All that I
wrote yesterday
was out of grumpiness. My day was already shit because of outside circumstances and then I wake up to all of my post rewards being voted away by hoa type busy bodies. I’m sorry people had to see that, but I’m not sorry for writing my rant.
I’m sick of being silent. I’m sick of being pushed around. It took a very long time for me to get to this place in my life but now I am here.
I have always been the guy who rolled over and took abuse just to keep the peace. Virtue is important to me and being a peacemaker is a virtuous thing. But how much is too much to take? At what point does someone have to defend themselves?
Bitterness is a hard pill to swallow. It’s an even harder pill to resist. Over the last two years I have been betrayed by people very close to me. One betrayal I only found out about two weeks ago. It’s like my life can’t possibly get above water.
After the first betrayal, I fell into a pretty deep depression and I stayed away from Hive for the most part. When I finally felt better, I came back. Then I was betrayed by some anonymous person on Hive who decided to turn me in for “plagiarism”.
In every one of these instances of betrayal I didn’t get to confront my betrayer. The first (my ex) because she just didn’t care. The second because he’s multiple states away. And the last because he/she/it hides in anonymity on the internet.
When I tried to confront the downvoting I was told by one of the people in the appeals Discord server that I only started posting on hive again because the price went up. They rudely assumed my motives for posting again. This to me demonstrates clearly that they don’t actually care about providing a good service, they’re just doing it to puff themselves up. They don’t know my story, they don’t know why I came back, they don’t know why I left to begin with. They just assumed my motives and treated me with disrespect.
I don’t even pay much attention to the price of Hive. Had I known it was going up I would have done some things differently. I powered down a lot before I started posting again because I intended to walk away. But then I thought about it and realized that posting and engaging again could be a great cathartic exercise. Lord knows I need some distractions in my life.
But then yesterday happened and a lot of my awful feelings were triggered again. Instead of catharsis I just felt sick again. I felt the same gut punched feeling that I felt for pretty much all of 2020. It didn’t help that the “appeals court” didn’t listen. Worse, they bullied me and several other people in there.
So I stood up. I said my piece to an audience of practically none and then went about my day. I have learned that abusive people love emotional responses. They thrive on conflict and getting under the victim’s skin. The best way to deal with them is to speak truth and leave it at that. No anger, no whining, no showing any emotion. Just say what needs to be said and walk away.
They may think they have won. And it may look to others as if you’re a wimp or giving up. But mentally speaking it is better to let it go. Abusers win when they control your emotions. They win when they get a rise out of you. At the end of the day your sanity is more important than whatever squabble or injustice was committed against you.
Even if the injustice was great (Hive injustice is a pittance, I’m talking affair level injustice), it’s still better to make your peace. Bitterness will eat you alive. I know this firsthand. The hardest thing I have had to fight these last two years was bitterness. I have been rightfully angry, but anger is not bitterness. Anger can motivate one to good actions or bad ones. Bitterness only leads to bad ones.
Anger can lead to justice, but bitterness only to revenge. In most cases, revenge only backfires. This is especially true when the victim has little real power. Bitterness also gives the abuser free real estate in your head. Don’t let them live there. They deserve to be on the curb, not in the palace of your mind. As tough as it is, let it go. Forget them, erase the memory of them, and focus on the future.
That's the only way to survive.