You're A Glass!

So, today my therapist explained why it's not weakness to be fragile or easily flustered or not so thick skinned anymore.

Every person is a glass.

We start out as an empty glass.

Let's for sake of demonstration say it's an 8 ounce glass.

Every trauma adds water to the glass.

You can handle the traumas until the glass is full.

The glass gets full and if more trauma comes the glass is overflowing.

The glass being full is all the bullshit you can handle before it's all too much.

There's no upgrade to a bigger cup though.

The goal is to reduce the water in your cup. Free up the space in the glass.

I don't know what level my glass was before the memes, but those memes hit me like Niagara Falls overflowing my glass.

My glass is pretty much Atlantis. It's singing "Under The Sea". I'm thinking of adopting a Kraken but they're so hard to potty train.

Big Win Thanks To A Friend!

I was in a bad place. I was cursing and angry after discovering the We Believe In Nihilism page had blocked me and seemingly deleted all my posts requesting to take it down and even fighting back in comments.

A friend of mine familiar with the page was able to contact the true page owner because it's a sub page.

He apologized and took it down! That post is now gone! Only one more to go! I'm about to cry happy tears! 

Living With Anhedonia

What is anhedonia?

My therapist said it's having a lack of joy in doing things that normally brought you joy.

Shortly after finding out about the memes listening to music did nothing for me. No singing along, no toe tapping, absolutely nothing.

I used to watch Walking Dead when new episodes aired every Sunday night. I even had a ritual of making my weekly pizza before it came on. That all stopped. Episodes piled up on the DVR for weeks before I even had the urge or inclination to watch them. 

Even now I'm months behind on Gotham, Flash, and Supergirl. Total loss of interest. 

Reading has been a big one. Books and comics alike the urge to read just evaporated. It's just not there. 

There are times when I don't know what I want to do, and I feel like doing nothing. No music, no TV, no reading, and no art.

Even doing my art has become a struggle because of this. When I was in a gallery it gave me something positive to focus on...but no longer being in a gallery there was less reason to produce new works, and my depression got worse. The anhedonia got worse.

Even cleaning the house goes by the wayside sometimes for months. I know it needs done. I want to do it. Then something in my head delays it. 

I even lose my appetite. I haven't even ate today. There was even a time for a few weeks when anhedonia struck my love of pizza. I got to the point where pizza didn't cut it. I was giving away my left overs to my neighbors. 

I got so bad that last year there were months I just did absolutely nothing. It was bad. So much so that it changed my mind about trying medicine.

I was very weary about any medication that alters my brain chemistry. And I should've never taken the equivalent of one pill of generic Zoloft.

It made things worse by taking away my ability to dream, to daydream, to imagine at all. I could no longer even hear myself think. No imagining while listening to music. It's like it robbed me of my soul. 

During that time I wasn't emotionally suicidal. No, this was more cold, calculated, and logical. I didn't want to live that way. My quality of life was sanitized. It took away the good and the bad at the same time. 

It took months to recover. I'm not fully back to how I used to be though. Especially creatively.

Every single day is a struggle. It sucks. 

Fighting Is Not Futile! You Can Win Against Bullies And Harassment!

So, since discovering these were still up on Facebook in mid-February and that Buzzfeed was still up I went to work fighting them and trying to take them down. Some did not like my threatening legal action for defamation, harassment, bullying, and unauthorized use of my likeness.

Again, they didn't like my methods but it did get results. Admittedly I was a fusion of sadness and anger, feeling suicidal yet emboldened with a purpose.

I figured out how to contact Buzzfeed and they sent me this reply. 

Shortly after it was taken down and replaced with this! It was a big win for me.

This page had 16 of the individual ones up. I was glad they responded and took them down. Wins were starting to pile up.

This was the first one to apologize too. Another big win. Sometimes you just have to keep at it, and it took me a year to get to the point I'm at now fighting back.

This was a small victory with a big win. Somebody had made a new version of the meme and posted it in the comments of one of the pages still up. He took it down and apologized. 

Then tonight one of the last 3 pages finally saw my comments and messages and took it down! Now I'm down to the last two pages, hearing back more from Reddit and Imgur. 

This is all proof that you can fight back against bullies and win. You do have the power to stop it, but only if you're alive to do so. This wasn't easy. It took me a year of therapy and help from friends to be able to do this. My friends say I'm strong. I'm not. I'm still broken inside, I still have anxiety and it takes everything I have not to kill myself and it takes all that just to do everyday tasks in public.

Facebook not taking down the posts when reported was a huge blow to me, but that page taking it down tonight helped immensely. I don't know when I'll feel good though. 

Depression makes even a win a bit sour.

The Importance Of Friends

Friends are there to help.

Back in 2017 the day after I discovered the memes I was the most suicidal of my life. Two friends stepped up the most. One contacted the meme maker on Instagram and got the first apology. That apology pulled me back from the brink of hopelessness and killing myself that day.

The second friend got the Bye Fellipe page to take down their post and that wiped out all the shares and nasty comments. 

Later on in June I'd be devastated when that first friend unfriended me completely. 

Good friends have tried to help me cope and heal over the past year. One used to text me daily and I only made it through much of last year because of her.

This year my friends have helped find where these memes have resurfaced, helped me battle the pages, and the nasty commenters. 

Having them to talk to helps. Having their aid in this gives me fuel for fighting the suicidal thoughts.

My family never really embraced mental health. All I've got are friends, neighbors, and my therapist.

Sometimes I can't do everything friends try to do to help though. My anxiety has been so high that eating out with them seems impossible. I can barely make it through getting groceries or doing laundry as it is. 

Seeing a movie is easier though. Nobody watching me in a darkened theater. 

If you feel suicidal try reaching out to your friends. Keep in mind they may not know exactly what to say or do to help, but they don't want you to die. 

Seek help. Talk to family and friends and don't bottle it up inside. Get a therapist. There's nothing wrong with getting help.

Everybody needs a little help from their friends at times.

The Comments That Fuel Suicidal Thoughts!

See, if people were compassionate then it wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunately it looks like some are devolving into trolls.

This is the poetry my face inspired. This is literally people saying my face looks like a sexual predator, a rapist, or a murderer. 

Now here we get a defender and an insulter! I literally just realized he called me fat and ugly. So few strangers stood up for me by saying this is wrong I'll take what I can get. Again, people assume I did the things in the memes. Guilty before proven innocent? See why it's hard to think I have a clean slate in meeting new people.

They want to kill me with fire. Yet this is ok for Facebook Community Guidelines? They don't mind my being suicidal or this bit of homocidal joking. To me it's not a joke though. Killing somebody should not be a joke.

Another defender being fought over saying this is wrong. Thankfully the page these comments were on responded to my request to take the memes down. I made screenshots of everything just in case though. 

My friends started trying to help me and they ran into the same logic as the one commenter above. People want this to be ok so they try to validate it and fight the truth. Why do people assume I'd agree to be in these? 

Oh, the one from Imgur was my first run-in with the Freddy comparisons. I have nothing against Robert Englund, great actor, loved him in "V", but they're comparing me to his CHARACTER not him. The character of Freddy Krueger is a child murderer. They think I look like a child murderer. If that's not a reason to commit suicide then what is? People see my face and think "child murderer". 

Being Suicidal, Dealing With It, And Surving It

I have dealt with suicidal thoughts for a long time. 

My grandfather commited suicide when I was in 9th grade. He was a World War 2 veteran and had emphysema and took his own life so that his family could stop caring for him. 

I was bullied a lot in both middle school and high school. Mostly for my weight and for being poor. I was an outcast even to the other outcasts at times.

My father beat my mom and was verbally abusive towards me. I called the police on him the summer before 10th grade and that got him to stop physically abusing my mom but the emotional abuse didn't stop until he died in 2010.

I've always had problems getting dates, having girlfriends, and it did take a toll on me emotionally. Loneliness sucks.

Before the memes I was able to laugh at myself and partake of self depreciating humor. I believed it wasn't my looks that mattered but who I am that matters. 

Yet there were those who said I didn't love myself because I'm fat and wasn't trying to get thin. That ruined what self esteem and confidence I had at the time because it seemed they thought I was so unlovable they couldn't even fathom that even I loved myself.

I was able to realize nobody can tell me how to feel about myself except myself.

I had the ability to talk myself out of suicide. Once it was because I didn't want to miss the upcoming first Avengers movie. 

Sometimes my family needing me worked. 

Then there was the point that I'll never find someone if I'm dead. Can't be a corpse groom. 

Then there's the fact that if you kill yourself then your life will never be better than whatever it was up to that point. Living means life can get better. Sure, it can get worse, and that's not good either, but with life is opportunities to get better. It's not as finite as death.

The first time I called a suicide hotline the person tried getting me off the phone quickly. They asked me "What changed?". I replied "Nothing.". They said "If nothing changed why do you want to kill yourself now if nothing's changed?" and I realized they didn't get it. I talked myself out of suicide by saying things could change for the better...but it never did. Years of living through it the stagnation meant staying alive didn't get better. I was suicidal again because nothing had changed at all. 

Life got better though. It took years. In 2016 I was focusing on my health, getting back into my artwork again, pawned most my DVD collection to afford making prints, and taking care of my mom after her stroke in 2011 and severe back arthritis diagnosis in 2016. I was losing weight, my A1C was going down, I got myself down to one pizza a week, and life was good.

If I thought other people might think I'm ugly I could tell myself it's just in my head and move on. 

Then I found out about the memes in early 2017. I felt the most suicidal of my life. All hope was lost. 

My ugliness was no longer just in my head. I was bonafide physically undesirable to women. My face was being associated with the evilness I've seen in screenshots of texts on Facebook. People, women in particular, were associating my face to that behavior. 

I no longer had a clean slate in meeting anybody new. Meeting someone would be a defensive uphill battle trying to prove I'm not the kind of guy those memes portray. Finding love became impossible.

I realized when strangers recognized me in public the last few years it had to be from these memes. We ruled out schools and work places but they always were certain they'd seen me before.

I was afraid to leave my house. Afraid of going out in public and being recognized again. To this day I have anxiety just getting groceries and going to the laundromat.

Last year I began experiencing anhedonia which means I had lost the enjoyment of doing things I loved. Things that were routine enjoyment for me like watching new episodes of Walking Dead on Sundays I just stopped doing and it took months for me to catch up on the DVR. I still have little interest in reading books, even comics, now.

I get suicidal often. It feels so easy now to give in and give up and let it be over. 

Fighting it isn't easy. It gets even harder when friends whose support you used to have just abandon you completely. The people you used to reach out to for help just unfriend you and leave.

Then you find out people are still uploading the memes of you, and this time people are comparing you to a child murderer?

My face was made the face of creeps, misogynists, rapists, murderers, and all male douchebaggery and evilness. It was done so without my permission.

I can count on my hands how many strangers said this was wrong. 

There are thousands more with no problem about it and feeling happy to bully and mock my face, to laugh at my face, to defame my character.

And Facebook, after all this, decides not to take them down. 

THIS NEEDS TO BE CHANGED! 

I can't fight it if I'm dead though. You can't fight back either if you're dead. 

Don't kill yourself. Get help. Don't surrender to the evil that tries to bring you down. Rise up and battle that evil and vanquish it to make the world a better place for all humanity!

ONLINE BULLIES MUST NOT WIN!

Right Now

Right now these 3 Facebook pages have been unresponsive to my requests at taking down the memes. First up we have the Cranky Fat Feminist page that seems to normally post body positivity messages...yet has no qualms about making fun of my face. 

Too Soon is unreachable by messenger and has not responded to my messages tagging them.

This page is pure evil. My comments tagging them are marked spam. Messaging them I get an automated bot response. 

I marked these as harassment and that they make me feel suicidal. I marked they use my photo and are humiliating. Facebook believes they fall within their community guidelines. I haven't even posted the screenshots of the comments yet. This actually got me more suicidal today. It's one thing that so many commentators believe it's ok to bully and harass a person but Facebook? Facebook sides with the bullies? No wonder people commit suicide from online bullying BECAUSE NOBODY TRIES TO FIX IT OR STOP IT.

Reclaiming My Face And Forgiveness

So, these are actual quotes of things I've said. I do have the screenshots of the Facebook posts to prove it as well. I did this to try and take back my face. Recently, some on Facebook have been evil about this and then made my new profile picture a new derogatory meme against LGBT people. I have family that's gay so I don't appreciate that at all. 

Yes, I forgave her for making the memes. She apologized three times and learned her lesson about not considering the feelings of the person being memed. She showed remorse. 

Right now I admit it's hard for me because of all the new comments and new postings of the original memes.