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2001-08-13 / 7:02 p.m. ~Sticks and stones may hurt a lot, but words can be like daggers~ Please read the previous entry for this one to make sense. Yes, I'm totally conflicted about writing here, and I think if you "diary surf" for a while you will find MANY echoing the same conflict. Why are we here? Who do we hope will read us? How personal do we want to be? Do we care what our readers think? Will they like us after reading about our private lives? Will we need to lock our diaries, shut out the idiots of the world? One of my favorite diarists recently did just that, she locked her diary, and she may keep it locked. She did give me the key, the password, and for that I was grateful because she is a wonderful writer, and I didn't want to miss out on her life. I've locked mine again, and unlocked it. Locked it because I wanted NO ONE to read it, but me, but then I got email from someone who was disappointed she couldn't read it, and I gave her the password. Then I thought about what I've posted here, and I thought that really I would like anyone who wants to read it to be able to. I want others to know what can happen. I've been gloriously (not gloriously written, but gloriously unfailing) attacked with words. I've been told not to feel any sort of insult, any sort of pain, I've been told the person who attacked me is not even real, not to me, that people online are not real. Why would anyone think this? Why would anyone think that because I am sitting here typing on my keyboard instead of talking on a telephone, instead of sitting across from you face to face, that I am any less real? I am a human being, I have feelings. Number one rule of "Netiquette": the people you encounter online are REAL people. The screen names, the "entities" in diaries, chat rooms, message boards, are all REAL people, with real blood flowing through their veins. Because they are accessible to you only through words on a video display terminal is NO reason to insult them and "flame" them. It's immature and just nasty. I thought about what he wrote to me all day. He says I'm passive agressive, and I doubt he even knows what that means. He bandied it about like the greatest insult he could muster. He said I am emotionally invested in him, I lack any grasp on reality, I live my life online, oh, he insulted me, insulted me, lashed out at me, over and over again, made me out to be a total freak, and for a second, amidst my Monday, my hellish cubicle, and my PMS, I started to believe him, in a little way, and in a greater way I wanted to make him see how incredibly cruel he'd been, how wrong he is, how nasty, wanted to lash back, but knew there was nothing I could do. This left me with a frustration so palpable I could feel it, taste it, I could see its blackness enveloping me, could see the darkened pit into which I was sinking. How could anyone, much less a virtual stranger, one with whom I'd exchanged pleasant emails in the past, a fellow diarist, a fellow writer, one whom I'd supported, yes, publicly, one whom I'd boosted when he did not believe in himself, turn on me, be so totally vicious to ME, one who has done nothing more than, yes, ask for appreciation for a good deed? He now tells me he cares nothing about me, nor anyone else "online". Anyone using a computer, anyone in the world who happens to encounter him through his writing, on the internet, will never be more than electrons to him. Not one of us exists as a person, and if he wounds us with his words, if he insults and badgers and aims to hurt, and we feel any of the pain intended for us, it is because we have an unhealthy emotional investment, in him. What planet is this person from? This is someone who has felt his own pain, deep, deep intense pain, written about it, here, on diaryland, about the girl he loved, the one who turned away from him and cried in mourning for her lost relationship with her ex-boyfriend.....after he, the entity here, made love with her for the first time. I was sympathetic, I was supportive to his story. He has a Guestbook. He has a Sitemeter, but he denies he wants to be read. We all want to be read, we all want readers. If we didn't, we would write in Word, or a similar word processing program. We would write on paper, where no one could see. He is a hypocrite, he has his own incredibly flawed arguments, but proceeds to do nothing but tell me how my own logic is flawed. If he really wanted to write in order to better his writing, he would take a workshop, or simply practice at home, privately. Perhaps we can see who the troubled one here really is? How could I let someone like this bring me down? How could I be dying all day to really take the time to write about it here, conflicted over and over again about the idea of all of this being public, and then driving on the way home, passing up a dog along the highway? How could I be doing that? Passing that dog, not stopping to rescue it, too set on coming here, writing only. Torn up inside because someone tore me apart. Someone I respected and appreciated and supported. This person telling me that he does not exist and neither do I. And I know if I saw him in person he would only cower, unable to speak these same words to my face. He professes to know me better than I know myself, to psychoanalyze me, this person, this very young boy, this admittedly uneducated person, this person who cannot find a job due to his lack of education and smarts. This is the person who tells me I crave attention, I seek it out, and if this insults me then I have issues. Thank you Dr. Freud. And this person, this boy, who reads Quoted every day, or so he had said, doesn't "give a shit" that he is now quoted himself. Hypocrite. One of the most amusing things about all that he wrote (and yes, now that I am writing here, locked, unlocked, locked, unlocked, I feel SO much better, so much clearer, writing it all out makes me see how fucked up he is) is that every time he insults me he tells me that if I am insulted I have issues, I have "a limited grasp on reality". Since when does being insulted by someone insulting me mean I have a limited grasp on reality? Huh? Oh yes, let's not forget that it also means I am dense. Oh here, this part is really sweet: "Perhaps you should try and figure out why you're insulted by the relatively benign ideas I've directed at you. You might find enlightenment." What? Benign? Telling me I am a freak is benign? Basically the guy is trying to tell me that I need to be institutionalized for some sort of psychosis, but it's all just benign? Yeah, I have no grasp on reality, but it's just benign, not hurtful, if I can figure out why that's insulting to me I will find enlightenment. This guy is so fucking lost it's finally beginning to really amuse me! Thank god. What I felt all day was intense frustration at not being able to deal with it, not being able to sit and write it here, in the diary that I have come to count on, the place where I feel I can write whatever I want, and maybe someone else will read it and like it, or yeah, maybe someone from a web site I admire will read it and take a shine to me, and there's nothing wrong with any of it. I'm enlightened. I realize he is very troubled, and I knew that when I read his diary. He had lost feeling, he was so wounded in his puppy dog first romance that he could not recover. I knew this. My mistake, which has been a grand lesson here, was feeling compassion for him. Reaching out to him, caring. How sad that caring can be a mistake, but it often is. And again, sad because of this medium, and being construed, perceived, as less than human for being here. Cost of the War in Iraq
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