These dangerous nutjobs are loose on the Internet when they should be locked up in asylums, chemically lobotomized with compounds of medications. They have no censor button or "filter." They think the Internet is like the Old West where anything goes, and so far, Congress has allowed it.
Cyberbullies and cyberstalkers hide behind anonymity and fake identities, posting comments that ruin lives, spreading lies, making up shit, all simply because there's no accountability for their actions... yet.
But just you wait. The time is approaching when these cybercrazies will face the consequences of their actions.
Ironically, bullies are more often female. Don't ask me why. As a woman, I think it's shameful. Bullies are not only kids or teens. Many are adult women who really should know better, and would make Jerry Springer guests look intelligent and classy by comparison. Bullies come in all shapes and sizes, but the one thing they have in common is low self-esteem. Some use bullying as a defense mechanism. Others are bullies because they're mentally unbalanced, or to put it in more basic terms, they're fucking crazy.
For much of my life, I've been a magnet for crazy. It's as if crazy people see my steady glow and are drawn to it like hummingbirds to nectar. They want to feed off my energy like metaphysical vampires. These mentally ill and emotionally damaged people don't realize their behavior is unhealthy, because they are trapped within their illnesses.
I'm popping this blog's cherry with the story of Lizzygate.
Lizzy (not her real name) is a 30something girl with much promise, but whose self-pity and self-loathing is so toxic that she accuses others of somehow victimizing her, when in fact, she bullies them. I met Lizzy in an unusual social situation and befriended her. I saw in her a supreme intelligence and artistic talent that somehow had lost its way because of a traumatic event that happened to her a decade before we met.
She has had an eating disorder since her teen years, struggling with self-esteem issues. Lizzy identifies with Sylvia Plath: a suicidal, depressed poet, trapped in darkness and misery. Lizzy was sexually assaulted in college and ten years later still carried a victim mentality, unable to move forward with her life.
When we met, I mistakenly thought I could help her to discover her strength, and show her that she could choose to be happy. For several months, I was the loyal and devoted friend. I'd pick her up and take her places, since she didn't have a car or driver's license. (She is too unstable to handle driving a car.) I'd take her out for music, cook meals to put weight on her frail frame, and listen to her stories about how her life was horrible. I'd help her in various ways, boosting her up as often as possible.
Her parents paid her rent so she only had to work part-time. She had a sharp mind, was well-read, and had artistic talent. For four months, the friendship went on, and day after day I would see her post her misery on Facebook. Lizzy was filled with anger and rage. She identified herself as a victim, and insisted there was nothing she could do to improve how she felt. She claimed to be powerless over her feelings.
At one point in the brief friendship, she sent me an email thanking me for being an amazing, supportive friend. She remarked that I was the only person who truly listened or understood, and that her mother was grateful she had a friend like me.
Lizzy had been hospitalized for suicide attempts, one of which was because a guy named Rod had rejected her after a handful of dates. She was unstable and melodramatic, in need of constant attention. One day I suggested that she try something new. I said, "Why don't you try posting just one positive thing every day and see how it feels? Isn't it time you start moving forward instead of staying trapped in feeling sorry for yourself?"
She flew into a rage, screamed she had PTSD, and that she would "never" get over what had happened to her.
I said, "I'm not discounting the magnitude of what happened to you. But at a certain point, you make a conscious choice to stop living in the past. We all have our stories. We all experienced things that affected us painfully, profoundly, deeply, and left indelible scars on our hearts and souls. But the only way to heal is to forgive, let go and move on... one step at a time. I'm not saying it's easy..."
I tried reasoning with Lizzy, forgetting that the concept of reason is not in a crazy person's toolbox. I told her that although she can't change what happened to her, she was in control of NOW, i.e. the "what is," and could CHOOSE to move forward... that we are not defined by what has happened to us, and we have the choice of how to react or how we allow something to affect us.
Lizzy reacted as if I had said something unforgivable. She called me names and attacked me, accusing me of being a horrible person. She had her friends on Facebook send me nasty emails as well. She became a bully.
When I realized that being friends with Lizzy was toxic, I extricated her from my life, post haste. I severed the friendship, backing away with as much grace as I could muster at the time. You would think the story ended there, but it doesn't.
She began sending vitriolic, ranting emails, each from a different email address. I ignored all of them and stayed on the high road. She sent a few more ugly missives, but got no response from me. Lizzy tried to blame me for her self-hatred. She used passive-aggressive statements riddled with melodrama.
Here's the thing. I will not engage with crazy. I will not be manipulated by crazy people. What they say about me (or to me) does not change how I feel about myself, or who I know myself to be.
Lizzy wanted me to feel guilty about some wrong she felt I'd done, all a product of her mentally ill imagination. I had been her friend. I had tried to help her. I infused our conversations with honesty and compassion, but she didn't want to hear the truth. Now she wanted me to somehow suffer because she felt I was to blame for her misery. Nope, wasn't gonna happen. I continued to ignore her and after some silence, thought I was free of her. I was wrong.
About six months later, I was seriously harassed by some other cyberbullies on Facebook (I wasn't kidding when I said I'm a magnet for sociopaths), and Lizzy got wind of it. She reached out to these criminals, excited to get their attention. She proceeded to tell them intimate details about me and my life which I had shared with her during our friendship, violating ME. Ironically, she behaved just like the man who had raped her.
She took great joy from intentionally attacking my reputation, and attempting to ruin my life. The more Lizzy could inflict hurt, the happier she became. Finally Lizzy had found who she really was - a bully. And she liked being a bully. It gave her a perverted sense of power.She told these other bullies that she was afraid of me - what a joke! This girl was stalking me, sending me email after email, while I was steering clear of her, and she had somehow convinced herself (and now them), that I was a bad person.
She "followed" me on Twitter, and even got onto one of my Facebook groups as an admin. If I'm as horrible as she says, why would she keep inserting herself into my life wherever possible?
Her August 2011 email to me was especially troubled. In it she claimed that she "never intentionally hurt another person." Just four months earlier, she had gone out of her way to share my information with strangers and help them harass and terrorize me. I would call that intentional, and not accidental. But again, Lizzy has trouble differentiating between right and wrong, sane and fucking nuts.
In her warped view, she projected onto me all the rage she felt about being raped. Even though I had never intentionally hurt her, she manufactured in her mind a scenario that justified her right to attack and terrorize me repeatedly. She even convinced her new boyfriend to join the crusade, telling him lies that got him to participate in her online slanderfest.Since she was unstable and capable of hurting herself, for all I knew she was also capable of harming me. So I continued with the proverbial radio silence, hoping she'd find a new obsession. I figured that if I ignored her long enough, she might actually go away.
Again, there was a false sense of quiet, and Lizzy left me alone for a few blissful months. I kept a low profile on the Internet, living like someone in witness protection, all to keep Lizzy's unstable behavior out of my world.
But every so many months, Lizzy would find another way to harass me. She'd track down a page on one of my sites that had an "email me" link, and she'd use it to send me the same blame-filled message. She was like a broken record, repeating the same accusations each time she lashed out, unprovoked.
I wondered what triggered her each time, just as you wonder why a serial killer goes dormant and then starts up again. What was the inciting event? What was going on in Lizzy's life that she felt the need to send me a hate-filled message? Did she really have that much time on her hands? Who has time to track someone down repeatedly, for the sole purpose of telling them how much you despise them? Who does that? I'll tell you who. A mentally ill person, being enabled by everyone around her and not getting adequate psychiatric care.
I debated whether to shut down the link to thwart her from harassing me. She has made it her life's mission to harass me for no purpose other than to tell me off... time and time again. Crazy? Hell yeah.
Yet another email from Lizzy, claiming I somehow ruined her life and was to blame for her inability to recover from her rape, that I was solely to blame for allegedly setting her recovery back. Of course, her claims were not based in reality, just as Lizzy wasn't based in reality. She was stuck in her cycle of insanity.
Remember Rod? After a handful of dates with Lizzy, he knew something was amiss and backed away in self-preservation. In response, Lizzy took an overdose of pills, and then picked up the phone and called him to tell him, so that he'd (of course) call 911 and come running to make sure she was okay. That's about as passive-aggressive as a bully can get.
If you don't love her or want to be her friend, she will bully you relentlessly until you despise her as much as she despises herself. Or at least that's what she's trying to do. But instead of despising her, you merely end up pitying her. Because how pathetic is it to blame others for your own misery?
After that suicide attempt, she started sending the guy email after email, telling him that he had ruined her life, and blaming him for hurting her recovery. Sound familiar? Yep. He got the barrage of crazy, accused of being the source of her unhappiness, until she found a new target... me.
She made a point of telling me about him, and painted him in a terrible light, getting the sympathy from me that she craved, and validation that she was indeed a victim of horrible people. It's interesting to note that I had lunch with this fellow after I ended my connection to Lizzy, and found him to be a reasonable person who agreed that Lizzy is one of the most disturbed individuals either of us had ever met.
A year ago (and again a few weeks ago), I spoke with the Center where she was treated, and let them know I was considering filing a restraining order but was concerned how that might trigger her. They suggested that I continue to ignore her, because they were sure her obsession with me would eventually subside. In the last month, I've received two more delusional emails from her.
Lizzy underestimates me, thinking I'll somehow believe her delusion. She wants to hurt me and wants me to feel as hurt as she does. She doesn't realize that I am strong and know who I am. Anyone who is sane knows I am not responsible for Lizzy's misery nor am I capable of controlling her happiness. Only she is the master of those emotions.
People who are bullies have usually been victims of other bullies. Bullies are antisocial people who need to take their unhappiness out on others. Lizzy is no exception. She's a bully. She's a stalker. And unfortunately, she's also nuts.
So, the next time you try to help a crazy person, remember...
Coming soon: Tales of Other Nuts & Cyberbullies
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