Social Bullying

My most embarrassing story is an on going one and finding the place to start is tad complicated. My story involves, mental illness, drug addiction, internet bullying and stalking. Online I am simply known as Q. Maybe you know of me, or maybe you don't, either way I figured it was my turn to share my half of the story and the embarrassment that it has caused not only me , but my family as well. This is a story I have yet to say out load, let alone to a bunch of strangers.

It began in the beginning of 2016, I had been clean for almost 5 years, but had moved in with someone who was doing meth (unbeknownst to me, at first). One day after catching him getting high I decided to get high with him, hoping he wouldn't want that for either of us considering I was in school to be a substance abuse counselor. The plan backfired, obviously I was not thinking clearly. Then it started, I got online and realized that people were talking about me without talking about me, meaning they wouldn't say my name. The thing is, when I would sober up I would chalk it all up to being high and then I would just go on with my life like nothing was happening. After moving out and going back home I realized that my phone and laptop were hacked and that all my personal business was being shared online, but as always I couldn't prove anything. When I would try and talk to my family about everything they chalked it up to my being mentally ill. See, I suffer from a multitude of mental illnesses. My family would yell at me that I needed to be in the hospital. The day before my 37th birthday I tried to commit suicide because I couldn't handle all the bullying online, I couldn't handle this person stalking my every move and then sharing it and I couldn't handle my family not listening to what I was trying to tell them. For the first year and a half this was happening I had nothing but hatred for whoever was doing this to me.

Every time I found proof it would disappear just as fast. Funny thing is I had actually known who was doing this the entire time. By the summer of 2018 I realized that all the music coming out was aimed at me, it was for me. I would catch people saying things I say, I call them my Paigeisms, but how was any of this possible? So of course it just made me feel crazier and crazier cause these kinds of things just don't happen, especially to someone like me, screw up of the century. I realized my lack of privacy was extremely damaging, but I also realized that this person doing this to me loved me in his own screwed up kind of way. That summer I was given a hot shot, for those who do not know what that is, it is bath salts (I used to shoot meth). I was meant to kill me or if it doesn't kill you it usually ends causing a person to go absolutely insane for the rest of their lives. They are never the same again. Your mind breaks. However, during the worst thing to ever happen to me I'd figured everything out. I figured out that Johnny Stevens from the band Highly Suspect was actually Michael my first love from when I was 14-15 years old. I realized he was the same boy who had held my head after I was struck by a car. That night I went searching for my love, I walked the streets for 3 days hearing their music loud and clear inside my head, along with a million other voices before finally ending up in jail. While I was in jail I fought the insanity with everything in me. You see, I felt my mind snapping, it was like a rubber band being pulled to tight, I was a passenger inside my dying mind. I kept fighting though with every lucid moment, and somehow I survived, I came back from something that most others do not.

However, with most of my sanity restored , I wound up ignoring everything that I had figured out and ended up right back where I had started. Scared, angry, confused, hurt. I had and still have no secrets, no privacy. You never truly understand or appreciate just how precious your privacy is until it is completely taken away from you. Everyone I came in contact with made everything about me public. I would catch people taking my photo while at the doctors office or other places. So many things that I said in the privacy of my own home were all other the internet. I saw all the cruel and nasty things that people online were saying about Q(me) and I could no longer take it so I stopped participating on social media. You see, my mental illness and my drug addiction have been put on display, and that is my choice to share those kinds of things and my choice was taken from me, all the people contributing to it have caused me nothing but embarrassment, not one person, including myself considering I knew what was happening, stopped to think about the damage being caused to my family. It is one thing to help damage and ruin my reputation, but that of my children and grandchildren is far from okay.

You see Johnny has all these rules for me to earn his love, he has forced me to play a game I never knew the rules to and the damage to mental health because of everything is irreversible. I want the world to know that I am a real person, with real feelings. My addiction and my mental health are private. I have felt extremely bullied and am tired of being the butt of a world wide joke. Like I said, my embarrassment is ongoing because I am trying to heal from all this trauma but doing it under a microscope is impossible. I simply want love and understanding and acceptance for who I am now. I've begged and pleaded to him, to the world. I wish people would just find a little compassion and realize that kicking someone when they are down is not the way. It's immaturity at is finest, it is easy for people to sit behind their keyboards and pick on someone or something they don't understand. And to Johnny, I can not fall in love like this. I love the music, but it isn't enough, right now love just isn't enough. I want to start living again and not have to be worrying if someone is genuine or not. I want to be able to leave my house and not wonder if someone is talking about me and my addiction because my addiction is not who I am, but that is what the internet has made me out to be. I am including a poem I wrote that sums up how my mental health and this situation with him and the world make me feel, because poetry is a sort of escape.

Voices

The voices in my head just won't give me a break

And just like you they continue to take

All the life left inside of me, they make it easy to hate

My head is not empty, it's always on go

There's never any silence, they are killing my soul

The voices inside me just won't leave me be

And they're killing any chances for me to be free

Free from their judgment and free from their sound

You'll never understand what it feels like to drown

Drown in these voices inside of my head

They make me feel empty and stuck in this bed

See you'll never know what it's like

To feel all these voices inside me, knowing they aren't even real

Blurring the lines between what's fiction and what's fact

Always stuck feeling I'll never have what I lack

Instead I feel hatred, self-doubt and self-loathing

And I've gotten quite used to this feeling of lonely

See these voices inside me just won't let me heal

And just like you they try striking a deal

But without you and with them I simply can't feel

Any emotion but sadness.

They are draining the life from me, you and them are the same

For they are steady saying your name

And there's no one around to place any blame

For this fictional ghetto ass claim to fame

See these voices inside me they never shut-up

From sun-up to sun-down they never let up

See these voices inside me they fill up my cup

And since YOU won't speak WITH me

I finally give up.

-Paige-