A Serious Post

Excuse me, I am going to be serious for a moment. This is a message for one particular reader, and meant kindly.

'However can she hope to be taken seriously on the blogs?'

I know this strange phrase 'on the blogs' is not a term anyone ever actually uses, and 99.9% of mentally healthy people understand that spending maybe 20 mins a day typing up your thoughts, and posting them, for your own and others amusement is not quite the same as 'actually living your life' or 'existing in an environment that is real and has consequences', but never mind.

When I say 'on the blogs', I mean 'tangible, visible on the internet' and for me, that is the same as real life.

I know it sounds odd, but it is true. For me.

I am now unable to distiguish between blogging and real life. I actually think that by controlling the words on a screen I control reality. For me, this is reality now.


The attention I get from strangers feeds a need in me that I simply cannot meet in real life. That is why I spend all my time online. That is why I would rather lose everything than give this up. That is why, when I was told I could no longer use the internet as part of my bail conditions, I said

'It is not possible to exist under such conditions'.

I truly meant that: I wasn't exaggerating. I cannot exist, I do not feel alive, unless I am online. Because I feel so insignificant, I will do anything to provoke a reaction. To live, to be.

'To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?'

Oh God, I want to end this, but I daren't.

'To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;'

I seek help, through writing to people. It is bad enough living this life. What might come after it? I am so afraid.Because of that, I lash out.


'For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make...[...]

'Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;'

You see, readers, I choose, in my small, horrible way, to be. To be someone, even if it is only someone whom you notice because you hate me.

Reacting means you *see* me. Reacting makes me feel alive, in a small way, for a short time. It may sting, it may wound, it may hurt me more than it hurts you, but it is still a feeling, something real. It is all I have, now to sustain me. It is not much, but I dare not give it up.

And now my friendless, homeless, hopeless world has shrunk to this point: where I am a lonely monster, a frightened angry ghost, screaming and venting into cyberspace, typing into the darkness

'Rage, rage, against the dying of the light'

I am only alive now when I see my words posted on a screen. I live for the response I get when an incoming email pings into my in-box. There is nothing else.

I would love to stop, but I am so, so afraid of what will become of me when I cease to be. So I choose life, even this life.

I need help but I cannot ask for help: perhaps that is why I have played this game. Perhaps only by losing everything will I be healed.

I would like to hope so.