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Trolls, stalkers and threats: ten years of my blogging experiences

I’ve had this blog since January 2009, and it has seen a lot in that time.  I’ve also had a website since around 2005.  So for the tenth anniversary of the blog and fourteenth of the website (merged in 2014), let’s do a little summary of what has happened:

For 3 years, I mostly wrote book reviews; not much happened.  Around 2012, it started to get a bit of traffic because I started writing about narcissism, which was just getting popular as a blog subject.

  1. In May 2012, two of my abusers came to my blog after not looking at it for a couple of years.  They discovered I’d been writing about their abuses, accused me of lying, threatened me with a lawsuit–and also threatened to stalk me at church.  I knew I was telling the truth, and zero lies.  So I stood my ground, kept the blog up, and continued telling friends/family/church friends/priest what was happening, as I had been doing for two years already.  It has now been 7 years, and no lawsuit.  The statute of limitations has also long since run out.  These two abusers still read my blog, but none of their many threats ever came to pass.  I count this as a victory.  I’m not sure why they check my blog anymore, because these days they often spend maybe a minute on it, and that’s not enough time to read anything.
  2. In August 2016, after I had supported a particular blogger for four years–comments, sympathy, reading her novel, reblogging her–she threatened me with a lawsuit for *quoting* her with full attribution (well within my rights under copyright law regarding Fair Use).  I took the quotes down, but after this, I wanted nothing to do with her anyway, or with promoting her blog.  But the fear and trepidation over this had to succumb to real-life trouble because a couple of days later, I got the call that my dad was dying in a few days.  That was a very difficult month–but I got through it, and I warn others about this blogger.  She is very popular online, and has had many other victims as well.  Or rather, she was–I’m very relieved to see that her blog is now offline and apparently has been for a while now.  Maybe people can still find good things in her book to help them understand narcissists, but she encouraged people to stay “stuck” in the anger stage–even yelled at people who said we should try to heal eventually–and blamed people for being victims of narcissists if they didn’t fit a certain category.  This is all very harmful, so I’m glad to see her no longer running a blog where she victimizes people who come to her for help.  Meanwhile, my own blog and website are still up, and I encourage you to try to heal and move on after your anger has run its course.  You’ll be much happier than if you endlessly try to find ways to “get even.”
  3. In early 2017 and again in early 2018, this blog was inundated with hits from malicious and obsessive trolls who had been stalking another blogger for a couple of years.  He’d attracted a whole mob of them, who now started checking me out for talking to him.  I had only just gotten a Twitter account, which they used to find my blog, where they began leaving snarky comments and combing through my archives looking for who knew what.  I used the blog for therapy and wrote all sorts of things about my past, so I feared what these people planned to do with it.  Even when the mob abated, I was told they still stalked my blog and Twitter and talked about me in their little circle.  I occasionally saw evidence of that, myself.  But for many months now, they still stalk the blog and Twitter account of their original target but seem to be leaving me alone.

 

Meanwhile, I have learned a lot about blogging and running a website.  I have learned things that have helped in healing from the past.  I’ve been working on a new novel for nearly four years now, a new passion, along with defeating Trump and what has become of the GOP in the last several decades.  I have learned a lot about and/or changed my mind about a lot of things, from politics to religion to abuse to history…. This has all happened over the fourteen years of this blog/website, and you can find it all in the archives.

I have also been very active on Twitter, here.  I don’t write as much on the blog as I used to because Twitter is a good way to share retweets and keep my followers up-to-date without having to go through the trouble of writing a blog post for everything that’s on my mind.  I encourage you to follow it (unless you’re a troll).

Some thoughts on my sociopathic stalkers as I revise an old post….

I’ve been revising old posts and putting them on my front page for a time, so more people can see them–and so I can take care of formatting issues in an orderly manner.  This website has nearly 1000 posts and pages.  😮

While revising this one to sticky-post last night, I found a note:

[Update 10/22/14: About six months ago, at least one of my stalkers began using a new device and connection.  I thought it was a new fan, until they gave themselves away, probably Richard.  He seemed particularly interested in this post for some reason.]

As I revised the post and thought about that weeks-long obsessive stalking campaign a year ago, I began adding the following as an update–which seems like it should also be a new post as well, about how to deal with blog stalking sociopaths:

Since the time described in this post, when I moved to WordPress.org and could now block them effectively, Richard and Tracy switched Internet Service Providers and began stalking my blog with different IPs.

(For people who don’t know what that is, IPs are your computer’s “address.”  Some are temporary, some are fixed.  They are easily obtained by many website hit trackers, and can also be blocked when you have access to your website’s root files.)

They occasionally use somebody else’s IP, whether belonging to a business wi-fi or to a friend.  Once, the IP belonged to a hotel.  They hook up their smartphone(s) to an Internet connection, or use their wireless plan.

But their usual IP has been the same since September 2013, so I could block them at any time: I just choose not to.  Well, except now and then, when I want to mess with them.

Nowadays, instead of bothering me, I find their antics on my blog highly amusing.  Such as in the above note from October 2014, describing when they came on from an unexpected place in April 2014, began obsessively and hilariously stalking my blog and probably raised its Google ranking, and then sent a little “guess who” in my blog stats.

They knew I would catch their little message.  When I called out these obsessive little buggers, they made a PDF copy of that post.  This stalking campaign went on for hours a day for weeks, making me wonder where they found the time.

They searched my blog for posts on stalking, for hours at a time.  I even took their search terms and made new post categories out of them.  🙂  (You can see a few of them at the bottom of this post.)

I describe this all here.  And in that post, I also wrote,

Ah, Richard or Tracy, I will block and unblock you at will, because it’s fun.

But don’t think I fear you anymore.

On the contrary, this is highly entertaining.  Bring it on.

That particular stalking campaign stopped abruptly after they read that.  I guess they wanted me to be scared by it, not amused.  LOL

These antics also make me almost certain that they deliberately drove by me a second time back in January 2013 because they wanted to spook me.  (I know they know it was me, because I heard their little girl call my name when she first saw me.)  Because if they can do this, they can do that.  It fits their modus operandi.

These antics prove that they’re sociopaths beyond any lingering doubt.  “Normal” people don’t behave like that: They’d either try to make things right or go away eventually, not carry out a campaign of intimidation and obsessive blog-checking.  “Normal” people have better ways to spend their time than trying to terrorize people.

(Well, okay, Richie on The Slap did that to Hector.  But he’s a teenager who mistakenly thought Hector raped his BFF, and it only went on for a short time, leading to Richie’s repentance.  Oh, yeah, and he’s also a fictional character.  😉  He’s not a real-life 42-year-old with a family, who claims to be a Christian.)

This really is a terrible example to set for one’s children.

I’ve also encountered other sociopaths before them.  One, the webmaster of a group we belonged to, e-mailbombed and carried out a smear campaign against my husband for daring to say, “Hey, you need to make some changes to the website.”

Another, a girl who constantly carried out smear campaigns against other people on a computer bulletin board system back in 1994.

And no, neither of these sociopaths ever admitted to wrongdoing, as they terrorized others.  I don’t know what ever happened to the Avenger, but the old webmaster eventually ended up in jail at least two or three times–and on the sex offender registry.

These antics prove Richard and Tracy are sociopaths, and they do this because I’m one of several people who have seen through their masks and know what they really are.  I’ve seen before how Tracy can go after perceived enemies, how ruthless she is, even as the target protests his or her innocence–especially if the target tries to tell.

But they’re amusing sociopaths at least.  If you can laugh at sociopaths, their power over you is gone.

The payoff of sharing my abusers’ sociopathic e-mail: Part 2 of my “Stalked” series has been pinned

Statcounter constantly reveals interest in various sections of my “Now I’m Being Stalked” series from 2012.

In this series, which was originally one long post, now split into 7 parts starting here, I described how Richard and Tracy had begun stalking me, and posted the sociopathic e-mail they sent me.

Then in 2014, I re-visited the e-mail with Running my abusers’ e-mail through the narc decoder.

The latest numbers, gathered about a month ago, showed that this series had received 528 views.

In Part 2 and “Running,” I tore apart the sociopathic e-mail by showing the truth behind my stalkers’ ludicrous, lying words.

And these posts are being read.  “Running” has received 33 hits just in the last month.  The various parts of “Stalked” have received 43 total in the last month.

Recently, Part 2 and “Running” have been getting more attention.  Someone in Canada has read “Running” 13 times over the past few days.  And now Part 2 has been pinned:

Gratitude Girl has pinned my post, just before 6am this morning her time, onto the Psych/Narcissism/Sociopathy/Abuse/Codependency board on Pinterest.  (She also pinned Breaking the Power of Narcissists.)

She runs the board; it has 407 followers.  Here’s hoping this pin helps the post go viral, just as a post to a Facebook group last spring made this post go viral: Wasted Years Mourning a Narcissist: Reclaiming Our Lost Selves and Thriving

[Update 4/4/15: And now somebody read “Stalked” (whole page) and “Running,” and subscribed to my blog.  🙂  )

My blog just contains diary posts, not the “expert” advice of life coaches or psychiatrists.  These detail my struggles and the lessons I learn from them.

Yet so many people are connecting with various posts, whether on narcissism or abuse, that I continually see yet another Facebook share in Statcounter, or a reblog.

It felt so risky to post on these subjects–especially when my two recent abusers discovered them and began stalking me for it.  It felt risky to continue posting even as they watched my blog every week–sometimes more often–to intimidate me into silence.

I didn’t know if they were laughing, if they were looking for a reason to sue, or what they wanted.

It was risky, intimidating, frightening, foolhardy.

But I did it anyway, to prove to myself that I wasn’t just some weak-willed, easily-dominated target of bullies.

And over time, my blog has grown.  My site currently averages 148 views a day and is maybe two months away from 100,000 views.  Others have found comfort and lessons in my posts.  Comments are often turned off, but I see it in repeat visitors, likes, printing my posts, subscriptions, and online shares.

It is particularly comforting to see this in the past week, right after I revised the formatting for the “Stalked” posts and sticky-posted a few of them on my front page for a bit.  Part 2 includes the sociopathic e-mail.

It is comforting to see others read Part 2 or “Running,” because they, too, see this e-mail for themselves.  They then read my response, and find something of value in it for their own struggles with abusers.  I see people click on the link that prints the post.

Just as it was comforting to share that e-mail with the members of the Forum, and know they understand and believe me.  And now, in the past month, new members of the Forum have gone through the 3-year-old threads, read the e-mail and empathized with me, then asked me if things were resolved, and if Richard was properly punished, because child abuse is disgusting.

Just writing these blog posts, and including the sociopathic e-mail from my abusers, was emotionally taxing, because the e-mail meant to rip me apart.

It made me practically catatonic when it first came in.  I was appalled and devastated to discover just how evil both Richard and Tracy truly are, to send such an e-mail and to even plan to stalk me at church!  To call themselves Christians, and then behave in such a manner–!!!!

The e-mail is so horrid (and proves me correct even while objecting to making Tracy out to be a “horrible person”) that I could not even open the original “Stalked” post again for two years.

The same as other e-mails sent by Tracy back in July and August 2010, which I kept as evidence, but have not even peeked at in five years.

Tracy’s style of writing would be familiar to many of you: the kind that tears you apart and makes you afraid to even open an e-mail from your abuser.

(Obviously, Tracy does not feel this way when reading my blog, since she reads here so often.)

When I read Oscar Wilde’s account of Bosie’s telegrams and letters in De Profundis, I realized that Bosie and his father were male Tracys.

Bosie and his father both had a raging dysfunction which Wilde said ran in the family, so it must have been some sort of Cluster B personality disorder.

From what I know of Tracy, abuse, narcissism, borderline personality disorder, and Bosie’s family, writing such horrid letters appears to be a common trait among abusers.

There is absolutely no concern for nor respect for the recipient, but rather a desire to make him or her feel smaller than a dust mite, to make her feel like the slime on the wall of a sewer pipe.

And it makes no difference whether the recipient did anything to deserve this: No, all that matters to the abuser is that the abuser THINKS he did.  Wilde would get such letters and telegrams from Bosie without rhyme nor reason to it.

So it was emotionally risky to open those posts again in order to revise them.  But I did it anyway.

It is wonderful and healing to see that my pain in doing this, is helping others to heal.

It was worthwhile not only to share those blog posts and the e-mail, but to keep them up.  Sometimes it takes a while, but others find them and use them to glean their own lessons.  They find validation for their own struggles.  They find a way to no longer care when their own abusers send them e-mails like mine sent me.

Then, sometimes, they share with others.

It’s all part of raising awareness and helping to heal abuse victims.

[Update 4/5/15:]  Also, the more I see people subscribing to my blog and connecting with the posts that skewer my abusers’ sociopathic e-mail to me, the less and less power that sociopathic e-mail retains over me.  I realize that my abusers have not been back at my church for two and a half years.

I realize that I feel mostly content these days, because I’m busy at church and Writer’s Club, and people in both places call me Friend.  This helps remove any residual emotional attachment to Richard.

My abusers do not have the ability to sue, no legal leg to stand on, so their e-mail had only an emotional power to hurt me.  Once I remove the emotional power, all their power to hurt me is gone.

BLOG HARD!

Why I post my abuse experiences

[This is already an often-read page along my sidebar, but I’m posting this for old readers who have not yet seen it.]

I post My Journey Through Recovery from Abuse, or the process of my journey from a recent, traumatic bullying experience, through the anger and pain, hopefully to rise above it through writing therapy.

I post college memoirs of how I’ve handled abuse/bullying in the past and risen above it.

Some things I write may reveal that I’m not blameless, but if I were, I wouldn’t be human.  Sometimes I won’t recognize my own blame, while readers might.  I am limited by my own perspective.  But it’s important that the story be truthful, not whitewashing.  Whitewashing would hurt my credibility.  It also won’t help other victims of abuse who struggle with feeling they brought on the abuse.

I DO NOT NAME MY ABUSERS ON THE INTERNET.  That information is reserved for friends and family (and people in authority if needed). 

The names used here are false.  I do not give addresses or post pictures of my abusers.  So revenge is out of the question.

This isn’t about holding onto pain or a “pity party.”  I don’t sit around all day brooding over how I’ve been treated in the long-past.

This was about analyzing what happened, fighting to understand, so that I could recognize patterns, weaknesses, and what could have driven my abusers to act in such a manner (without blaming myself, as they wanted to do).

One purpose of writing this was to get out all those feelings of anger, sadness and depression, to pull myself out of that deep funk–

–so that I could function again, enjoy life, pursue my dreams and interests, and have energy to give to others.

The blog is a journal to hold all those negative feelings so that my “real life” can be content–and so I have the strength to deal with what else comes my way each day.

In fact, most of the time, whatever incident you read about in these blogs, I barely think about anymore in my “real life.”  But I put it here not just to vent it out and heal, but to help others, as I explain below.

My own purposes in writing this have been fulfilled.  I continue to share this journal with you, my readers, to help you reach that stage of healing and contentment as well.

You can see every stage of my confusion, anger and grief, as I keep it up for you, along with how the abusers were able to entrap and keep me in their webs.  Through this, you can recognize your own experiences, and know that others have been there–yet survived.

I post my abuse experiences to help others recognize how abusers operate–and get out of that relationship.  I also post to validate and comfort other abuse victims, show them they are not crazy, that this happens to others.

I also post because two of my abusers have been keeping close watch on this blog since May 2012, and I want to prove to them (and myself) that they cannot intimidate and threaten me into silence–as I hope that maybe something I write will finally get through to them.

This is a safe way for me to confront them with what they have done, so that I can one day forgive them.

Abusers fear exposure, which is why they tried to threaten me into silence.  Oddly enough, by keeping up this blog despite threats, I seem to be keeping the abusers at bay.  Maybe because they know if they do anything else, I will post it–and that I am not afraid to go to authority figures for help.

I also post because I’ve been through some wacky and unbelievable stuff in my life, but it’s all true, it all really happened to me.  So I post it because I’m a born writer who just HAS to tell a good, wacky or tragic story when I have one.  Otherwise my writing would all be just boring, meaningless drivel.

I also post to raise awareness and understanding of abuse and how it affects people with social learning disorders (Asperger’s, NVLD).

I am joining the worldwide conversation on abuse.  I want the full accounts of my experiences to stay up even as the years pass, to help others have a more complete picture of just how abusers and narcissists act and how their targets react.

[written 2014: ] I am stickying old posts to breathe new life into them, something bloggers often struggle with, especially old posts from before they got readers.

I am also revising a web-book (The Darkness Engulfs Me: Abuse by Two Narcissists–and Betrayal by a Best Friend and Spiritual Mentor) which I wrote from 2010-2012, and posting it here, to get more readers.  I’m also revising and posting my College Memoirs web-book, for the same reason.  These are, or include, stories of abuse and bullying.

(A 4-page summary and index of the first story is here.  The process of working through the despair to healing, is here.)

In both web-books, since I wrote them about and/or during emotional periods in my life, there are passages which reflect this emotion.

But rather than take out all my anger, grief, etc., I will often keep those passages the way they are–even if I have long since moved past those emotions.

I believe this will connect more with my readers, especially those who are still in the midst of such emotions in their own struggles.

These web-books are for you my readers, after all, who can glean comfort, validation and lessons from my own struggles.  You can identify my mistakes (even the ones I don’t recognize myself) and avoid them; you can realize you are not alone.  And, well, the college memoirs aren’t just about grief, but about fun times, too.  😀

I’m posting them quickly, though they are long and there are many, because I want to get them OUT of my system for good.  From the movie “The Help”:

God says we need to love our enemies. It hard to do. But it can start by telling the truth. No one had ever asked me what it feel like to be me. Once I told the truth about that, I felt free.

And I got to thinking about all the people I know. And the things I seen and done. My boy Trelaw always said we gonna have a writer in the family one day. I guess it’s gonna be me.

Updated 11/2/16

 

 

I am out of danger from my abusers: Statute of limitations has run out

A quick check of Wisconsin laws tells me that the statute of limitations for libel/slander is two years.  I never libeled, defamed or slandered my abusive ex-friends, but when they found my blog, they threatened to sue me for this.

Even if Richard and Tracy were to still think they have a case, it has been between two and a half to four and a half years since I told friends, family, my priest and this blog about what happened, hoping for support, venting and help with healing.  It has also been more than two and a half years since they made this threat.

They have suffered no job losses.  If they even have jobs, I wouldn’t know who they work for, and wouldn’t contact their employers anyway.  That just isn’t the kind of thing I do.  We also do not run in the same circles except online, even though we live in the same city.  They have absolutely no financial losses to claim because of me.

This tells me their threats were just intimidation meant to keep me quiet, that they were all bluster, that they hoped I was easy to intimidate, that they were indeed intentionally trying to gaslight me into doubting what I knew was true.

Instead, I stayed strong and brave, continuing to tell my story, keeping my blog up, keeping my mind and memory strong and secure against the gaslighting.

This tells you, the reader, to be brave and tell your own story of abuse.  Don’t let your abusers silence you!

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