I won't mince words. I write a blog and it's my opinions and views on what occurs in my life. However, people always get affected by what affects you (hmmm…).That is how blogging works. That is why my blog is unknown to many. She found my blog. I never expected that to happen. Her response to it… to throw away everything I left in France. Oddly enough it was after a great deal of communication about my possessions. A conversation I didn't initiate. I didn't want to be bothered with her. Yet I didn't expect her to stoop as low once she realized we were done. I wish I could say that was all. It would make me feel so much better if she retaliated with just throwing my stuff into the Seine. The problem is she didn't stop there. I don't feel as bad as I did when things originally happened. Now I just feel like I made a series of bad choices. It's hard to talk about. I feel violated. Surely, I lost material things but I like to think I lost so much more.
I've touched on being in a jet lagged warp. I've talked about social media & blogging and the repercussions. When I came home I was in a downward spiral. I was trapped. I had culture shock. I didn't want to adapt. The loss of the friendship was enough. It really, truly was. I expected that it was all I had to bare. If that makes sense. It was the one thing that made me feel bad. When she began to really harp on about it I began to feel guilty. I actually sat around trying to figure out how I could make something right between her and I. It was all surface and ulterior - on her end. She tried to act as if the friendship meant something to her. I could see right through it. The moment when what I owed turned into a debt. The moment she found that we weren't friends on Facebook over a month later. The moment she began haggling with me about my own belongings. Then the most important moment of so-called "finding" my blog and trying to express her own tale of violation. Surely, I'd used words to demean her but no one was privy to it or so I thought.
I'll never really know how and when she found my blog. It doesn't even matter. What does play an important role is that I immediately took the two negative entries down. She acted as if I'd painted her wrong to the entire world. The reality is I hadn't even tried. I'd wrote those things so long ago. I never outwardly insulted her or flat out told her what I really thought. I chose to just remove myself from a bad situation and cut the ties slowly. The rapport was only there to pay her back, get my stuff and move on. I know who told her about the blog because I'd asked this person to stop reading it years ago. It was the same horrible person who couldn't figure out the line between a racist, crass dig and a joke. Just months before she was crying about this persons ability to disrespect people and now they were in some secret alliance. What troubles me is they weren't even close. I seriously was looking for a third wedding anniversary present for this person when they were having some sort of sordid connection via my blog.
I eventually put those negative entries back up. Soon after that I changed the url for the blog. What kills me is I'd done a version of that before. That person approached me at work about my blog years ago. At first I was flattered and after a while it was frustrating. It was like someone was asking me about my dreams. I asked that they stop reading it or at least keep thoughts to themselves. They wouldn't stop and I immediately moved the blog to an entirely different platform. It wasn't public knowledge to anyone what I did. I had a huge following and even my primary audience was uninformed. At this point, my blog wasn't negative. I didn't talk about anyone at least not in the tone I talked about her. I don't even think that was explained to her. The fact that I'd been blogging since 2005. I think this person just sent her a link and let her read those few entries out of thousands. When I put her entries back up I knew I'd started a war.
Frankly, I only took them down to appease her in the moment. She never asked me to. I simply did it and informed her. When it was apparent that those entries were not all she was looking for I decided to make everything accessible. I could see where people were viewing from and what browsers they used. I saw my viewership spike from zero views for over four years to hundreds of views each day. Either she and her circle of friends really liked to read my thoughts on her or they generally liked the entire blog. In actuality, they were going back through all my entries. It was told to me that "everyone" was reading it. I was informed that my blog was bookmarked at my former job for leisurely reading. Everyone gravitated to stuff I'd written years ago as well as my entries on her. So I took to the blog making the situation more ideal for people who couldn't get enough. This may have translated to some turmoil on my end or a nasty reaction to an invasion of privacy. The reality is I was thoroughly amused and after a while of toying with them I purposely sold the url to any porn site willing to buy it. I wished I could have seen their faces when they were either informed the site was deleted or pushed into a series of vulgar pop-up windows. My blog still exists - in its entirety, for anyone to see. I'm sorry for those who were generally entertained and risked accessing NSFW content.
In the midst of the above, she still managed to keep communicating with me. She continually negotiated with me about my payment of debt and her sending me my stuff. She was the one who contacted me first about those formalities. I expected her to send me my things. I expected for her to be thankful I was even speaking to her. I expected for her to see the good in me. Instead, she kept messaging me negatively. She would send me these odd ransom photos of my things and haggle with me on how to send it. It seemed as if no matter how much we discussed it she wasn't going to send it anyways. In total it was about $500 worth in items I'd brought and bought. Most of the things I could immediately catalogue and others took a few weeks to figure out. She admitted to "donating" my things and shredding my personal documents. That could mean anything. She never claimed that I didn't send her the money in time to ship it or that she couldn't leave it behind. She didn't even word it that there would have been no way for me to have her friends send it in her absence. She just sort of told me they wouldn't have. Of course, that same night every friend connected with my belongings had blocked me on Facebook, Twitter etc. Her father had been gladly accepting my payments to her via his bank account but even he couldn't answer his phone once she revealed the above. Then hours after her bold announcement I received a nasty letter asking me not to contact her again. Overall, it was this threatening tone of her being debased and put out by me. I was dumbfounded by the chain of events. I stopped sleeping. I was even checked out for heart palpitations. It wasn't about the material things anymore. It was the prestige of her infraction. It was equivalent of her attacking me or robbing me. It all felt the same.
If a little fat shaming and slut speak got her so riled up - I wonder how should I have reacted? Really, what would have been the perfect response to her behavior? Maybe I should have promoted my blog entries. Maybe I should have avoided paying what I owed. Maybe I should have sent her family a nasty letter about the goings on abroad. I guess I didn't get to do any of that because I'm not that type of person. In the same respect, I never thought she was the type to do what she did. I have three years to recoup my material loss. Life is too short to think about betrayal in trust. Sometimes I like to think she left my items as I requested because I did eventually ask her not to ship them. Why? We'll I'd sent her over $400 and in total repaid over $1200 for her to be "unable" to wait one more day for $60 USD to ship it. She couldn't use a portion of that money to ship my things? She couldn't even fathom to just downsize and bring my things with her? All I'd asked if it she couldn't be the bigger person to just leave it behind and I'd make arrangements myself. Even that was just too much for her to bare. It troubles me that someone would go as far when there were so many easy ways to avoid doing what she did. I wrote a blog. I went home. I answered her when she called. That was all I was ever guilty of. In my eyes, she committed a crime when all I did was exist.
As for the blog well again it could have gone unread for a thousand years. There was only one person who would even know where to go find it. There are only so many methods to blog online and I use one moniker. If you notice now, I'm entitled as "Me". As proud as I am of this particular blog, I am torn on whether it should be in my namesake. I don't plan on befriending anyone else that could or would compromise my blog. However, I will never take that chance again. Of course, to switch my URL I had to give up that pen name and everything that went along with it. So in that I lost my things, more than one friend and my online identity. All of which are irreplaceable. I can't make a friend without assuming the worst. I can't recreate that identity or get that URL back. I can't re-buy French niche gifts bought for my mother who may never make it to France or figure out just how my checkbook was "shredded". I try not to think about the possibilities of her biggest mistake. These days she likes to call herself a lover and a humanitarian. The same as the fire starter doesn't recognize karma. I'm baffled as to how the two fumble through life and neither think to apologize or try to make amends.
It's fine. At least for me.
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