After about 2 years of blogging and over 250 posts, guess what?! SQUEE!!!
I HAVE AN INTERNET TROLL!
I mean - obviously, this is a huge deal. Not only does it mean that I've potentially written something annoying enough that someone out there thought it was worth their time to belittle me, it also means - MY BLOG IS BIG ENOUGH THAT SOME STRANGER CAN FIND ME TO BEGIN WITH.
Now, before I go too far, let's back up for just one minute.
Of course, having a troll isn't all fun and games. And yeah ... their email was pretty mean. So it's weird for me to get all excited, right? After all, how can you be happy about an email titled, and I quote: "HEY you fat sack of sh!t"? (I censored that last word, in case you're wondering - they did not).
And man, did they have some other things to say to me, too! Not only did they tell me I should I kill myself, they thought my children should die, and ... I think they must have used the word c_nt at least 56 times in one paragraph (again, I'm censoring - and to be honest, with such liberal usage of the C-word, I really had a hard time not laughing by the time I got to the end of the email because ... who even uses that word anymore?!).
In the end though, regardless of this massive milestone, I have to admit - I am a little disappointed.
Because for as creative as I am with my running costumes and what not, I would have hoped that my troll would show some creativity, too. Or at least, put some real effort into reading my blog first, and then trying to slam me.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to provide them material or anything but .. they REALLY missed a chance for a home run. Like, they really could have hit below the belt by saying something about how I deserved to have a miscarriage last spring/summer, and tied it to me being a fat slob or something like that.
But dang. I just said that. Shoot.
Well, whatever.
Anyway, why am I writing this post? I'm sure many of you are out there saying "Natalie, don't react. That's just what they want, and you're letting them win." -or- "Natalie, you're only encouraging them to write you again."
Maybe so.
But I wanted to use this experience as an opportunity to say something that I don't think some people realize about me.
I've been the fat person all my life. Even now that I'm relatively thin, I still struggle with my weight sometimes. As a result, I've had hundreds of "fat" slams thrown my way - and the majority of them have been done to my face, in person, and often in a very aggressive and threatening way (read: way worse than via an anonymous email).
No, being on the receiving end of those slams was never fun. But I lived through it.
And not only have I lived through it, but for every mean thing a person has done to me, I've had tons more positive things come through afterwards. Case in point? Literally hours after the "troll" pressed send on their nasty email, I had these two things flow across my Facebook feed:
*Side note, that is my "fat sack of sh!t" ass in the leggings photo above.
For some reason, though, I seem to be unable to find the fat ... or the sack. Huh.
PLUS, just a day prior, I had one of the most amazing evenings of my life. And it wasn't just because my "regular" Tues/Thurs students wanted to hang out post class. Or even because we had happy hour or that we all had a good time. It was because one of my students said something that made me burst with pride:
"I found out the other day that my mom, who's in her early 80's and trying to stay in shape, has been using soup cans for workout weights. I was like, mom you can't do that! So I gave her my 3 pound dumbbell set. I told her I'm not using them anymore anyway, and that she could just take them since I have a set of 5 and 8 pounders at home. But seriously you guys - I used to use 3 pounders during class. Can you believe that?"
Yep. That's me making a difference right there. On a personal and mass impact level.
So for that, I will take 100 emails calling me "fat" ... simply because I'm helping someone else not be.
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