Monica Lewinsky: The price of shame

I'm posting this to show support for the cause that Monica Lewinsky speaks of.  I too went through a period of online cyber harassment.  The degree to which it was waged upon me was in every way as bad as other cases that resulted in suicide.  Perhaps the biggest difference is that I experienced it for approximately 4 years, nonstop.  The harassment I experienced included publishing offensive articles in my name by the harassers.  My wife, my daughter, and I received death threats by email and online.  I'm talking about a small child and a female immigrant, powerless to fight back against these online harassers.  This made my wife increasingly paranoid.  Today she suffers from schizophrenia.  Personally, I believe this harassment may have contributed to this illness that has destroyed her life.

Once the harassment took hold, other individuals that knew me, such as my ex-wife, her husband, some former coworkers, and other mentally disturbed people joined in.  I know who many of them are.  I could list their full names here, but let me settle for their first names: Holly, Bridget, Elise, Josiah, Jack, Mike, Michael, Doug, Mary, Karen, Jan, Daniel, Jim, Cy, Bill, Gustavo, Laura, Cyndi, John, Hang, and Stephen.  This isn't the whole list, but this is a list of the most vile.  There is a sociological phenomenon that is as old as the human species.  We see it under dictatorial regimes where cowards anonymously turn in or falsely accuse those they dislike or those they are jealous of to the authorities.  We see it online in anonymous bullying where, once it gets started, mentally ill sociopaths gang up on a target simply because they can.  In Salem, it took the form of witch trials.  In the South, it took the form of lynchings.  It is all about killing a person, biologically, mentally, or virtually.  It is all about destroying a life and getting pleasure from it.

However, there is a price these animals have paid for their harassment.  Other people know what they did.  Whether they realize it or not, they have diminished their own lives by being known as someone that has worked to destroy others.  In the case of some, they lost a good friend.  Several of these individuals do not know it, but I did many things to help them and improve their lives, without seeking credit, before they put their masks on and began the harassment, all those years ago.  There is no going back.  One will be visiting my mother late in May.  I won't be there when she comes.  I choose not to be.  She lost a friend by joining the dark side.

Listen to when Monica Lewinsky has to say.  People that do these things are the lowest form of life.  If you know one, shun that person.  They are murderers.

If I could do it all again, I wouldn't.

This video is the perfect description of a woman I once knew. She seemed charming and I must admit that I fell for the persona that she wore as a mask.  There is much more to the story, too much to waste my time explaining, but she was my first close experience with someone polluted with narcissistic personality disorder.  Love makes one blind, so even with all the evidence, I rejected the possibility that this "friend", Bridget, was mentally ill.  She even revealed that she had no empathy, but I thought she was exaggerating.  Her room mate, Robin, warned me that Bridget is a narcissist, but I ignored that too.  I can only blame myself for not having accepted the blatantly obvious truth that Bridget is a narcissist.  Love does that to people.  We turn a blind eye to the negative attributes of those we love.  It is foolish to do this, but that is what hormones do when dumped into our blood.

Looking back, benefiting from what I now know about her, with the veil of love lifted from eyes, I see how profoundly ugly Bridget is.  I remember looking over at her from the passenger side of her pathetically shitty car, looking at her face, and seeing a booger hanging from her nose.  The fact is, with her pale face, ugly teeth, and hay colored hair, only a fool in love could have seen anything beautiful in her.  Alas, her ugliness was more than skin deep - it extended all the way to the core of her being.

She's the only person I know that was fired from a job for moral turpitude.  She would get angry at the slightest criticism.  Her understanding of society and of other human beings was nil.

Anyway, here is a video that reminds me of her.

You Should Have Been Nice To Me

Look at an ugly woman through the beer goggles of deception

Have you ever met someone that, after many years, you looked back and wondered how you could have ever found that person attractive?  Many times I've wondered how it was that I fell for a sociopath named Bridget.

Bridget was not good looking.  At that time in my life I was in a relationship that repeatedly extinguished every dream I had.  When Bridget came into my life, I saw her as the opposite of the person with whom I was bound.  Bridget, it was later revealed, was an infiltrator sent to spy on a political organization that I was a member of.  Had I known that, back then, there never would have been any connection between myself and this subhuman waste of skin.

I was aware of her profound physical ugliness, but there was something about her personality and her professed interests that drew me in and overcame her plainness.    My estimation of the inner Bridget became a kind of beer goggles, masking her true presentation.  I was willing to ignore her far-too-pale skin, her straw hair, her hideous nose, and her boring eyes.

Before that point, I didn't know what a sociopath really was.  Her fake persona was a professional act.  I was tricked.  Later I discovered that she was a liar, a snitch, a defamer, and an amoral hollow shell of a person.  It is a hard lesson I learned.  I am now far more cautious of people that drop into my life.