Tuesday, Apr. 29, 2003 / 7:03 p.m.

~Death and the Golden Rule~

My cousin's daughter, my second cousin I guess, has been in touch. My uncle doesn't have long at all. She is really upset, but glad to write to me, and I to her. I don't think I'll be seeing him before he dies, but I've written to her just now to ask for a phone number so I might call, say goodbye to him. It sounds so morbid, but I'm more aware now, it's sunk in now. He'll be dead soon. My cousin will pack up his things, and where they go, I have no idea, but it's not about that. He won't be there anymore, and this is hard to imagine.

I think I might be in the denial phase, although I feel so accepting at the same time. It's like I'm cognizant of the reality, the death part, but I feel like I might catch myself sending him a card at Christmas before I remember.

Just writing that hits me hard. This one, this loss, this death, this person, losing this person, affects me more than any other lately. And it must be because of the suddenness. It must be because I didn't know until a week or so ago. I pictured him old and cranky, irascible and ornery, neurotic, eccentric, just like I'll be at 80. 80 years old. He outlived his own mother, his sister, his father, look how far he made it.

My cousin writes that he is the only strong male figure she's ever had in her life, that he is like a 'dad' to her. But she has time constraints, must get back to the states in a couple weeks, and her mother has no more sick leave, she's not even there. Her uncle supposedly doesn't care, so he is not around at all. It's just this young woman, her distraught grandmother, and her grandfather. And his eyes don't even see her anymore.

She described to me that he can't talk, he can't get up to the bathroom, he's not even there. She says it's time. And I know what this feels like. I KNOW this. I've done it, I've been there. And maybe that's why it hurts the way it does. Maybe what I'm feeling is not just the loss of him, but the loss of everyone I know who has died, who suffered lying in bed, at home, in a nursing home, in hospital.

Hopefully, when this is over and done, I have my cousin in my life, my little second cousin, the little girl with the long curly blond hair. But she must be all grown up now, in her 20s, a woman. I want to see her. And her mother? She doesn't seem to want to be in touch with me, and I can deal with that, she's always been that way. I told my cousin we must have a 'disconnect gene' in our family. We break off ties easier than anyone I've ever known.

I let out a long sigh here. It's been such a stressful time. And I was thinking of the Golden Rule, and wondering how can anyone visit someone's online diary, a very personal, very heartfelt diary, and harass the writer. Would these people want this done to them? Would they want someone slamming them in their guestbooks? What is wrong with people? Really, what is wrong with our society that this is what we come to? People trying to tear someone apart, stalking, harassing, when I'm just writing my life here. That's all this is. Yes, it's public, yes, you can read it, anyone with Interweb access can, but there is no need to harass. Read it, move on. Don't pester me, you wouldn't want me to pester you. Have you no compassion at all? You read this, you know a bit of my life, right? You know I've been really upset about my uncle, do you think I need aggravation from you on top of it? What do you gain?

Really. What is the gain here?

Look at this, from the guestbook...

"Geneva" writes:

I will admit I don't know the whole story here, the reason you are attacking my sister, but I do have to say you have no idea who you are talking about. Catie is an honest, moral, loving person, and to think otherwise just means you have no clue who she is. Are we back in high school?

No, we're not back in high school. I'm 42 years old. I write an online diary as a hobby, and frankly it means a great deal to me. It will be two years in a week or so. Two years. I was seeing an IP in my stats, someone clicking on my diary throughout the day, every day, one of the IPs anyway, and Catie wrote in my guestbook it was she, her IP was the one. According to the IP on the guestbook, yes, it was. I asked her, politely, if she'd go away, her response was rather nasty, but she said yes she would. I'd recently asked someone else the same thing, a mature woman, a woman close to my own age - someone with whom I'd had some not so great email exchanges - and she gladly complied. No sweat, don't want me to read, I won't, I have other diaries to read, said she. And other things too, in a last ditch slam effort.

Fine. After Catie said she would 'gladly' stop reading, I saw her IP again, and yes, I checked to see if she would stick to her word. It didn't make sense. She didn't. It was the same IP number. You know, the number, the series of numbers that constitutes the Internet Protocol address.

I had every right to be pissed. I take people at their word, I have no reason to mistrust her. But, from what I could tell, she was fucking with me, she lied, and she was giving me a hard time, clicking because she knew I could see it, and she knew I'd be checking. No, I don't know her, I have no desire to. She is your sister, great, she is probably a great person, but I'm not here for her, I'm here to write. I'm a writer. This is what I do. I have some people who read this, regularly, and most have communicated with me in one form or another. There are a couple who have not, and most likely do not intend to, and that's fine. They may click on over once a day, if that, maybe less. But any time I see someone clicking over and over I grow suspicious. Who is this person, what does this person want, and why is this person doing this, it's not normal diary reading behavior.

Of course it's not high school. I genuinely have been perturbed by people making an attempt to piss me off.

Here's a related story: There was once a woman, a diarist, right here on Diaryland, who kept a diary, who found mine, or I found hers, and we found each other. We read each other's diaries, we added each other to our favorites lists, and we commented, frequently, on each other's lives, through our written diaries, online. Turned out, in the end, she was a fabrication. She did not exist, not the person in the diary. She was totally different, a woman, yes, but not the person in the diary. By this point, we had exchanged email, she knew my real name, I liked her, for who I thought she was.

Her guilt caused her to close up her diary. And she had a diary stalker too. She also became possessed by frequent visits to her diary, after she had stopped writing altogether. It drove her a bit crazy, as it has done to me. She was guilty, though, because of her misrepresentation of herself, and her lying to me. I called her on it, understandably pissed, betrayed, and she grew angry, took to finding ways to piss me off in turn.

Which, in my experience, is what happens. I get hurt, I lash out, people lash back at me, not realizing, or not caring, that they hurt me first and my reaction is a valid reaction. This is the rule. But, alas, she would link to me from specific searches online, and find other ways to piss me off, and admitted it to me finally. Eventually going away altogether, until, ironically enough, the other night, when I was feeling particularly harassed! She must've gotten a giggle out of my ranting and raving, and that's fine. I'm over what happened between us, and I don't know if she is or not. I'll probably never know. Time heals all wounds, however large or small.

More from the guestbook.....

From "another person who thinks youre an idiot":

That's just rude. And unnecessary. This is where we move to the really nasty part, where people jump in and just want to put me down, just want to be mean, without knowing much about how I feel, nor caring, frankly. Again, Golden Rule applies.

What kind of a loser obsessively checks her stats, anyway? What are the stats for?

Most people, and it's safe to say 'most', have some sort of site statistics counter on their web pages, especially diaries. People want to get some idea of who the audience is. It serves many purposes, least of which is preserving anonymity, if that's your bag. Say you don't want your mother reading your diary. You get a site meter, you check your stats, and when another person with your unique IP shows up one day, from a PC that sounds suspiciously like yours, using an old version of Netscape, or whatever, you know it's Mom, you lock it up.

Or, if you just want to know how many people read you in a day, you can find that out, or when someone from Asia drops in, you might think, "Hey, that's pretty cool, I've got someone in Asia reading my little diary, who'd have thought?" And I don't check obsessively, I check as often as anyone else, but when I notice a pattern forming, I get suspicious, and I have an extremely inquring mind. I love detective work, finding answers to questions, seeking the truth, ferreting out information. My mind is very active, and my site meter is one of many tools I use, just online. I love research, it's a passion of mine.

Do you advertise? What is the necessity of knowing who/how many/when you have viewers? It's stupid.

Aw, now, it's not stupid, not at all. Like I described, it's a valuable tool, and most people who run web sites, which Diaryland allows us to do, run our own little sites, have some form of site stats available. It comes included with the Gold Membership as well. Andrew, the creator of Diaryland included it as a perk because he knows the value of having the ability to check to see who's reading, and how often. Plus, know what? It's fun. Oh, and I have advertised, on a diary registry, you can see the link at the bottom of this page.

Noone cares about you or your stupid diary.

There you're wrong. I have people reading me who've been reading me for a very long time. We start to feel like real friends after reading each other's diaries. A lot of people even meet on Diaryland, and get together in person. I have two 'real life' friends who've started their own diaries here, and they care a great deal about me, they know me and read what I write here. I've made wonderful friendships through having this diary. And a lot of people wander in here by accident, read a bit, bookmark it and come back later. It's amazing over these past two years how many people have read this diary.

And YOU have come here too! Obviously you care, or you wouldn't be here. :)

It's just like every other diary out here, open to the public.

In that regard, yes, it is like the other open diaries, open to the public. I've locked it in the past, and it was locked earlier this week, or over the weekend, I forget at this point, but I'm a member of many diaryrings, and one of the prerequisites of joining a ring is that your diary stay unlocked. So I like to keep it open if I can. I get really self conscious from time to time, as I've been the past few weeks, far too aware of the people, like you, who have bad intentions when they visit, but all in all, as a community, this has been a great and very valuable experience. And my diary, at times, is pretty well written. People have told me. Again, I don't normally use emoticons in my diary, but I want you to know, that despite the stress I've been feeling, and the sadness at my uncle's dying, I am smiling to you, I wish you no harm. You are misguided in attacking me. :)

Dufus, if you don't want people reading(or viewing through your blinds as you so lamely put it - so not a good analogy for the situation - how about a girl who left her diary open on the sidewalk EVERYDAY then YELLS at people for reading it?)..if you don't want people reading, PASSWORD. Gah, you're an idiot.

I hope it made you feel better to write this. And to leave it anonymously, quite cowardly. I'm not an idiot, I have a high IQ, I'm well educated, well traveled, a bit eccentric and fairly cosmopolitan. My analogy was a good one, you didn't understand it, beacause maybe you are a bit..... well, I won't stoop to namecalling here, I'll let you do that - though you're not terribly good at it. I'm not yelling at anyone for reading my diary, my beef was with the people who were consistently clicking on it, throughout the day. I update once a day, NORMALLY, and one click is good enough. No, I can't tell anyone how many times a day to click on her favorite diary, but these aren't people who list me as a favorite diary, or communicate with me at all. They've been lurking, linking to me from other people's guestbooks, and when I write about it here, as I write about whatever is on my mind, they ramp it up a bit, they exacerbate the situation by exaggerating the offensive behavior. Why would that be, but to anger me, to aggravate me?

I don't want people, in general, to stop reading, I never wanted that. Well, on the rare occasion, sure, but in general, no. I like a little feedback, that's normal, like Catie in her message board. She has her own message board attached to her diary, just so she can talk to the people who read her. We all like a little reassurance, a little feedback, a little appreciation. Writing a diary is a very personal endeavor, and to have people, strangers, read it and not say anything can be disconcerting. But we get past it, we don't think about that aspect, as long as the stats are normal. When one person starts 'stalking', as I call it, it becomes a 'situation'. This is what we had.

Catie, Heather, j, Korn, could've just said, "Know what, you're right, you've got a stupid diary, who cares, I'm leaving", but they stayed, to harass, quite specifically. This, and only this, has been my point all along. Any intelligent and caring person would see it.

In fact, some people have written to me, via email of their support. Here is an example of something really nice someone wrote to me yesterday:

Jo, don't cut yourself short, your a very talented person. Don't let others piss you off, or tick you off. They won if they did.

And this:

I hope you're able to get some rest tonight and clear your mind of those pesky dolts. Hang in there...

No 'idiots', but a well chosen and gentle word, "dolts". People who like me. I have people who read this and like me, who don't think I'm an idiot, who look forward to whatever I'm going to write next, and seem to support me no matter what. Isn't that amazing?

The ones like you, all of you who've taken the time to give me grief, are few and far between, but you can be loud when you want to be heard. I do hope you find another outlet for your anger, or take it out in your own diaries. Find a way to be happy with your own self expression, and "Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You". It's the best way to live.

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