A Better Way To Spend Your Time

“But no one will think I’m pretty!” she said, her 7 year old face starting to well up with tears.

Dressed as if she were going to be in an elementary school fashion show, she was wearing the dress that she begged me to stay up late last night and wash, enough plastic bracelets to accessorize the entire 2^nd grade, my cherry Chapstick (because “maybe my friends will think it’s lipstick!”), and yet she still wouldn’t get out of the car.

Looking at the 7 year old face wearing the cherry red Chapstick that I would never normally allow her to wear to school, my mothering instincts wanted nothing more than to lock the car doors, and take her back home where I could protect her.

But I couldn’t do that and she knew it, because it was a conversation that had kept her and I up late many nights over the past few weeks; a conversation revolving around the fact that she didn’t want to wear her new leg braces to school.

My daughter has worn braces on her legs since she was two years old, but a year ago at the suggestion of her physical therapist, we decided to see how she would do without them, and for about nine months she did great!

But then she stopped doing so great.

After a trip to the doctor and a check-in with her old therapist, it was decided that she needed to go back in the braces overnight and for periods of time during the day. To say that my daughter was crushed would be the understatement of the century. Although braces for her won’t be a forever thing, she doesn’t care, because for her they are a “right now” thing and right now she is in 2^nd grade where the kids are learning to judge each other on anything and everything.

She doesn’t want to be judged.

To her, she feels the way that every little girl wants to feel. She feels like a princess, a model, a singer, a dancer, a comedian, and a valedictorian. She is goofy, spunky, crazy, funny, smart, caring, precious, and loved. But when she looks in the mirror, she sees plastic that makes her feel “different, less than, and broken.” And when that reflection shines back at her it overpowers the princess wearing the cherry red Chapstick and 37 plastic bracelets, because she knows that when other people look at her, they aren’t going to be looking at her bracelets. She knows that the other kids (and even some adults) are going to be looking at her legs and that everything else that makes her who she is will become secondary to the one attribute that people will naturally focus on.

And it kills me.

The Hack

Oh my gosh, I do not want to talk about the trolls anymore!!! I'm so over the trolls but I know that a lot of you are waiting to hear about what happened in regards to Saturdays post about the hack, and the hack was initiated by someone trying to figure out more about my real life identity, so here we go again.

Come, join me under the bridge.

So....the hack.

Well I was able to trace it back and to my surprise, it wasn't stemming from the "Answers" post, that's just what they used as a pathetic cover. It actually stemmed from this article "Don't Pretend Your Kid Has Allergies And Be Surprised When Other Parents Hate You." That article was written by a blogger named Maria Guido in response to an article that I had written that ran on the homepage of Yahoo (and before that on YourTango).

Homepage of Yahoo!! Yay! Right?

Except that when articles run on Yahoo it's not atypical for other bloggers to want in on the discussion as well and so to do that they write a rebuttal post. It's fine, tons of writers do it, I've done it, it's not abnormal, except for when they mislead.

To fit her agenda Maria edited my original article to completely change my point. She quoted me in a long paragraph saying that "I cringe when I see other kids eating a cupcake" but "forgot" to leave in the entire point of that sentence, "that I realize my judgments are wrong and I should not be making them."

Basically she portrayed me as a complete bitch just so she could write a rebuttal post.

And?

Her readers called her on it.

Which is unusual because readers tend to be very loyal.

So I popped into the comments over there, chatted with some of the readers, and then it started; the trolling. I won't say who it was but I have my suspicions, which were even more confirmed by a posting that was put on GOMI this afternoon by a 1st time commentor urging people to go look at the article on Mommyish that "one of our bloggers put up about Eden." 

*COUGH*  *COUGH*  Eh Hem.

I Would Like To Introduce You To My Real Life Friends

Trust me,  you are going to want to read this one through to the end....

It was almost exactly a year ago when I started this journey with you all. The blog went up in October but it wasn't until Dec 23rd that my first article ran and a lot of you found me.

I was about to pull out of the parking lot at the grocery store when all of a sudden my blog email inbox started up with messages. Now I'm not saying 1 or 2 came in, I'm talking about several hundred within the first hour. I'm a little dull so I'm sitting there thinking "who the heck are all these people and how has my blog suddenly become the place to hang out?"

Now mind you I put up this blog and I told no one. There is obviously no family to tell, I didn't tell any of my friends, I just put it up and went along my merry little way, writing for myself and anyone else who cared to read. For all intents and purposes I had walked into the middle of the forest that is the Internet, stuck a twig in the ground, and suddenly thousands of people were noticing that one tiny twig.

8,000 people that day to be exact and I had no idea who any of them were.

I drove home, pulled up the blog, looked at the traffic reader, and realized that an article I had submitted to XOJane 7 weeks prior had published that morning and people were now pouring into my blog from there. 

It was about then that the enormity of what I had done became apparent. I had told the entire world that I had disowned my family and then they followed me here where I proceeded to tell them that my husband was abusive and I had been raped.

Because that's not scary at all....

The Trolling Report

As most of you know, trolling on this site has been an issue for quite some time and as my name has slowly crept it's way across the Internet, naturally it's only gotten worse. It's mostly a group of about the same five people that like to trail along behind me, commenting on everything I post everywhere, under several accounts and different names, but either way, boo.

Because I am an anonymous writer with a crazy life, it naturally leads some people to believe that I am a fictional person. I get that, I can absolutely see how someone might think that of me. The difference between doubting and trolling is that while a normal person might doubt my story, the trolls make it their life's mission to "take Eden down" as they say.

That's weird, who does that? Whose life is so meaningless that they make it a point to fully invest themselves into a tiny little blip on the Internet radar that makes them so angry? Who makes their mission to bring down someone who very well could be (and is) living a life filled with past abuse and doing nothing more than trying to heal?

Trolls my friend, the trolls do.

As you also know, I have already touched on this subject many times.

In "A Message To The Trolls" I talked about my reason's for writing under a pseudonym and why I would not be providing proof to discredit the trolls outlandish accusations.

In the post "Facing The Silencers" I talked about why it was important for me to move past what the trolls were saying about me and continue on.

Finally in the post "Censorship" I talked about the reasons why I would be editing the trollish comments out of this blog.

So here we are, at the point where I have decided to continue to write under the pseudonym Eden and where I have decided that I'm not going to go away just because the trolls don't like me. So what next? I've watched other bloggers fall down with the trolls, either scared right off the Internet or tangled in Cease and Desist lawsuits, and to be honest, that just seems like a lot of work.

So if they aren't going away and I'm choosing not to fight them, what other options are there?

I'm choosing to embrace them!!

Crazy huh?

I know, I never claimed to be normal, but really, what is this blog all about? It's about healing, personal growth, accepting what you can't change, not letting labels define you, and standing proud in the face of adversity.

Hell I can't be handing out advice and then not taking it myself, can I?

So with that in mind, since I was able to take what my parents did to me and learn how to be a better parent, and then I took what my ex did to me and started a nonprofit, then I can at least make something useful out of this situation, right?

Of course I can!

Hey, if you're not going to fight, and you don't want to cry, you might as well join in the cackling laughter with them!

So with that I bring you a new series, "The Trolling Report." Written by the trolls, about me, for you! From now on I will scour the Internet and gather up the best of the best in snarky comments directed at me. I will then compile them all into a nice little satirical report for you so that you can heed their warnings about me in the form of humor, and then either choose to stick around or go running for your life.

Your choice!

Really, how nice am I?  For most blogs you would have to go back and forth between the blog and the two biggest sites for trolling, XOJane and GOMI to really get the full scope of things, but on here, nope, I will gladly pull it all together for you!

***TRIGGER WARNING*** This is me, being snarky in my own right. This will surely trigger some trolls, so if you are a troll and you cannot handle criticism, satire, and snarkiness, you may want to back away now.

With that I bring you the first edition of :

"The Trolling Report"

Censorship

I had a funny story that I was planning to post today, seeing as how this place has been a bit more serious lately than it has been in past times, but unfortunately an issue of greater importance has arisen.

For those of you who read the comments, you know that the trolls have been hitting this blog really hard for the last few weeks. Comments, emails, and threads outside of this blog, most spawned by the same one or two people, have cast an ever present dark shadow over the safe place that this was supposed to be.

“You are such a whore, you deserve to be raped the way you tease men. I hope someone does it again since you sure didn’t learn your lesson the first time around.”

“If anything you are saying really is true, then why even bother going on? Why don’t you just shut your mouth and stop whining about it online; do the world a favor and just disappear.”

“Eden is maladjusted and creates the drama that is in her life. She needs to grow up and just get over the fact that she didn’t have the childhood she wanted. What 30 year old still thinks about their childhood anyways?”

“I can’t believe anyone would continue to read the awful writing that is Eden Strong. All of her pathetic little readers cheering on her pathetic little life are just as pathetic as she is.”

“Someone needs to figure out who this lady is and have her children removed from her home. Clearly she is unstable, no wonder her husband ran for his life. Whatever judge awarded her custody should be fired immediately. Those poor kids are ruined for life.”

“No way is this lady for real. There is absolutely no way anyone could have lived a life like that. I’ve never seen such bad writing in my life. She reads like a high school wannabe writer, pretending that she lives this fantasy life, and you are all falling for it like the idiots that you are.”

“The only reason anyone reads your blog is because you are pretty. No one cares what you have to say and no one gives a shit about you. The only reason you even have a blog is because you have the body to make up for your thoughtless brain.”

"I can't believe you are all reading the rants of a narcissistic psychopath. Clearly this girl needs help."

Those are just a few of the phrases that have either been posted on my blog, a site thread created about me, or emailed to me over the last week alone.

Maybe the trolls are right and you guys have been coming here day after day just to waste your time reading the bullshit that I write; or maybe I’m not even a real person at all and you are being brainwashed by the mythical life that I have born from a severe mental illness.

Maybe I should just pull this blog down.

A Message To The Trolls

So this week has definitely tested my willpower in self restraint. The trolls, or as I am more inclined to think, the troll who is assuming multiple "anonymous" personalities, have been coming at me hard. Questioning what I say, demanding proof that I am who I say I am, and just generally feeling entitled to know every single detail about my life.

I thought about how to handle this situation quite a bit. The lesser in me wanted to write up a nasty post and give you the name and phone number of one particular Troll who is demanding that I call her and return the favor by exposing myself. Luckily, I thought better of that.

So after much thought and internal debate, This is the conclusion that I have come too:

Facing The Silencers

Ok, so, this post has been a little hard for me to write. I love this blog, I love that survivors are coming together in the comments section, I love that people are feeling comfortable sharing their stories, and I love that the stigma of abuse survivor shame is finally being broken.

Coming on here week after week and bearing my feelings in front of you all, it has not been easy. Writing comes easily to me, but the reflections I get while I'm writing, the memories that are dragged out of the darkness from the back of my closet where I have buried them away, they aren't easy to face. But I can't keep everything hidden away in the corner of a closet with the three year old me anymore. The closet is full. I can no longer close the doors on my past trauma's. Just like all the wrong sized clothes that hang around in a closet and do no good to anyone, someone else could use them if you are just willing to pull them out and give them away. I wouldn't have been in the closet if someone had seen me. I wouldn't have spent years piling more, and more, into that closet and locking it away if I had known that it was ok to pull it all out. If I had known it was ok to tell someone what was going on and if someone had listened, I might have been saved from years of trauma.