nasty comments and blog litterbugs

I got a nasty comment about the previous post. It went something like this:

"I really enjoy your blog, but can you keep it fluffy?"

(That's heavily paraphrased, by the way.)

Essentially, the post about the boy who touched me inappropriately made one of my readers feel a bit uncomfortable. In an act of extreme cowardice, this person left a drive-by trash-heap explaining how I should be more careful what I say, since I might drag others down with me. Based on the arrows shot in my general direction, it almost sounds to me like a) this person has put two and two together, knows who the boy is, and has chosen to side with the other party or b) this person had a similar experience and it was just too painful for them to read someone talking about it so candidly, without any spite or malice. I was then chastised for being so lighthearted about my cheesy junior high suicide attempts, and called a drama queen for using the term 'sexually molested' for a situation I had clearly created myself. Apparently, it's also not very 'professional' to have written about this on my blog.

I have to respond to some of the points this person made, before calling it a night.

#1.) The suicide attempts were cheesy junior high suicide attempts, not seriously intended to do off with myself. They were the kind of, "I'll show them!" thing that emotionally immature kids will do. I wanted the people who were hurting me, to see how hurt I was, because no one had ever told me I could just tell them to go screw their hats. I figured if I couldn't reel them in with kindness and complacency, I'd reel them in with sympathy by showing what a delicate flower I was. Unfortunately, I didn't really think it out very well. For starters, the first time I tried, it was a Friday night, and the people I needed to show my suffering wouldn't be available until Monday morning, by which time, had I succeeded, I'd have been far too dead to enjoy their misery. The second time all I managed to do was earn myself a day off with what my Mom called in as the flu. Oops! And that last time, with the pink Bic leg shaver and the tiny metal crochet hook used for making doilies and decorative trim on gingham table cloths - let me just say that no amount of Tylenol is sufficient to numb your senses - mental or physical - to the point where you are capable of slicing open your wrists and scooping out the veins. It was silly and morbid and - well - silly. Do I think suicide is funny? No, not in the least. Suicide scares the ever-living shit out of me. I have been touched by suicide - friends who didn't give a damn how the rest of us felt, who felt so sad and alone and hurting that being dead was better than being alive. They weren't seeking attention like I was - they wanted to be dead. There's a difference there, BIG difference. I'm old and wise enough to know the difference, and what I did was juvenile, and (in retrospect) laughable.

#2.) I don't really care about outing the boy. What you seem to misunderstand is that this was a post about ME, not HIM. I don't really care about his feelings any more than he did about mine. I already pointed out that I have no desire to seek retribution or financial compensation. I don't want to ruin the boy's life or destroy his family, I have no desire to have a heart-to-heart with him, I have no drive to waste a single moment or penny pursuing revenge - I didn't name names for a reason - but at the end of the day, I can honestly say that I don't really care if his job or his life were in fact affected by this incident coming to light. I have relived the whole incident time and again in the last several days, and this time instead of issuing the gag order, I spoke. For those of us with a habit of self-censorship, you'll understand that this is a BIG thing for me. And now that I have given that 13-year old girl inside of me her own voice, I'm letting it go, for both of us. I think 20 years is long enough to hold on to that pain and shame. Besides, a little public shame is good for nurturing feelings of humility, something most of us could stand to learn. If he is a big man, he'll own it. If he's a little man, he'll deny it but his good name will be marred. Either way, it's a good lesson to us all: if you don't want your actions to come back and bite you in the ass, choose your actions carefully.

#3.) Sexually molested is a strong term. It is what the boy did to me. It comes down to perspective. Making light of it by saying he 'put the moves on me and I turned him down' would be making light of what occurred, and not doing justice to the gravity of the situation. Saying I brought it on myself is like saying a little girl deserves to get raped because she has the audacity to be cute, or a little boy living in a poor neighbourhood deserves to get shot because his parents are too poor to live in a gated community. It ALWAYS comes down to perspective - if you're the mother of the boy, you might want to make the girl culpable and use fluffy language to write off the incident as being typical kid stuff to maintain your illusion of your son's innocence. However, if it was your daughter who had been sexually molested, then I doubt you'd be so anxious to play it down. The facts remain the same: perspective changes everything.

#4.) Read the name at the top of this page. I'm a photographer, and a writer, and this is a blog written from my perspective. Hear me roar. It's a stage of my own design, for my own selfish purposes, that I stand upon and belch out my thoughts and indiscretions to the people I have come to establish relationships with, who choose to come here for whatever reasons they have. Some I've met here, some are family members, some are friends I've met elsewhere, some are clients I've come to be friends with, and some are people who randomly stop by and decide to hang around for a bit. To be a well-rounded person with a past and thoughts and emotions and my own sense of humour makes me human, not unprofessional. If I were pushing pornography or making racist jokes or promoting drug use or publishing unauthorized details about the personal lives of my clients, then yes, I'd agree, that would be unprofessional. Oddly enough, though, a number of people - clients, too - who have experienced my blog have thanked me, for being candid, for being honest, for being real, for giving them food for thought or a different perspective or something pretty to look at.

So. Cowardly blogger person who likes things fluffy (and isn't a client, by the way). I'd like to say I'm sorry. I'd like to say I give a damn. I'd like to say I won't ever post another blog entry that pushes another human being the least bit out of their comfort zone. But then I'd be a liar, wouldn't I?