I Got Revenge and I Don't Regret It: The Story of the Troll

I did the wrong thing today

And I don’t regret it.

I did the childish thing. I wasn’t the bigger person. I made the wrong choice. I stooped down so many levels. I stopped listening to the voice in my head that told me to knock it off.

Have you ever been so angry that right as you’re about to say the most horrible thing, it feels like your vision tunnels? I can only describe it as the feeling that my brain is shaking inside of my skull. It’s like those moments in movies where a person is about to access their superpower and so they feel things they’ve never felt.

I felt power. I felt this person at my mercy. I didn’t use all of that power. Not even a fraction. Even without all of it, I was still ruthless. Several months of pain coming out so fast that I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop.

I know I should regret it. I know I should look in the mirror and hate myself for it. But I can’t. I’m too busy thinking about the person I was a few months ago, the person who was so hurt by cruel words. Cruel behavior that I was powerless to stop. And once I got that power back for myself, I wanted to make them feel what they made me feel.

When they said “Thank god Abigail has agoraphobia because she doesn’t deserve to be a part of society”

Or when they said “Abigail will never apologize (for something I had said unrelated) because narcissists never do, but they hide behind so-called mental illness giving other people a bad name. I hope she never has to leave the house”

Or “Btw Abigail the dog was cute, sad that he’s gone” the day after I put my Sadie Grace down.

Or “Abigail performative is not bravery, and don’t get it twisted, I said you should’ve been kept away from society because you are a terrible person” after I spoke about trying to be brave to overcome my agoraphobia.

And so many more… all anonymously. Yes, those are verbatim quotes.

I wanted to hurt her the way she had hurt me. Not as much because quite frankly, a couple of those put some intrusive thoughts into my head and I wouldn’t want her to experience that. But I wanted her to sit in the car while crying just like I did. I wanted her to feel watched and stalked and terrified just like I did.

From then on, it got both better and worse. it came in the form of an anonymous reply to any tweet I posted. Since her account was private, I couldn’t even see the username of who was talking on my tweets in order to block them.

All I could see was “1 Quote Tweet” and I’d click on it and it would say “No Quote Tweets” — a tell-tale sign that someone with a private account is talking about you.

Later, she admitted it to me later that it was her doing it. I just couldn’t see it. She had something to say about everything. My mental health, my appearance, my disability, my dead dog, my dead family… my past abuse.

Yeah, that last one kinda got to me.

Things I tried to be brave about, to talk about publicly in hopes that it would de-stigmatize some of the topics. They all became weapons against me.

After a while, I realized there was no line she wouldn’t cross. I saw her attack my friends over their mental health, appearance, disabilities, sexual identities, them being autistic, and whatever else you can imagine. I saw her tell people to end their lives.

So I got mad. I got real mad.

All I could think was “do it back, because you know you can be just as mean if not meaner”

I didn’t go as far as she did. I couldn’t bring myself to do that. But I did feel something inside of me snap when I had finally had enough.

One day, she slipped up. She said something that she shouldn’t have and it was very very quickly traced back to her real identity that we were already familiar with.

When her identity had been revealed and I had the power to absolutely destroy her. Which I did think about doing. I shouldn’t have had that power. I thought about calling her job to tell them what she had said. I thought about telling her gay brother that she was using the F slur. I thought about how I could take a lot of this information about her and use it to tear her life to absolute shreds. Make her lose sleep, the same sleep I was finally catching up on now that it was over.

Let me explain something about me. I am both the toughest person you will ever meet, and the softest. My loyalty to my people runs so deep that it’s just as red as my blood. I will rush to help perfect strangers if they need it. But when people treat me like I am less than human, I possess the ability to be the cruelest person. But I have been learning to bite my tongue while doing so in order to not ruin my own life in the process.

So I gathered up everything I could find on her. I dug so deep that I found out she has two separate facebook accounts for her cats. Deep enough that I used the internet archives to find a snapshot of her old website domain from back while it was still up. Hell, I even went on the actual dark web to try to find a way to break past the lock on her private account and see what had been said about me (spoiler alert: I wasn't able to). I loaded up my file of information and was ready to weaponize it against her.

I went from knowing nothing about who she was to knowing the color and pattern of every single bedspread she had slept on in the last 5 years. I even had pictures.

I could feel my conscience pulling at me: begging me not to do this. But I had to.

I saw what she had said to my friends, what she had said to me. I saw what sort of things she was wishing on us.

Why do I always have to be the bigger person? I’m tired of taking the high road. I wanted to take the roads that led through ground effing zero.

I could’ve been meaner. To be honest, I’ll probably spend a lot of time regretting the fact that I wasn’t. I’ll probably also be forever grateful that I wasn’t. The things I could’ve said likely would’ve ended me up in jail - but not her, the person who said these things first.

I found out that a woman 20 years older than me was dictating my life while hiding behind a keyboard. For months, I didn’t say certain things or do certain things. I hid from this person because I felt unsafe. Some of my friends who weren’t involved in this but knew about the situation had even urged me to call the police because they feared for my safety.

What was I supposed to tell them? I’m 22 years old and being cyber bullied? They would’ve laughed in my face and told me to log off.

And at several times, I did. I logged off. I turned my accounts to private - even knowing she could still see it all because she likely followed me to make sure she missed nothing while I was locked down. I sorted through 800+ followers trying to delete the ones who could possibly be her. I lost my right to live my social life the way I wanted to because she wanted to hurt me. Somehow, her words became my responsibility? How is that fair?

It isn’t.

“Life isn’t fair, Abigail”

Shut up, I know.

It went further than drama. I hardly knew this person. In fact, I hardly recall ever even saying anything to her. I just knew that in the past, she had said some pretty vile things on the internet and for that, I disliked her.

It wasn’t high school. It was a 42 year old woman telling my friends to end their lives. Telling me I don’t deserve to be part of society. I had nowhere to turn.

So I did what I did. I did it in front of everyone. I did the equivalent of ripping the mask off of her face and telling the world her secrets. I showed the collage I had made of the meanest things she had said, and every time I felt I went too far, I showed that collage and said “well, this went too far too”

And it felt amazing. And then bad. And then it felt like nothing at all. It felt numb because I wasn’t sure if this was the end or just the beginning.

I just wanted my life back.

Then I was told that two wrongs don’t make a right. You know who said that? The same person who received one of those anonymous hate messages. Except the one they received? The header was about me. The header talked about what a sh*t human I am or something.

The word “dox” got thrown around a lot. Funny thing is, every piece of information that I posted about her was found in 3 minutes or less. It was all free to the public. I even showed exactly how I found it all, just to reiterate that the only thing I did to find it was type in her name.

I wanted her to feel that same violation that I had felt. Like someone knew everything there was to know about her, and for everyone else to know it too.

This story isn’t for pity. I don’t want your pity, you can keep it.

This story is about what I did and why I did it. And the only reason I’m even writing this down is for me. Because so many times over the last several months, I’ve been told to brush it off. Walk it off, Abigail. She can only hurt you if you let her.

No.

NO.

I am a person. Yes, I am no longer 16 and in high school, I’m well aware. Does that mean I’m not allowed to hurt? Does that mean I’m not allowed to feel all of those horrible words as they wash over my skin? Since when did pain have an age limit?

You’re being immature, Abigail. Shut it down.

You’re being dramatic, Abigail. Grow up.

No.

NO.

I spent too much time battling the original bad thoughts in my head, I didn’t need to let hers take their place. Since when was self-defense and retaliation made into such a bad thing? Two wrongs don’t make a right but immobilizing someone the same way they did to you? That sounds very much like poetic justice if you ask me. If you make me jump, I’m grabbing you so we both go down. 1, 2, 3… Geronimo.

Nobody cares about your petty fights, Abigail. Let it go.

NO.

I cared.

I cared. I cared about all of the times I felt myself locking up. All of the times my heart had plummeted into my gut when I got a new email. A new email with the header saying that the faceless person was back to tell me all of the ways I didn’t belong here anymore.

Why shouldn’t I care?

All of the times when they weaponized my greatest faults against me. All of the times I had to pretend I wasn’t hurting when really, I had never hurt so badly. Why shouldn’t I care?

Cover up those wounds, Abigail. Don’t let her see that you can break.

Don’t show them where to poke a sharp stick, Abigail. Don’t let her see you sweat.

Don’t talk about the bad day you’ve had, Abigail. She’ll make it worse.

Don’t let anyone see the fact that you are not made of stone, Abigail. She’ll know just how much of a human you are.

Pretend to be perfect, Abigail. That way she can’t find the imperfections.

No.

Let her shoot you, Abigail. But don’t you dare bleed where anyone can see.

No.

No. I am done.

I bled.

I did, I bled. I cried. I pulled pieces of myself apart and looked at them. Her words were written all over me. Then I heard the patronizing words of ‘inspiration’ from people that I told, them telling me the obligatory “Don’t let it get you down!” Jesus, why not just say that with a smile?

So this is it.

This is me getting the last word in before this chapter ends. My last words?

I’m done, and so are you.