Don’t Feed The Trolls

Aww I made it as a fully fledged blogger today with a little passive agressive hate post all of my own. It’s like the internet has accepted me as one of their own. Now, the standard reaction to the comments section on anything is “don’t feed the trolls”, and yet repeating this didn’t exactly work, so I’m going to chuck a couple of statements on here, just in case anyone other than me or Mr Geek reads this.

I write this blog for me.
Much of my blogging is an electronic format of diary writing. It’s a stream of consciousness which is rarely edited, nor proof read. At most, it’s occasionally written to explain what’s going on to my friends and family.

This is not my job. You don’t pay to read my blog, I’m not here to entertain you, so if you aren’t finding anything interesting or useful, read something else. If however,  I happen to entertain you, make you feel less alone with a chronic illness or highlight something useful,  then welcome to my metaphorical tree house – make yourself at home.

Photo credit domesticatedmomster

I’m self obsessed here, so I don’t have to be elsewhere.

There are  number of scientific, peer reviewed articles about the benefits of blogging for your mental health. Personal blogs are seen as a safe space in which to let out your inner thoughts and fears without needing to find the words verbally. It’s also a place to verbalise those things which if left bottled up, would niggle away at your state of mind and turn you into an unpleasant person. These reports identify that those who use a personal blog to talk frankly about themselves have a higher level of perceived social support. For me, I have made contact with a wonderful support network who support each other.

In real life, I put on a brave face and get on with my life.

Once you post online, you no longer have control of it.

Probably the most important lesson I teach my kids. It doesn’t matter if you later regret what you post as there’s this thing called a screen capture.

I hope this particular troll isn’t actually a troll & just another person struggling with EDS who felt wronged by my willingness to call people out on their ill treatment of service users, or felt that they have it worse and as such my open grief over the loss of my previous life is unjustified. I’ll give them the benefit of that doubt because EDS is crappy and without somewhere to vent, can make you angry and defensive.

But through the magic of the screen capture, here is that now undeletable comment.

And for transparency, my response.

You probably need your own blog, because after a day of receiving some of the most beautiful private messages of support from my friends since I posted that response, I’ve written another self-absorbed and mindnumbingly boring post which has released all that negativity into the ether.

You won for about 4 hours. After that, my blog won and then there was this: