured so much was so poisoned by all the viciousness, hatred and stress I couldn't even bring myself to like it anymore.
For a while I still wanted to care, forced myself back by playing the game and being involved in that KH-related writing project I'm part of. It just made the stress worse, though, being a constant reminder.
Now, finally I've found something to replace it, and it's such a blessed relief to be able to finally let go. No more fandom, no more threats, no more hateful people ready to tear you down over a mutual interest interpreted slightly differently.
"Clinical depression (also called major-depressive disorder or unipolar depression) is a common psychiatric disorder, characterized by a persistent lowering of mood, loss of interest in usual activities and diminished ability to experience pleasure.
While the term "depression" is commonly used to describe a temporary decreased mood when one "feels blue", clinical depression is a serious illness that involves the body, mood, and thoughts that cannot simply be willed or wished away. It is often a disabling disease that affects a person's work, family and school life, sleeping and eating habits, general health and ability to enjoy life."
And that's where I am today.
Some days are better than others, thanks to the medication. It'll take the worst edge off the darkest moods, and help numb the wildest ups and downs of an uncontrollably fluctuating mood. It's a horrible thing for a usually very stable and down-to-earth person to have thoughts not thought by oneself, become utterly overcome by emotions not truly felt but just appearing out of nowhere, like having a conscious beast inside trying to live your life for you.
I've reached a point in the trauma experience now called the Reaction Phase. All those things numbed by sheer survival instinct and stress before are now bubbling up to the surface beyond my control, and I'm angry.
Utterly, horribly angry, downright furious at what was done to me, and what it's led to. Angry about how those who did it got away free, can move on and pretend nothing happened, many of them even now remaining anonymous - cowards who never dared step forward to even try and work things out. Furious about how something so dear and important to me was so cruelly taken from me. Furious at the self-important bitch who would sit aloofly judging me as I struggled, marking words and painting me out to be an arrogant asshat when I was desperately clinging on by the fingertips to even justify my right to be part of the communities I myself had built, worked hard on, nourished and helped grow.
Disappointed that those believed to be friends weren't, and equally disappointed that no-one else cared, intervened or helped me at its worst, or even notcied my absence.
Sometimes I even get angry at those closest to me, because I'll feel they didn't do enough even though I know they did so very much, far more than could ever be expected of them, and then the anger will turn into guilt, grief and self-contempt instead, for even thinking such thoughts. I know this has affected my friends as well, because they worry and care about me, and they, too, have had their experience of the fandom ruined by watching from outside how this whole mess unraveled, how people would act in the name of the fandom. And that, too, makes me righteously furious, that my friends are made to suffer because of me in ways I cannot prevent or control.
I am not a hateful person.
Never once during this ordeal have I dropped names or targeted any person specifically. I wouldn't dream of conspiring against someone, although there have been many I haven't cared much for, because you don't do that. If people have a differing opinion, you either ignore them or you rant about it in your own journal. You do not start up hate-campaigns, troll or threaten them. No matter what certain younger people seem to believe, this is not okay behaviour, it's not 'just how it is'.
I've started, run and participated in communities online for over a decade, and the toughening climate online is a recent trend. Never once, in any of the countless other fandoms I've been part of, has this been okay. But it's becoming more and more frequent, and the brats who'll resort to this kind of harassment don't even realize how far out there they are, or how horrified we oldtimers are by their attitude and behaviour.
I am not a hateful person.
The most traumatic event of my life was when someone I loved and trusted came very, very close to getting me and my younger brothers killed, and although I grieved and was very afraid, I told him " You can hurt us, and you can kill us, but you cannot make us hate you."
I don't hate. I would never encourage hate, or for people to actively set out to hurt or harm another person.
But by all gods, right now, caught up in these unbalanced, wild emotions, I do feel hate towards those who hurt me, caused all this hurt in me and those I care about.
I wouldn't want to wish harm upon them, because I need to believe I am still the better person, but I sometimes do wish they will all have to go through what I was dragged through, and come out wiser for it, never, ever hurting someone else like that again.
Maybe I should have been stronger and fought it from the start, to make sure no-one else would risk being the target of these self-appointed judges. Maybe I should have taken the oft-repeated advice to take things to the police, since it was a case of (actually illegal, yes) harassment, and I knew the identities of the ones involved.
Sometimes I wish I had, if it had meant I would be better off now.
But then, I've been through enough crap in my life to know that trauma and depressions will pass, one way or another. The pain will numb, and life will go on.
And I want to be able to look back at this conflict five years from now and be proud of how I handled it. Know that I did everything I could, tried to understand, explain and solve everything in peace, even though the price was high.
Christmas is coming, and next week I'll go home and spend several weeks with my family. I'll get to see good friends again.
'Tis the season to be jolly. I hope it will help.
And for all the things we're both much too rational to ever say out loud, damn, Chi, I love you so much. If not for your support through all this, I could never have made it through, and I am so, so sorry it's been so hard on you. Having you there means more to me than words can ever say. I just wish there was some way I could ever repay you.