The Tried to Silence Me. Instead, They Strengthened My Voice.

There is something profoundly disturbing about a group of people deciding that another human being deserves to be relentlessly targeted.

People use phrases like online trolling, social media drama and hate campaign almost casually now. They make it sound like something contained within Facebook, a message inbox or a computer screen.

"Just switch your phone off."

"Stop reading it."

"Stay off social media."

If only it were that simple.

Because what happened to me didn't remain on social media.

It spilled into my real life.

It affected my relationships, my work, my home, my reputation and the people I loved. The constant feeling of being watched, discussed, judged and targeted followed me long after I put my phone down.

Eventually there was nowhere that felt completely safe.

And I don't think people truly understand what living like that can do to another human being.

When There Is No Safe Space

Home is supposed to be where you close the door on the outside world.

Mine stopped feeling like that.

Social media was only one part of what was happening. The effects of the campaign reached into virtually every aspect of my life.

When something follows you beyond a screen, you cannot simply log out.

You wake up with it.

You go to sleep with it.

You carry it into conversations with the people you love.

You find yourself wondering what is going to happen next.

Another message?

Another allegation?

Another attempt to interfere with some part of your life?

Another person joining a story without ever asking you for your side?

Another notification that makes your stomach turn before you've even opened it?

Living permanently braced for the next attack changes you.

And inevitably, it changes life for the people around you too.

Because hate campaigns don't have one victim.

They create ripples.

The people who love the person being targeted watch somebody they care about becoming exhausted, frightened, angry or withdrawn.

They live with the consequences too.

They worry.

They try to protect you.

They pick up the pieces after particularly bad days.

They watch you struggling and sometimes feel completely powerless to stop it.

That is something I will never forget.

I Reached the Point Where I Wanted It All to Stop

There was a time when I wasn't simply distressed or overwhelmed.

I was suicidal.

I had thought seriously about ending my life. In my mind, I had planned for the practicalities and tried to account for the consequences.

At that point, death didn't feel frightening.

It felt like relief.

Not because I didn't love my life or the people in it.

Because I desperately wanted the relentless pressure to stop.

I wanted silence.

No more messages.

No more accusations.

No more social media posts.

No more people discussing my life.

No more wondering what was coming next.

No more feeling as though there wasn't a single corner of my existence that couldn't somehow be reached.

When people participate in a hate campaign or online pile-on, I wonder whether they ever contemplate that possibility.

Do they understand where sustained harassment can take somebody mentally?

Do they ever look beyond the profile picture and remember that there is an actual human being reading their words?

Do they ever wonder whether their comment might be the hundredth comment that person has endured that week?

Because that is one of the most dangerous things about mob mentality.

Responsibility becomes diluted.

Everybody throws one stone and nobody accepts responsibility for the injuries.

Even Today

Even after everything that has happened, I woke today to a message telling me to kill myself and "make the world a better place." As usual sent from a fake profile because at their core, these individuals are cowards.

Think about that.

Another human being consciously decided those were appropriate words to send to somebody.

My blog has also been targeted and reported as hate speech.

I disagree fundamentally with that characterisation.

My blog tells my experiences and my truth. People may dislike what I say. They may challenge it.

They may disagree passionately with me.

That is their right.

But disagreement does not justify harassment, intimidation or trying to silence somebody altogether.

And reporting something repeatedly doesn't automatically make it untrue.

I fought to get my blog back online because somewhere during all of this, I realised something incredibly important.

I had spent far too long allowing other people's hatred to determine how I felt about myself.

Then I Thought About Who I Would Leave Behind

Something stopped me.

It wasn't fear of dying.

It was love.

I started thinking properly about what my death would actually mean.

Someone I loved could be the person who found me.

My family and friends would have to receive that telephone call.

Someone would have to tell the people who cared about me that I was gone.

There would be a funeral to arrange.

There would be questions that could never be answered.

People I loved might spend years wondering whether they had missed something, whether they could have stopped me or whether there was something they should have said.

They would inherit the pain I had been trying to escape.

And then there were my dogs.

My Dogs Need Me Here

My dogs aren't possessions sitting in my house waiting for somebody else to feed them.

They are family.

They depend upon me.

And some of my dogs are exempt dogs under the bully ban.

That means my death would not simply mean my dogs losing the person they love and the person responsible for them.

For some of them, the consequences could potentially affect their very existence.

That thought hit me incredibly hard.

I couldn't simply assume somebody would pick up their leads and everything would carry on exactly as before.

Their circumstances are different.

Their lives come with legal responsibilities and protections that have to be maintained.

So when I thought about ending my own life, I had to confront something much bigger than myself.

What happened to them afterwards?

Who would protect them?

Who would understand everything that needed to be done?

Who would fight for them if necessary?

Could my decision ultimately put their futures at risk?

Suddenly suicide wasn't simply about ending my pain.

It was about the enormous consequences my absence could create for every person and every animal who depended upon me, loved me or would be left behind.

For me personally, that became one of the most powerful reasons to stay.

They needed me alive.

And I realised that I needed them too.

The Part of Me They Cannot Touch

That realisation changed something fundamental inside me.

I cannot control what other people write.

I cannot control gossip.

I cannot control whether somebody dislikes me.

I cannot control the person who wakes up and decides that today will be another good day to send me abuse.

But I can control something far more important.

Whether I allow them to determine my worth and my future.

They don't get that power anymore.

My greatest strength isn't that their words never hurt.

Sometimes they do.

It isn't that I've somehow become bulletproof.

I haven't.

My strength is knowing that there is a line they cannot cross.

They can attack my reputation.

They can gossip about me.

They can send messages.

They can report my writing.

They can encourage other people to join them.

But they cannot own my decision to remain here.

That belongs to me.

Their Behaviour Is Not My Identity

Once I understood that, I started seeing the campaign differently.

Instead of constantly asking myself what their behaviour said about me, I started asking what it said about them.

What does it say about a person when they derive satisfaction from another person's distress?

What does it say about a group when cruelty becomes entertainment?

What happens to people's humanity when mob mentality makes behaviour acceptable that they might never contemplate alone?

What does it say when somebody becomes so consumed by their hatred of another person that telling them to kill themselves somehow feels justified?

I stopped absorbing their behaviour as evidence of my worth.

I began viewing the toxicity, hatred and mob mentality as a reflection of the people participating in it.

Their behaviour belongs to them.

It doesn't define me.

That distinction changed everything.

I Found My Purpose

There was a time when all I wanted was silence.

Now I want to speak.

I want to talk about what sustained harassment can actually do to another human being.

Not just online.

In their home.

In their relationships.

In their work.

In their confidence.

In their mental health.

In the lives of the people who love them.

I want people participating in pile-ons to understand that there is a living, breathing person at the centre of their entertainment.

And I want the person sitting alone believing that disappearing is the only way to make everything stop to know something else.

The mob doesn't get to write the ending of your story.

I Will Not Be Silenced Again

I fought to get my blog back online because it represents something much bigger to me now.

It represents my refusal to disappear.

People are entitled to disagree with me.

They are entitled to dislike me.

They are entitled to challenge what I write.

What they are not entitled to do is determine whether I exist.

There was a time when the hatred almost achieved the ultimate silence.

It didn't.

I'm still here.

My loved ones still have me.

My dogs still have the person who loves, protects and advocates for them.

And I still have them.

Every morning I wake up, every time I care for my dogs, every time I laugh with somebody I love, every time I write and every time I refuse to be intimidated into silence, I reclaim another piece of the life that hatred once threatened to consume.

Perhaps that is the greatest irony of all.

The people who wanted to destroy my voice ultimately helped me discover just how powerful it could be.

They wanted silence.

I found my voice.

They wanted shame.

I found my purpose.

They wanted me gone.

I'm still here.

And now I know exactly what I have to stay for.