There's an old yarn that anybody who writes or comments publicly isn't doing a really good job until they get death threats.

I guess I'm on my way, 'cause I'm getting hate mail. What a trip! [smile]

On New Year's Eve I got an email saying I'd gotten an electronic postcard. Usually when I get an electronic postcard it's from a friend or somebody else who wants to brighten my day. Instead, I got a nastygram from somebody.

I say "somebody," because the sender took the coward's way out and signed it "x," using my email address as the return address.

Well, I was down that day as I usually am during holidays, but I really needed the laugh it gave me to pick me up. It was such a pitiful attempt to upset me, and on the heels of my lamenting about how I let people get under my skin, that it could elicit no other reaction.

In fact, I sent it around to friends for fun. Gurugrrl had a good laugh at it, too, and agreed that if it wasn't a halfhearted joke, then she felt really badly for the person and they just hoped that I'd get it and sit around wondering who sent it, driving myself nuts. Poet said that whoever sent it was just plain sick. Crafty thought it was pretty sad, too.

Well, I didn't think much of it after that; I'd captured a graphic image of it to write a note about it in the journal, but then decided why give whoever sent it the satisfaction? They would have just figured it bothered me.

And so I let it go with a chuckle.

They're not giving up that easily, however.

This morning I got out of bed around 5:45 to get ready to go walk at the park despite the freezing temperatures (note to other people from the deep south: layering of clothing really does work, people in the north aren't as dense as we think), and as is normal for me, I decided to check my email first thing when I got up.

Among the two-hundred fifty some-odd messages was one from an ecommerce outfit:

1/4/2000

Dear Mike,

Thank you visiting and requesting catalogs/magazines from our site.

Exsqueeze me?

It turns out, it's an order for a catalog called "ENHANCE YOUR SEXUAL MAGNETISM", to be sent to my home address. Har-dee-har-har. I don't think anybody who would have sent it would know a whole lot about my sexual magnetism, thankyouverymuch, and imagine how much I count my lucky stars about that.

None of this happened before I sent out the email for Poet. I'd made a bit of a boo-boo in the same sense that I had with Moogie, in that when I sent out the email I didn't suppress my signature block, and so I sent the URL to my journal to a lot of folks that I'd thought I'd managed to get rid of. Alas, no, here they are like bloodsuckers on a dog's back again.

I'd send that email for Poet regardless, and she knows that. But my bad, because not too long after that, I started getting this hate mail.

For fun, let's consider the field of potential haters here. This has to be somebody who has a beef with me, has my email address and my home address.

There's Andrea. She's not terribly happy about the entry I wrote that largely featured her, but I've confronted her about sending the electronic greeting card and she denied it. I believe her, too, because this second thing is obviously from the same misanthrope, but it's one that has my home address.

There's Eleanor. She's mad at me because I walked out of her life and can't see the reasons why. Furthermore, she has my home address, and is probably at about the maturity level to do things like this (uh, clue, maybe that's why I walked out of your life?). Of course, this doesn't track 100% because a) she already has my journal URL and b) I'm sorry, but the writing in that electronic post card was too literate to be her.

This leaves me the ones who just found my journal, Hypochondria and/or one of her brood. (Or perhaps a combination of them and somebody else, like Eleanor, but that's neither here nor there.)

I appreciate y'all's self-absorbed compulsion to check my journal constantly to see if I've updated, probably wondering if I'd written about any of you again. It's flattering in a sad way that your lives are so empty that you have this deep interest in what I'm doing after I'd gotten past you, except when you come up in my life again like bothersome gnats.

I find it entertaining that over the course of two or three days you read every entry, Hypochondria; I guess what you said about being interested in my life even if you didn't want to be a part of it was true, even if that is pretty lame. And it's a daily treat to see Goosestepgirl and Digestive Biscuit checking it, too. Not to mention the various others who show up in my life at random intervals, as if to tell me, "we're watching you." Whatever.

There was a time when I thought you were my friends. After that, there was a time where I was deeply wounded and upset that you proved that notion was horribly wrong because I needed help and you weren't strong enough to give it anymore.

I feel so sorry for you.

I've grown beyond you. I've proven that I am stronger than you are. I'm getting better, where you're stagnant, if not going downhill. I take comfort in the thought that you were there huddling together for comfort before I came, and you're still there struggling like always.

You can't hurt me. If you want to read my journal, fine. If you want to laugh at me among yourselves, go for it. If you want to harass me, you know I can't really stop you. But it sickens your souls, not mine.

If you have something to say to me, be adult enough to pick up the phone and call me. Say it to me, directly. Otherwise, grow up.

restlessmind