Trigger warning: This post could be distressing for those who have been in an abusive relationship
My new year’s resolution is to give up trolling.
I’d never thought of myself as a good candidate for turning into an online troll. But I guess I’d also never imagined I would be a victim of domestic violence.
On one level it’s quite pleasing to think that I can still surprise myself after 40 odd years of bumbling about in this otherwise familiar body and brain.
Being in an abusive relationship was hellish. But astonishingly, after I finally found the strength to ask him to leave, I found myself in a whole new kind of hell.
Central to this purgatory was shame. I was too ashamed to tell my family and friends what had happened. Telling the truth would be to admit that I had lied for years about the man he was. Telling the truth would require that I expose myself as the type of woman who knowingly remains in an abusive relationship.
And telling the truth meant admitting, to my own mortification, that I had chosen to stay in a relationship with a man who had physically harmed my children.
And so I spiralled downwards. When people asked what had happened I found myself unable to answer.
I justified the trolling, at first, as the pursuit of accountability. Now that some time has passed I can see it was actually fueled by rage and revenge.
It seemed to me that my former partner had the ability to present himself to the world as a good man. An honourable man. A man who supports all the right causes and knows all the right people. It infuriated me, not least because I had been completely fooled.
I spent a lot of time ruminating on all the warning signs back in the beginning of our relationship – wishing that I had paid attention to them and extricated myself before it was too late.
And it was too late now. For me, anyway. I decided that exposing him might serve as a warning to future partners. It might ward them off him, give them a motive to get out sooner than I had. And, in what seemed like a win-win it might just ruin his chances of future happiness. In my despair I honestly felt as though it might make me feel better.
My decision to start trolling was deliberate and calculated. We’re not talking about impulsive actions after a couple of glasses of wine. I write strategies for a living. This one had four key objectives:
Top Comments
She wasn't trolling, she was just butthurt
Ok so she's not a troll - that is not the point. This person has been seriously impacted, emotionally and probably physically, by an abuser. That is the point.
It is incredibly frustrating and demoralising to have been abused by a perpetrator, male or female, who (as they usually do very well) has fooled the community into believing they are a wonderful, good person. I know as I was seriously emotionally and physically abused by my ex.
He seriously assaulted me, the last time attempting to kill me and coming very close to succeeding. However, as a typical sociopath, he had everyone fooled even the police.
Despite footage of me on television news showing very disturbing injuries from a very serious assault many people did not believe he did this. God knows how they think I ended us so seriously injured.
People are so easily conned by these perpetrators - just because they appear to the outside world as a nice person they can be the complete opposite to anyone in a personal relationship with them. Far too many domestic violence perpetrators get away with shocking behaviour because of the very clever persona they present and the public and police' gullibility.